french revolution essay body

French Revolution

Server costs fundraiser 2024.

The French Revolution (1789-1799) was a period of major societal and political upheaval in France. It witnessed the collapse of the monarchy, the establishment of the First French Republic, and culminated in the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the start of the Napoleonic era. The French Revolution is considered one of the defining events of Western history.

The Revolution of 1789, as it is sometimes called to distinguish it from later French revolutions, originated from deep-rooted problems that the government of King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) proved incapable of fixing; such problems were primarily related to France's financial troubles as well as the systemic social inequality embedded within the Ancien Régime . The Estates-General of 1789 , summoned to address these issues, resulted in the formation of a National Constituent Assembly, a body of elected representatives from the three societal orders who swore never to disband until they had written a new constitution. Over the next decade, the revolutionaries attempted to dismantle the oppressive old society and build a new one based on the principles of the Age of Enlightenment exemplified in the motto: " Liberté, égalité, fraternité ."

Although initially successful in establishing a French Republic, the revolutionaries soon became embroiled in the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) in which France fought against a coalition of major European powers. The Revolution quickly devolved into violent paranoia, and 20-40,000 people were killed in the Reign of Terror (1793-94), including many of the Revolution's former leaders. After the Terror, the Revolution stagnated until 1799, when Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) took control of the government in the Coup of 18 Brumaire , ultimately transitioning the Republic into the First French Empire (1804-1814, 1815). Although the Revolution failed to prevent France from falling back into autocracy, it managed to succeed in other ways. It inspired numerous revolutions throughout the world and helped shape the modern concepts of nation-states, Western democracies, and human rights.

Most of the causes of the French Revolution can be traced to economic and social inequalities that were exacerbated by the brokenness of the Ancien Régime (“old regime”), the name retroactively given to the political and social system of the Kingdom of France in the last few centuries of its initial existence. The Ancien Régime was divided into three estates, or social orders: the clergy, nobility, and commoners. The first two estates enjoyed many social privileges, including tax exemptions, that were not granted to the commoners, a class that made up well over 90% of the population. The Third Estate was burdened with manual labor as well as paying most of the taxes.

Rapid population growth contributed to the general suffering; by 1789, France was the most populous European state with over 28 million people. Job growth had not kept up with the swelling population, leaving 8- 12 million impoverished. Backwards agricultural techniques and a steady string of terrible harvests led to starvation. Meanwhile, a rising class of wealthy commoners, the bourgeoisie, threatened the privileged position of the aristocracy, increasing tensions between social classes. Ideas of the Age of Enlightenment also contributed to national unrest; people began to view the Ancien Régime as corrupt, mismanaged, and tyrannical. Hatred was especially directed toward Queen Marie Antoinette , who was seen to personify everything wrong with the government.

A final significant cause was France's monumental state debt, accumulated by its attempts to maintain its status as a global power. Expensive wars and other projects had put the French treasury billions of livres into debt, as it had been forced to take out loans at enormously high interest rates. The country's irregular systems of taxation were ineffective, and as creditors began to call for repayment in the 1780s, the government finally realized something had to be done.

The Gathering Storm: 1774-1788

On 10 May 1774, King Louis XV of France died after a reign of nearly 60 years, leaving his grandson to inherit a troubled and broken kingdom. Only 19 years old, Louis XVI was an impressionable ruler who adhered to the advice of his ministers and involved France in the American War of Independence. Although French involvement in the American Revolution succeeded in weakening Great Britain , it also added substantially to France's debt while the success of the Americans encouraged anti-despotic sentiments at home.

In 1786, Louis XVI was convinced by his finance minister, Charles-Alexandre Calonne, that the issue of state debt could no longer be ignored. Calonne presented a list of financial reforms and convened the Assembly of Notables of 1787 to rubberstamp them. The Notables, a mostly aristocratic assembly, refused and told Calonne that only an Estates-General could approve such radical reforms. This referred to an assembly of the three estates of pre-revolutionary France , a body that had not been summoned in 175 years. Louis XVI refused, realizing that an Estates-General could undermine his authority. Instead, he fired Calonne and took the reforms to the parlements .

The parlements were the 13 judicial courts that were responsible for registering royal decrees before they went into effect. Consisting of aristocrats, the parlements had long struggled against royal authority, still bitter that their class had been subjugated by the "sun king" Louis XIV of France a century before. Spotting a chance to recover some power, they refused to register the royal reforms and joined the Notables in advocating for an Estates-General. When the crown responded by exiling the courts, riots erupted across the country; the parlements had presented themselves as champions of the people, thereby winning the commoners' support. One of these riots erupted in Grenoble on 7 June 1788 and led the three estates of Dauphiné to gather without the king's consent. Known as the Day of Tiles, this is credited by some historians as the start of the Revolution. Realizing he had been bested, Louis XVI appointed the popular Jacques Necker as his new finance minister and scheduled an Estates-General to convene in May 1789.

Rise of the Third Estate: February-September 1789

Across France, 6 million people participated in the electoral process for the Estates-General, and a total 25,000 cahiers de doléances , or lists of grievances, were drawn up for discussion. When the Estates-General of 1789 finally convened on 5 May in Versailles, there were 578 deputies representing the Third Estate, 282 for the nobility, and 303 for the clergy. Yet the double representation of the Third Estate was meaningless, as votes would still be counted by estate rather than by head. As the upper classes were sure to vote together, the Third Estate was at a disadvantage.

Subsequently, the Third Estate refused to verify its own elections, a process needed to begin proceedings. It demanded votes to be counted by head, a condition the nobility staunchly refused. Meanwhile, Louis XVI's attention was drawn away by the death of his son, paralyzing royal authority. On 13 June, having reached an impasse, the Third Estate commenced roll call, breaking protocol by beginning proceedings without the consent of the king or the other orders. On 17 June, following a motion proposed by Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès , the Third Estate officially proclaimed itself a National Constituent Assembly. Two days later, the clergy formally voted to join it, and the nobility begrudgingly followed suit. On 20 June, after finding themselves locked out of the assembly hall, the deputies of the National Assembly met in the royal tennis court. There, they swore the Tennis Court Oath, promising never to disband until they had given France a new constitution. The French Revolution had begun.

Louis XVI realized he needed to regain control. In early July, he called over 30,000 soldiers into the Paris Basin, and on 11 July, he dismissed Necker and other ministers considered too friendly to the insolent revolutionaries. Fearing the king meant to crush the Revolution, the people of Paris rioted on 12 July. Their uprising climaxed on 14 July with the Storming of the Bastille , when hundreds of citizens successfully attacked the Bastille fortress to loot it for ammunition. The king backed down, sending away his soldiers and reinstating Necker. Unnerved by these events, the king's youngest brother, Comte d'Artois, fled France with an entourage of royalists on the night of 16 July; they were the first of thousands of émigrés to flee.

In the coming weeks, the French countryside broke out into scattered riots, as rumors spread of aristocratic plots to deprive citizens of their liberties. These riots resulted in mini-Bastilles as peasants raided the feudal estates of local seigneurs, forcing nobles to renounce their feudal rights. Later known as the Great Fear , this wave of panic forced the National Assembly to confront the issue of feudalism . On the night of 4 August, in a wave of patriotic fervor, the Assembly announced that the feudal regime was "entirely destroyed" and ended the privileges of the upper classes. Later that month, it accepted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , a landmark human rights document that championed the general will of the people, separation of powers, and the idea that human rights were universal. These two achievements are considered the most important and longest-lasting accomplishments of the Revolution.

A People's Monarchy: 1789-1791

As the National Assembly slowly drafted its constitution, Louis XVI was sulking in Versailles. He refused to consent to the August Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, demanding instead that the deputies include his right to an absolute veto in the new constitution. This enraged the people of Paris, and on 5 October 1789, a crowd of 7,000 people, mostly market women , marched from Paris to Versailles in the pouring rain, demanding bread and that the king accept the Assembly's reforms. Louis XVI had no choice but to accept and was forced to leave his isolation at Versailles and accompany the women back to Paris, where he was installed in the Tuileries Palace . Known as the Women's March on Versailles , or the October Days, this insurrection led to the end of the Ancien Régime and the beginning of France's short-lived constitutional monarchy.

The next year and a half marked a relatively calm phase of the Revolution; indeed, many people believed the Revolution was over. Louis XVI agreed to adopt the Assembly's reforms and even appeared reconciled to the Revolution by accepting a tricolor cockade. The Assembly, meanwhile, began to rule France, adopting its own ill-fated currency, the assignat , to help tackle the outstanding debt. Having declawed the nobility, it now turned its attentions toward the Catholic Church. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy , issued on 12 July 1790, forced all clerics to swear oaths to the new constitution and put their loyalty to the state before their loyalty to the Pope in Rome . At the same time, church lands were confiscated by the Assembly, and the papal city of Avignon was reintegrated into France. These attacks on the church alienated many from the Revolution, including the pious Louis XVI himself.

Sign up for our free weekly email newsletter!

14 July 1790, the first anniversary of the Bastille, saw a massive celebration on the Champ de Mars . Led by the Marquis de Lafayette , the Festival of the Federation was meant to mark the unity of the newly liberated French people under the magnanimous rule of their citizen-king. But the king had other plans. A year later, on the night of 20-21 June 1791, he and his family left the Tuileries in disguise and attempted to escape France in what has become known as the Flight to Varennes . They were quickly caught and returned to Paris, but their attempt had irrevocably destroyed any trust the people had in the monarchy. Calls began to mount for Louis XVI to be deposed, while some even began to seriously demand a French Republic. The issue divided the Jacobin Club, a political society where revolutionaries gathered to discuss their goals and agendas. Moderate members loyal to the idea of constitutional monarchy split to form the new Feuillant Club, while the remaining Jacobins were further radicalized.

On 17 July 1791, a crowd of demonstrators gathered on the Champ de Mars to demand the king's deposition. They were fired on by the Paris National Guard, commanded by Lafayette , resulting in 50 deaths. The Champ de Mars Massacre sent republicans on the run, giving the Feuillants enough time to push through their constitution, which centered around a weakened, liberal monarchy. On 30 September 1791, the new Legislative Assembly met, but despite the long-awaited constitution, the Revolution was more divided than ever.

Birth of a Republic: 1792-1793

Many deputies of the Legislative Assembly formed themselves into two factions: the more conservative Feuillants sat on the right of the Assembly president, while the radical Jacobins sat to his left, giving rise to the left/right political spectrum still used today. After the monarchs of Austria and Prussia threatened to destroy the Revolution in the Declaration of Pillnitz , a third faction split off from the Jacobins, demanding war as the only way to preserve the Revolution. This war party, later known as the Girondins, quickly dominated the Legislative Assembly, which voted to declare war on Austria on 20 April 1792. This began the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), as the old regimes of Europe , feeling threatened by the radical revolutionaries, joined together in a coalition against France.

Initially, the war went disastrously for the French. The summer of 1792 saw a Prussian army accompanied by French royalist émigrés slowly march toward Paris. In August, the invaders issued the Brunswick Manifesto, threatening to destroy Paris should any harm come to the French royal family. This threat sent the people of Paris into a hysterical panic that led to the Storming of the Tuileries Palace on 10 August 1792, the insurrection that finally toppled the monarchy. Still fearful of counter-revolutionary enemies who might aid the Prussians, Paris mobs then invaded the city's prisons and murdered over 1,100 people in the September Massacres .

On 20 September 1792, a French army finally halted the Prussian invasion at the miraculous Battle of Valmy . The next day, the jubilated Legislative Assembly officially proclaimed the French Republic. The later French Republican calendar dated itself from this moment, which was seen as the ultimate accomplishment of humankind. The Assembly was disbanded, and a National Convention was convened to draft a new constitution. One of the Convention's first tasks was to decide the fate of the deposed Louis XVI; ultimately, he was tried and guillotined on 21 January 1793, his family kept imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple until the trial and execution of Marie Antoinette that October. The trial and execution of Louis XVI shocked Europe, causing Great Britain, Spain, and the Dutch Republic to enter the coalition against France.

Reign of Terror: 1793-1794

After the decline of the Feuillants, the Girondins became the Revolution's moderate faction. In early 1793, they were opposed by a group of radical Jacobins called the Mountain, primarily led by Maximilien Robespierre , Georges Danton , and Jean- Paul Marat. The Girondins and the Mountain maintained a bitter rivalry until the fall of the Girondins on 2 June 1793, when roughly 80,000 sans-culottes , or lower-class revolutionaries, and National Guards surrounded the Tuileries Palace, demanding the arrests of leading Girondins. This was accomplished, and the Girondin leaders were later executed.

The Mountain's victory deeply divided the nation. The assassination of Marat by Charlotte Corday occurred amidst pockets of civil war that threatened to unravel the infant republic, such as the War in the Vendée and the federalist revolts . To quell this dissent and halt the advance of coalition armies, the Convention approved the creation of the Committee of Public Safety , which quickly assumed near total executive power. Through measures such as mass conscription, the Committee brutally crushed the civil wars and checked the foreign armies before turning its attention to unmasking domestic traitors and counter-revolutionary agents. The ensuing Reign of Terror, lasting from September 1793-July 1794 resulted in hundreds of thousands of arrests, 16,594 executions by guillotine, and tens of thousands of additional deaths. Aristocrats and clergymen were executed alongside former revolutionary leaders and thousands of ordinary people.

Robespierre accumulated almost dictatorial powers during this period. Attempting to curtail the Revolution's rampant dechristianization, he implemented the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being to ease France into his vision of a morally pure society. His enemies saw this as an attempt to claim total power and, fearing for their lives, decided to overthrow him; the fall of Maximilien Robespierre and his allies on 28 July 1794 brought the Terror to an end, and is considered by some historians to mark the decline of the Revolution itself.

Thermidorians & the Directory: 1794-1799

Robespierre's execution was followed by the Thermidorian Reaction , a period of conservative counter-revolution in which the vestiges of Jacobin rule were erased. The Jacobin Club itself was permanently closed in November 1794, and a Jacobin attempt to retake power in the Prairial Uprising of 1795 was crushed. The Thermidorians defeated a royalist uprising on 13 Vendémiaire (5 October 1795) before adopting the Constitution of Year III (1795) and transitioning into the French Directory , the government that led the Republic in the final years of the Revolution.

Meanwhile, French armies had succeeded in pushing back the coalition's forces, defeating most coalition nations by 1797. The star of the war was undoubtedly General Napoleon Bonaparte, whose brilliant Italian campaign of 1796-97 catapulted him to fame. On 9 November 1799, Bonaparte took control of the government in the Coup of 18 Brumaire, bringing an end to the unpopular Directory. His ascendency marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era.

Subscribe to topic Related Content Books Cite This Work License

Bibliography

• Andress, David. The Terror . Time Warner Books Uk, 2005.
• Blanning, T. C. W. The French Revolutionary Wars, 1787-1802 . Hodder Education Publishers, 1996.
• Carlyle, Thomas & Sorensen, David R. & Kinser, Brent E. & Engel, Mark. The French Revolution . Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Davidson, Ian. The French Revolution. Pegasus Books, 2018.
• Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Francois Furet & Mona Ozouf & Arthur Goldhammer. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution. Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 1989.
• Fraser, Antonia. Marie Antoinette. Anchor, 2002.
• Lefebvre, Georges & Palmer, R. R. & Palmer, R. R. & Tackett, Timothy. The Coming of the French Revolution . Princeton University Press, 2015.
• Lefebvre, Georges & White, John Albert. The Great Fear of 1789. Princeton University Press, 1983.
• Mikaberidze, Alexander. The Napoleonic Wars. Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Palmer, R. R. & Woloch, Isser. Twelve Who Ruled. Princeton University Press, 2017.
• Roberts, Andrew. Napoleon. Penguin Books, 2015.
• Schama, Simon. Citizens. Vintage, 1990.
• Scurr, Ruth. Fatal Purity. Holt Paperbacks, 2007.
• Tocqueville, Alexis de & Bevan, Gerald & Bevan, Gerald. The Ancien Régime and the Revolution . Penguin Classics, 2008.

About the Author

Translations

We want people all over the world to learn about history. Help us and translate this definition into another language!

Questions & Answers

What was the french revolution, what were 3 main causes of the french revolution, what began the french revolution, what ended the french revolution, what are some important events of the french revolution, related content.

Thermidorian Reaction

Georges Danton

Maximilien Robespierre

Fall of Maximilien Robespierre

Power Struggles in the Reign of Terror

Cult of the Supreme Being

Free for the world, supported by you.

World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organization. For only $5 per month you can become a member and support our mission to engage people with cultural heritage and to improve history education worldwide.

Recommended Books

Cite This Work

Mark, H. W. (2023, January 12). French Revolution . World History Encyclopedia . Retrieved from https://www.worldhistory.org/French_Revolution/

Chicago Style

Mark, Harrison W.. " French Revolution ." World History Encyclopedia . Last modified January 12, 2023. https://www.worldhistory.org/French_Revolution/.

Mark, Harrison W.. " French Revolution ." World History Encyclopedia . World History Encyclopedia, 12 Jan 2023. Web. 14 Jul 2024.

License & Copyright

Submitted by Harrison W. Mark , published on 12 January 2023. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike . This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

History Cooperative

French Revolution: History, Timeline, Causes, and Outcomes

The French Revolution, a seismic event that reshaped the contours of political power and societal norms, began in 1789, not merely as a chapter in history but as a dramatic upheaval that would influence the course of human events far beyond its own time and borders.

It was more than a clash of ideologies; it was a profound transformation that questioned the very foundations of monarchical rule and aristocratic privilege, leading to the rise of republicanism and the concept of citizenship.

The causes of this revolution were as complex as its outcomes were far-reaching, stemming from a confluence of economic strife, social inequalities, and a hunger for political reform.

The outcomes of the French Revolution, embedded in the realms of political thought, civil rights, and societal structures, continue to resonate, offering invaluable insights into the power and potential of collective action for change.

Table of Contents

Time and Location

The French Revolution, a cornerstone event in the annals of history, ignited in 1789, a time when Europe was dominated by monarchical rule and the vestiges of feudalism. This epochal period, which spanned a decade until the late 1790s, witnessed profound social, political, and economic transformations that not only reshaped France but also sent shockwaves across the continent and beyond.

Paris, the heart of France, served as the epicenter of revolutionary activity , where iconic events such as the storming of the Bastille became symbols of the struggle for freedom. Yet, the revolution was not confined to the city’s limits; its influence permeated through every corner of France, from bustling urban centers to serene rural areas, each witnessing the unfolding drama of revolution in unique ways.

The revolution consisted of many complex factions, each representing a distinct set of interests and ideologies. Initially, the conflict arose between the Third Estate, which included a diverse group from peasants and urban laborers to the bourgeoisie, and the First and Second Estates, made up of the clergy and the nobility, respectively.

The Third Estate sought to dismantle the archaic social structure that relegated them to the burden of taxation while denying them political representation and rights. Their demands for reform and equality found resonance across a society strained by economic distress and the autocratic rule of the monarchy.

As the revolution evolved, so too did the nature of the conflict. The initial unity within the Third Estate fractured, giving rise to factions such as the Jacobins and Girondins, who, despite sharing a common revolutionary zeal, diverged sharply in their visions for France’s future.

The Jacobins , with figures like Maximilien Robespierre at the helm, advocated for radical measures, including the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic, while the Girondins favored a more moderate approach.

The sans-culottes , representing the militant working-class Parisians, further complicated the revolutionary landscape with their demands for immediate economic relief and political reforms.

The revolution’s adversaries were not limited to internal factions; monarchies throughout Europe viewed the republic with suspicion and hostility. Fearing the spread of revolutionary fervor within their own borders, European powers such as Austria, Prussia, and Britain engaged in military confrontations with France, aiming to restore the French monarchy and stem the tide of revolution.

These external threats intensified the internal strife, fueling the revolution’s radical phase and propelling it towards its eventual conclusion with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, who capitalized on the chaos to establish his own rule.

READ MORE: How Did Napoleon Die: Stomach Cancer, Poison, or Something Else?

Causes of the French Revolution

The French Revolution’s roots are deeply embedded in a confluence of political, social, economic, and intellectual factors that, over time, eroded the foundations of the Ancien Régime and set the stage for revolutionary change.

At the heart of the revolution were grievances that transcended class boundaries, uniting much of the nation in a quest for profound transformation.

Economic Hardship and Social Inequality

A critical catalyst for the revolution was France’s dire economic condition. Fiscal mismanagement, costly involvement in foreign wars (notably the American Revolutionary War), and an antiquated tax system placed an unbearable strain on the populace, particularly the Third Estate, which bore the brunt of taxation while being denied equitable representation.

Simultaneously, extravagant spending by Louis XVI and his predecessors further drained the national treasury, exacerbating the financial crisis.

The social structure of France, rigidly divided into three estates, underscored profound inequalities. The First (clergy) and Second (nobility) Estates enjoyed significant privileges, including exemption from many taxes, which contrasted starkly with the hardships faced by the Third Estate, comprising peasants , urban workers, and a rising bourgeoisie.

This disparity fueled resentment and a growing demand for social and economic justice.

Enlightenment Ideals

The Enlightenment , a powerful intellectual movement sweeping through Europe, profoundly influenced the revolutionary spirit. Philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu criticized traditional structures of power and authority, advocating for principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Their writings inspired a new way of thinking about governance, society, and the rights of individuals, sowing the seeds of revolution among a populace eager for change.

Political Crisis and the Estates-General

The immediate catalyst for the French Revolution was deeply rooted in a political crisis, underscored by the French monarchy’s chronic financial woes. King Louis XVI, facing dire fiscal insolvency, sought to break the deadlock through the convocation of the Estates-General in 1789, marking the first assembly of its kind since 1614.

This critical move, intended to garner support for financial reforms, unwittingly set the stage for widespread political upheaval. It provided the Third Estate, representing the common people of France, with an unprecedented opportunity to voice their longstanding grievances and demand a more significant share of political authority.

The Third Estate, comprising a vast majority of the population but long marginalized in the political framework of the Ancien Régime, seized this moment to assert its power. Their transformation into the National Assembly was a monumental shift, symbolizing a rejection of the existing social and political order.

The catalyst for this transformation was their exclusion from the Estates-General meeting, leading them to gather in a nearby tennis court. There, they took the historic Tennis Court Oath, vowing not to disperse until France had a new constitution.

This act of defiance was not just a political statement but a clear indication of the revolutionaries’ resolve to overhaul French society.

Amidst this burgeoning crisis, the personal life of Marie Antoinette , Louis XVI’s queen, became a focal point of public scrutiny and scandal. 

Married to Louis at the tender age of fourteen, Marie Antoinette, the youngest daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, was known for her lavish lifestyle and the preferential treatment she accorded her friends and relatives.

READ MORE: Roman Emperors in Order: The Complete List from Caesar to the Fall of Rome

Her disregard for traditional court fashion and etiquette, along with her perceived extravagance, made her an easy target for public criticism and ridicule. Popular songs in Parisian cafés and a flourishing genre of pornographic literature vilified the queen, accusing her of infidelity, corruption, and disloyalty.

Such depictions, whether grounded in truth or fabricated, fueled the growing discontent among the populace, further complicating the already tense political atmosphere.

The intertwining of personal scandals with the broader political crisis highlighted the deep-seated issues within the French monarchy and aristocracy, contributing to the revolutionary fervor.

As the political crisis deepened, the actions of the Third Estate and the controversies surrounding Marie Antoinette exemplified the widespread desire for change and the rejection of the Ancient Régime’s corruption and excesses.

Key Concepts, Events, and People of the French Revolution

As the Estates General convened in 1789, little did the world know that this gathering would mark the beginning of a revolution that would forever alter the course of history.

Through the rise and fall of factions, the clash of ideologies, and the leadership of remarkable individuals, this era reshaped not only France but also set a precedent for future generations.

From the storming of the Bastille to the establishment of the Directory, each event and figure played a crucial role in crafting a new vision of governance and social equality.

Estates General

When the Estates General was summoned in May 1789, it marked the beginning of a series of events that would catalyze the French Revolution. Initially intended as a means for King Louis XVI to address the financial crisis by securing support for tax reforms, the assembly instead became a flashpoint for broader grievances.

Representing the three estates of French society—the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners—the Estates General highlighted the profound disparities and simmering tensions between these groups.

The Third Estate, comprising 98% of the population but traditionally having the least power, seized the moment to push for more significant reforms, challenging the very foundations of the Ancient Régime.

The deadlock over voting procedures—where the Third Estate demanded votes be counted by head rather than by estate—led to its members declaring themselves the National Assembly, an act of defiance that effectively inaugurated the revolution.

This bold step, coupled with the subsequent Tennis Court Oath where they vowed not to disperse until a new constitution was created, underscored a fundamental shift in authority from the monarchy to the people, setting a precedent for popular sovereignty that would resonate throughout the revolution.

Rise of the Third Estate

The Rise of the Third Estate underscores the growing power and assertiveness of the common people of France. Fueled by economic hardship, social inequality, and inspired by Enlightenment ideals, this diverse group—encompassing peasants, urban workers, and the bourgeoisie—began to challenge the existing social and political order.

Their transformation from a marginalized majority into the National Assembly marked a radical departure from traditional power structures, asserting their role as legitimate representatives of the French people. This period was characterized by significant political mobilization and the formation of popular societies and clubs, which played a crucial role in spreading revolutionary ideas and organizing action.

This newfound empowerment of the Third Estate culminated in key revolutionary acts, such as the storming of the Bastille in July 1789, a symbol of royal tyranny. This event not only demonstrated the power of popular action but also signaled the irreversible nature of the revolutionary movement.

The rise of the Third Estate paved the way for the abolition of feudal privileges and the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , foundational texts that sought to establish a new social and political order based on equality, liberty, and fraternity.

A People’s Monarchy

The concept of a People’s Monarchy emerged as a compromise in the early stages of the French Revolution, reflecting the initial desire among many revolutionaries to retain the monarchy within a constitutional framework.

This period was marked by King Louis XVI’s grudging acceptance of the National Assembly’s authority and the enactment of significant reforms, including the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the Constitution of 1791, which established a limited monarchy and sought to redistribute power more equitably.

However, this attempt to balance revolutionary demands with monarchical tradition was fraught with difficulties, as mutual distrust between the king and the revolutionaries continued to escalate.

The failure of the People’s Monarchy was precipitated by the Flight to Varennes in June 1791, when Louis XVI attempted to escape France and rally foreign support for the restoration of his absolute power.

This act of betrayal eroded any remaining support for the monarchy among the populace and the Assembly, leading to increased calls for the establishment of a republic.

The people’s experiment with a constitutional monarchy thus served to highlight the irreconcilable differences between the revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality and the traditional monarchical order, setting the stage for the republic’s proclamation.

Birth of a Republic

The proclamation of the First French Republic in September 1792 represented a radical departure from centuries of monarchical rule, embodying the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

This transition was catalyzed by escalating political tensions, military challenges, and the radicalization of the revolution, particularly after the king’s failed flight and perceived betrayal.

The Republic’s birth was a moment of immense optimism and aspiration, as it promised to reshape French society on the principles of democratic governance and civic equality. It also marked the beginning of a new calendar, symbolic of the revolutionaries’ desire to break completely with the past and start anew.

However, the early years of the Republic were marked by significant challenges, including internal divisions, economic struggles, and threats from monarchist powers in Europe.

These pressures necessitated the establishment of the Committee of Public Safety and the Reign of Terror, measures aimed at defending the revolution but which also led to extreme political repression.

Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror, from September 1793 to July 1794, remains one of the most controversial and bloodiest periods of the French Revolution. Under the auspices of the Committee of Public Safety, led by figures such as Maximilien Robespierre, the French government adopted radical measures to purge the nation of perceived enemies of the revolution.

This period saw the widespread use of the guillotine , with thousands executed on charges of counter-revolutionary activities or mere suspicion of disloyalty. The Terror aimed to consolidate revolutionary gains and protect the nascent Republic from internal and external threats, but its legacy is marred by the extremity of its actions and the climate of fear it engendered.

The end of the Terror came with the Thermidorian Reaction on 27th July 1794 (9th Thermidor Year II, according to the revolutionary calendar), which resulted in the arrest and execution of Robespierre and his closest allies.

This marked a significant turning point, leading to the dismantling of the Committee of Public Safety and the gradual relaxation of emergency measures. The aftermath of the Terror reflected a society grappling with the consequences of its radical actions, seeking stability after years of upheaval but still committed to the revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality .

Thermidorians and the Directory

Following the Thermidorian Reaction , the political landscape of France underwent significant changes, leading to the establishment of the Directory in November 1795.

This new government, a five-member executive body, was intended to provide stability and moderate the excesses of the previous radical phase. The Directory period was characterized by a mix of conservative and revolutionary policies, aimed at consolidating the Republic and addressing the economic and social issues that had fueled the revolution.

Despite its efforts to navigate the challenges of governance, the Directory faced significant opposition from royalists on the right and Jacobins on the left, leading to a period of political instability and corruption.

The Directory’s inability to resolve these tensions and its growing unpopularity set the stage for its downfall. The coup of 18 Brumaire in November 1799, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, ended the Directory and established the Consulate, marking the end of the revolutionary government and the beginning of Napoleonic rule.

While the Directory failed to achieve lasting stability, it played a crucial role in the transition from radical revolution to the establishment of a more authoritarian regime, highlighting the complexities of revolutionary governance and the challenges of fulfilling the ideals of 1789.

French Revolution End and Outcome: Napoleon’s Rise

The revolution’s end is often marked by Napoleon’s coup d’état on 18 Brumaire , which not only concluded a decade of political instability and social unrest but also ushered in a new era of governance under his rule.

This period, while stabilizing France and bringing much-needed order, seemed to contradict the revolution’s initial aims of establishing a democratic republic grounded in the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Napoleon’s rise to power, culminating in his coronation as Emperor, symbolizes a complex conclusion to the revolutionary narrative, intertwining the fulfillment and betrayal of its foundational ideals.

Evaluating the revolution’s success requires a nuanced perspective. On one hand, it dismantled the Ancien Régime, abolished feudalism, and set forth the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, laying the cornerstone for modern democracy and human rights. 

These achievements signify profound societal and legal transformations that resonated well beyond France’s borders, influencing subsequent movements for freedom and equality globally.

On the other hand, the revolution’s trajectory through the Reign of Terror and the subsequent rise of a military dictatorship under Napoleon raises questions about the cost of these advances and the ultimate realization of the revolution’s goals.

The French Revolution’s conclusion with Napoleon Bonaparte’s ascension to power is emblematic of its complex legacy. This period not only marked the cessation of years of turmoil but also initiated a new chapter in French governance, characterized by stability and reform yet marked by a departure from the revolution’s original democratic aspirations.

The Significance of the French Revolution

The French Revolution holds a place of prominence in the annals of history, celebrated for its profound impact on the course of modern civilization. Its fame stems not only from the dramatic events and transformative ideas it unleashed but also from its enduring influence on political thought, social reform, and the global struggle for justice and equality.

This period of intense upheaval and radical change challenged the very foundations of society, dismantling centuries-old institutions and laying the groundwork for a new era defined by the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

At its core, the French Revolution was a manifestation of human aspiration towards freedom and self-determination, a vivid illustration of the power of collective action to reshape the world. It introduced revolutionary concepts of citizenship and rights that have since become the bedrock of democratic societies.

Moreover, the revolution’s ripple effects were felt worldwide, inspiring a wave of independence movements and revolutions across Europe, Latin America, and beyond. Its legacy is a testament to the idea that people have the power to overthrow oppressive systems and construct a more equitable society.

The revolution’s significance also lies in its contributions to political and social thought. It was a living laboratory for ideas that were radical at the time, such as the separation of church and state, the abolition of feudal privileges, and the establishment of a constitution to govern the rights and duties of the French citizens.

These concepts, debated and implemented with varying degrees of success during the revolution, have become fundamental to modern governance.

Furthermore, the French Revolution is famous for its dramatic and symbolic events, from the storming of the Bastille to the Reign of Terror, which have etched themselves into the collective memory of humanity.

These events highlight the complexities and contradictions of the revolutionary process, underscoring the challenges inherent in profound societal transformation.

Key Figures of the French Revolution

The French Revolutions were painted by the actions and ideologies of several key figures whose contributions defined the era. These individuals, with their diverse roles and perspectives, were central in navigating the revolution’s trajectory, capturing the complexities and contradictions of this tumultuous period.

Maximilien Robespierre , often synonymous with the Reign of Terror, was a figure of paradoxes. A lawyer and politician, his early advocacy for the rights of the common people and opposition to absolute monarchy marked him as a champion of liberty.

However, as a leader of the Committee of Public Safety, his name became associated with the radical phase of the revolution, characterized by extreme measures in the name of safeguarding the republic. His eventual downfall and execution reflect the revolution’s capacity for self-consumption.

Georges Danton , another prominent revolutionary leader, played a crucial role in the early stages of the revolution. Known for his oratory skills and charismatic leadership, Danton was instrumental in the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the First French Republic.

Unlike Robespierre, Danton is often remembered for his pragmatism and efforts to moderate the revolution’s excesses, which ultimately led to his execution during the Reign of Terror, highlighting the volatile nature of revolutionary politics.

Louis XVI, the king at the revolution’s outbreak, represents the Ancient Régime’s complexities and the challenges of monarchical rule in a time of profound societal change.

His inability to effectively manage France’s financial crisis and his hesitancy to embrace substantial reforms contributed to the revolutionary fervor. His execution in 1793 symbolized the revolution’s radical break from monarchical tradition and the birth of the republic.

Marie Antoinette, the queen consort of Louis XVI, became a symbol of the monarchy’s extravagance and disconnect from the common people. Her fate, like that of her husband, underscores the revolution’s rejection of the old order and the desire for a new societal structure based on equality and merit rather than birthright.

Jean-Paul Marat , a journalist and politician, used his publication, L’Ami du Peuple, to advocate for the rights of the lower classes and to call for radical measures against the revolution’s enemies.

His assassination by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin sympathizer, in 1793 became one of the revolution’s most famous episodes, illustrating the deep divisions within revolutionary France.

Finally, Napoleon Bonaparte, though not a leader during the revolution’s peak, emerged from its aftermath to shape France’s future. A military genius, Napoleon used the opportunities presented by the revolution’s chaos to rise to power, eventually declaring himself Emperor of the French.

His reign would consolidate many of the revolution’s reforms while curtailing its democratic aspirations, embodying the complexities of the revolution’s legacy.

These key figures, among others, played significant roles in the unfolding of the French Revolution. Their contributions, whether for the cause of liberty, the maintenance of order, or the pursuit of personal power, highlight the multifaceted nature of the revolution and its enduring impact on history.

References:

(1) Schama, Simon. Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York, Random House, 1990, pp. 119-221.

(2) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 11-12

(3) Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution. Vintage Books, 1996, pp. 56-57.

(4) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 24-25

(5) Lewis, Gwynne. The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate. Routledge, 2016, pp. 12-14.

(6) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 14-25

(7) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 63-65.

(8) Schama, Simon. Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York, Random House, 1990, pp. 242-244.

(9) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 74.

(10) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 82 – 84.

(11) Lewis, Gwynne. The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate. Routledge, 2016, p. 20.

(12) Hampson, Norman. A Social History of the French Revolution. University of Toronto Press, 1968, pp. 60-61.

(13) https://pages.uoregon.edu/dluebke/301ModernEurope/Sieyes3dEstate.pdf (14) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 104-105.

(15) French Revolution. “A Citizen Recalls the Taking of the Bastille (1789),” January 11, 2013. https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/humbert-taking-of-the-bastille-1789/.

(16) Hampson, Norman. A Social History of the French Revolution. University of Toronto Press, 1968, pp. 74-75.

(17) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 36-37.

(18) Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution: From its origins to 1793. Routledge, 1957, pp. 121-122.

(19) Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. Random House, 1989, pp. 428-430.

(20) Hampson, Norman. A Social History of the French Revolution. University of Toronto Press, 1968, p. 80.

(21) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 116-117.

(22) Fitzsimmons, Michael “The Principles of 1789” in McPhee, Peter, editor. A Companion to the French Revolution. Blackwell, 2013, pp. 75-88.

(23) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 68-81.

(24) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 45-46.

(25) Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. Random House, 1989,.pp. 460-466.

(26) Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. Random House, 1989, pp. 524-525.

(27) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 47-48.

(28) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 51.

(29) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 128.

(30) Lewis, Gwynne. The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate. Routledge, 2016, pp. 30 -31.

(31) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp.. 53 -62.

(32) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 129-130.

(33) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 62-63.

(34) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 156-157, 171-173.

(35) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 65-66.

(36) Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. Random House, 1989, pp. 543-544.

(37) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 179-180.

(38) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 184-185.

(39) Hampson, Norman. Social History of the French Revolution. Routledge, 1963, pp. 148-149.

(40) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 191-192.

(41) Lefebvre, Georges. The French Revolution: From Its Origins to 1793. Routledge, 1962, pp. 252-254.

(42) Hazan, Eric. A People’s History of the French Revolution, Verso, 2014, pp. 88-89.

(43) Schama, Simon. Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution. Random House, 1990, pp. 576-79.

(44) Schama, Simon. Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York, Random House, 1990, pp. 649-51

(45) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 242-243.

(46) Connor, Clifford. Marat: The Tribune of the French Revolution. Pluto Press, 2012.

(47) Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. Random House, 1989, pp. 722-724.

(48) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 246-47.

(49) Hampson, Norman. A Social History of the French Revolution. University of Toronto Press, 1968, pp. 209-210.

(50) Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution. Vintage Books, 1996, pp 68-70.

(51) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 205-206

(52) Schama, Simon. Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York, Random House, 1990, 784-86.

(53) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 262.

(54) Schama, Simon. Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution. New York, Random House, 1990, pp. 619-22.

(55) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 269-70.

(56) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, p. 276.

(57) Robespierre on Virtue and Terror (1794). https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/robespierre-virtue-terror-1794/. Accessed 19 May 2020.

(58) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 290-91.

(59) Doyle, William. Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 293-95.

(60) Lewis, Gwynne. The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate. Routledge, 2016, pp. 49-51.

How to Cite this Article

There are three different ways you can cite this article.

1. To cite this article in an academic-style article or paper , use:

<a href=" https://historycooperative.org/the-french-revolution/ ">French Revolution: History, Timeline, Causes, and Outcomes</a>

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

French Revolution

By: History.com Editors

Updated: October 12, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The French Revolution was a watershed event in world history that began in 1789 and ended in the late 1790s with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte. During this period, French citizens radically altered their political landscape, uprooting centuries-old institutions such as the monarchy and the feudal system. The upheaval was caused by disgust with the French aristocracy and the economic policies of King Louis XVI, who met his death by guillotine, as did his wife Marie Antoinette. Though it degenerated into a bloodbath during the Reign of Terror, the French Revolution helped to shape modern democracies by showing the power inherent in the will of the people.

Causes of the French Revolution

As the 18th century drew to a close, France’s costly involvement in the American Revolution , combined with extravagant spending by King Louis XVI , had left France on the brink of bankruptcy.

Not only were the royal coffers depleted, but several years of poor harvests, drought, cattle disease and skyrocketing bread prices had kindled unrest among peasants and the urban poor. Many expressed their desperation and resentment toward a regime that imposed heavy taxes—yet failed to provide any relief—by rioting, looting and striking.

In the fall of 1786, Louis XVI’s controller general, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, proposed a financial reform package that included a universal land tax from which the aristocratic classes would no longer be exempt.

Estates General

To garner support for these measures and forestall a growing aristocratic revolt, the king summoned the Estates General ( les états généraux ) – an assembly representing France’s clergy, nobility and middle class – for the first time since 1614.

The meeting was scheduled for May 5, 1789; in the meantime, delegates of the three estates from each locality would compile lists of grievances ( cahiers de doléances ) to present to the king.

Rise of the Third Estate

France’s population, of course, had changed considerably since 1614. The non-aristocratic, middle-class members of the Third Estate now represented 98 percent of the people but could still be outvoted by the other two bodies.

In the lead-up to the May 5 meeting, the Third Estate began to mobilize support for equal representation and the abolishment of the noble veto—in other words, they wanted voting by head and not by status.

While all of the orders shared a common desire for fiscal and judicial reform as well as a more representative form of government, the nobles in particular were loath to give up the privileges they had long enjoyed under the traditional system.

Tennis Court Oath

By the time the Estates General convened at Versailles , the highly public debate over its voting process had erupted into open hostility between the three orders, eclipsing the original purpose of the meeting and the authority of the man who had convened it — the king himself.

On June 17, with talks over procedure stalled, the Third Estate met alone and formally adopted the title of National Assembly; three days later, they met in a nearby indoor tennis court and took the so-called Tennis Court Oath (serment du jeu de paume), vowing not to disperse until constitutional reform had been achieved.

Within a week, most of the clerical deputies and 47 liberal nobles had joined them, and on June 27 Louis XVI grudgingly absorbed all three orders into the new National Assembly.

The Bastille 

On June 12, as the National Assembly (known as the National Constituent Assembly during its work on a constitution) continued to meet at Versailles, fear and violence consumed the capital.

Though enthusiastic about the recent breakdown of royal power, Parisians grew panicked as rumors of an impending military coup began to circulate. A popular insurgency culminated on July 14 when rioters stormed the Bastille fortress in an attempt to secure gunpowder and weapons; many consider this event, now commemorated in France as a national holiday, as the start of the French Revolution.

The wave of revolutionary fervor and widespread hysteria quickly swept the entire country. Revolting against years of exploitation, peasants looted and burned the homes of tax collectors, landlords and the aristocratic elite.

Known as the Great Fear ( la Grande peur ), the agrarian insurrection hastened the growing exodus of nobles from France and inspired the National Constituent Assembly to abolish feudalism on August 4, 1789, signing what historian Georges Lefebvre later called the “death certificate of the old order.”

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

IIn late August, the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ( Déclaration des droits de l ’homme et du citoyen ), a statement of democratic principles grounded in the philosophical and political ideas of Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau .

The document proclaimed the Assembly’s commitment to replace the ancien régime with a system based on equal opportunity, freedom of speech, popular sovereignty and representative government.

Drafting a formal constitution proved much more of a challenge for the National Constituent Assembly, which had the added burden of functioning as a legislature during harsh economic times.

For months, its members wrestled with fundamental questions about the shape and expanse of France’s new political landscape. For instance, who would be responsible for electing delegates? Would the clergy owe allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church or the French government? Perhaps most importantly, how much authority would the king, his public image further weakened after a failed attempt to flee the country in June 1791, retain?

Adopted on September 3, 1791, France’s first written constitution echoed the more moderate voices in the Assembly, establishing a constitutional monarchy in which the king enjoyed royal veto power and the ability to appoint ministers. This compromise did not sit well with influential radicals like Maximilien de Robespierre , Camille Desmoulins and Georges Danton, who began drumming up popular support for a more republican form of government and for the trial of Louis XVI.

French Revolution Turns Radical

In April 1792, the newly elected Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia, where it believed that French émigrés were building counterrevolutionary alliances; it also hoped to spread its revolutionary ideals across Europe through warfare.

On the domestic front, meanwhile, the political crisis took a radical turn when a group of insurgents led by the extremist Jacobins attacked the royal residence in Paris and arrested the king on August 10, 1792.

The following month, amid a wave of violence in which Parisian insurrectionists massacred hundreds of accused counterrevolutionaries, the Legislative Assembly was replaced by the National Convention, which proclaimed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the French republic.

On January 21, 1793, it sent King Louis XVI, condemned to death for high treason and crimes against the state, to the guillotine ; his wife Marie-Antoinette suffered the same fate nine months later.

Reign of Terror

Following the king’s execution, war with various European powers and intense divisions within the National Convention brought the French Revolution to its most violent and turbulent phase.

In June 1793, the Jacobins seized control of the National Convention from the more moderate Girondins and instituted a series of radical measures, including the establishment of a new calendar and the eradication of Christianity .

They also unleashed the bloody Reign of Terror (la Terreur), a 10-month period in which suspected enemies of the revolution were guillotined by the thousands. Many of the killings were carried out under orders from Robespierre, who dominated the draconian Committee of Public Safety until his own execution on July 28, 1794.

Did you know? Over 17,000 people were officially tried and executed during the Reign of Terror, and an unknown number of others died in prison or without trial.

Thermidorian Reaction

The death of Robespierre marked the beginning of the Thermidorian Reaction, a moderate phase in which the French people revolted against the Reign of Terror’s excesses.

On August 22, 1795, the National Convention, composed largely of Girondins who had survived the Reign of Terror, approved a new constitution that created France’s first bicameral legislature.

Executive power would lie in the hands of a five-member Directory ( Directoire ) appointed by parliament. Royalists and Jacobins protested the new regime but were swiftly silenced by the army, now led by a young and successful general named Napoleon Bonaparte .

French Revolution Ends: Napoleon’s Rise

The Directory’s four years in power were riddled with financial crises, popular discontent, inefficiency and, above all, political corruption. By the late 1790s, the directors relied almost entirely on the military to maintain their authority and had ceded much of their power to the generals in the field.

On November 9, 1799, as frustration with their leadership reached a fever pitch, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état, abolishing the Directory and appointing himself France’s “ first consul .” The event marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era, during which France would come to dominate much of continental Europe.

Photo Gallery 

French Revolution. The National Archives (U.K.) The United States and the French Revolution, 1789–1799. Office of the Historian. U.S. Department of State . Versailles, from the French Revolution to the Interwar Period. Chateau de Versailles . French Revolution. Monticello.org . Individuals, institutions, and innovation in the debates of the French Revolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 

HISTORY Vault

Stream thousands of hours of acclaimed series, probing documentaries and captivating specials commercial-free in HISTORY Vault

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

French Revolution: Essay & Important Notes

What led to the french revolution.

At the close of the 18 th century, France had been long involved in the American Revolution and the extravagant spending of King Louis XVI led France to bankruptcy. Additionally, the common people of France were caught in a vicious cycle of poor harvest, cattle disease, and the increasing prices of bread. This led to widespread discontent and made the people revolt against the monarchy.

Prominent Events of the French Revolution

The entire period of the French Revolution saw several events. Some of the prominent ones include:

Rise of the Third Estate

The population of France had been changing for a long time and non-aristocratic members formed a major part of the Third Estate. However, the Third Estate was not provided equivalent powers and by 1798 began to mobilize for equal representation and wanted voting by head and not by status. The nobles were, however, not ready to part with their privileges and powers.

Tennis Court Oath

With increasing hostility between the three orders about the voting rights of the Third Estate, the title of the National Assembly was adopted by it at an indoor tennis court and took the Tennis Court Oath vowing not to disperse until constitutional reform had been achieved.

The Bastille and Great Fear

As the National Assembly continued its work, violence and fear had consumed the capital city. The rumors of an impending military coup further put the people of Paris in fear. Many rioters marched into the Bastille fortress to collect gunpowder and weapons and this is what marked the beginning of the French Revolution. The revolutionary fear spread far and wide and peasants looted and burned homes of tax collectors and landlords who had exploited them. This agrarian revolt is termed as Great Fear and led the National Assembly to abolish feudalism in August 1789.

Declaration of Rights

The National Assembly adopted the Declaration of Rights of Man and of the citizen in August 1789. The declaration proclaimed to replace the ancient regime with a system based on equal opportunities, freedom of speech, popular sovereignty, and representative government.

Reign of Terror

During the French Revolution, the period marred with a lot of violence was known as the Reign of Terror. It was during this period that the revolution turned radical and King Louis XVI was sent to death from treason.

Violence during the French Revolution

End of the French Revolution

In 1795, the National Convention created the first bicameral legislature of France. The executive power was given to the five-member Directory. However, the members of the Directory were involved in corruption, inefficiency as well as the financial crisis. By the 1790s, most of the members of the Directory had ceded much of their power to the military generals. In 1799, frustrated with the leadership, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup and abolished the Directory, and appointed himself as France’s “first consul.” This led to the end of the French Revolution.

Important Notes

• French Revolution was started to bring about political changes in France.
• The revolution aimed to create a free and sovereign France.
• There were several important events during the French Revolution that were marred by violence and revolts by peasants.

The revolution came to an end with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Related Posts

The Ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini

Fall of Constantinople Effects

Industrial Revolution: Essay & Important Notes

Crisis of Feudalism

Quit India Movement: Essay and Important Facts

Civil Disobedience Movement: Essay & Important Notes

Add comment cancel reply.

French Revolution

French revolution essay questions, france before 1789.

1. Evaluate the French royal court at Versailles, why it existed and the contribution it made to French government and society.

2. “The French nobility did little but concern themselves with leisure, finery, decadence, affairs and intrigues.” To what extent is this statement true in the context of late 18th century France?

3. The presence of things like lettres du cachet and the Bastille give the impression that pre-revolutionary France was an authoritarian society that oppressed personal liberty and freedom. To what extent was this true?

4. Examine the role of religion in 18th century France, both in ideological and practical terms. How did ordinary French people view the Catholic church and its clergy?

5. Identify and discuss tensions between the Three Estates that may have contributed to revolutionary sentiment in 18th century France.

6. To what extent was feudalism a cause of the French Revolution? Describe how feudal bonds and dues impacted on the ordinary people of France during the 18th century.

7. Explain why the taxation regime and the collection of tax revenue in 18th century France failed to meet the fiscal requirements of the nation.

8. Some historians argue that commerce and trade in France were restricted by regulations that were overbearing, complex and inconsistent. What were the grievances of the merchant and capitalist class in pre-revolutionary France?

9. Discuss how the strains and stresses of imperialism might have weakened the domestic government in 18th century France, paving the way for revolutionary sentiment.

10. Consider the political, economic and social position of women in 18th century France. Did the women of France have more motivation or potential for revolution than the men?

Government and royalty in the ancien regime

1. Louis XIV is once reported as saying “L’etat, c’est moi” (‘The state is me’). To what extent was this true, both of Louis XIV and his two successors?

2. Describe the relationship between the Bourbon monarchy and the French people in the century before 1789. How did French kings impose their will on the nation?

3. In what ways did the Roman Catholic religion support the Bourbon monarchy – and how was the church itself supported by the state?

4. Discuss the relationship between the Bourbon monarchy and the Second Estate. How did tensions between the king and his nobles shape the political landscape?

5. Evaluate Louis XVI and his character, personal abilities and his suitability for leadership. Was he a flawed king, or simply a victim of circumstance?

6. Critically examine the relationship between Louis XVI and his ministers during the 1780s.

7. Explain why Marie Antoinette was a target for intrigue, gossip and propagandists. To what extent was her reputation deserved?

8. The extravagant spending of the royal family is often advanced as a major cause of the French Revolution. To what extent was this true?

9. Explain how the ideological foundations of the French monarchy were challenged and possibly undermined by Enlightenment philosophers and writers.

10. According to Simon Schama, the Bourbon monarchy was threatened by “whispering campaigns”. To what is he referring to, and how did they endanger the monarchy?

The troubled 1780s

1. Giving close attention to specific writers, explain how the Enlightenment challenged and undermined the old regime in 18th century France.

2. What contribution did salons , cafes and other social gatherings make to the rising revolutionary sentiment of the 1780s?

3. “The libelles and political pornography of the 1780s contained no significant political ideas so had little impact on the old regime”. To what extent was this true?

4. Identify and discuss two individuals who attempted to achieve fiscal and political reform in France during the 1780s. To what extent were they successful?

5. Explain how France’s involvement in the American Revolutionary War impacted on the nation in moral, ideological and practical terms.

6. Discuss the actions of the parlements and the Assembly of Notables in the late 1780s. How did these bodies contribute to the developing revolution?

7. Explain the events of 1788 that led to Louis XVI calling for the convocation of the Estates-General.

8. What were the  Cahiers de Doleances  and what did they suggest about the mood of the French people on the eve of the revolution?

9. Why did French harvests fail in the late 1780s, leading to a downturn in agricultural production? What impact did this have on the lives of ordinary people?

10. What factors and forces led to the failure of reformist policies in the 1780s? Did these reforms fail because of resistant conservative interests or a disinterested, incompetent royal government?

The drama of 1789

1. Who was the Abbe Sieyes and what contribution did he make to the French Revolution, both in ideological and practical terms?

2. What happened at the Reveillon factory in Paris in April 1789? What working class grievances, fears and rumours triggered these events?

3. Explain how issues of ceremony, procedure and voting created divisions within the Estates-General when it met in mid-1789.

4. For what reasons did the National Assembly form in June 1789? Was the formation of this body inevitable – or did it occur because of chance and circumstance?

5. “From the beginning of 1789, the push for economic and fiscal reform in France became a push for political reform.” Explain the meaning of this statement, referring to key ideas and events of 1789.

6. Discuss the context, reasons and outcomes of the sacking of Jacques Necker on July 11th 1789. What impact did this have on the unfolding revolution?

7. Why has the storming of the Bastille become the best-known event of the French Revolution? What were the outcomes of this event, in both real and symbolic terms?

8. What were the causes and outcomes of the Great Fear? Was this event evidence that the French peasantry was a revolutionary class?

9. Why did the newly formed National Constituent Assembly move to abolish feudalism in France on August 4th? How sincere were these reforms and did they last?

10. On the surface, the relocation of the royal family from Versailles to Paris, a few miles away, seems a minor event. Was this really the case? Why did the king and his family relocate and what impact did this have on the revolution?

Creating a new society

1. Examine the background, motives and political values of those who sat in the National Constituent Assembly between 1789 and its dissolution in 1791.

2. What steps did the National Constituent Assembly take to abolish or replace the political institutions and social inequalities of the ancien regime ?

3. While many aspects of the French Revolution have been forgotten or discredited, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen has endured. Summarise the political values and ideas contained in this critical document.

4. The most influential political figure of 1789-1791, argue many historians, is the Marquis de Lafayette. Describe Lafayette’s background, attributes and political values. To what extent did he truly represent the revolution in France?

5. Evaluate the political leadership of Honore Mirabeau in the revolution between June 1789 and his death in April 1791. Did Mirabeau seek to advance revolutionary change – or to restrict it?

6. What were the political, social and economic objectives of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy? Discuss the impact this reform had on the clergy, the king and the French people in general?

7. How successful was the National Constituent Assembly in resolving the economic and fiscal problems of the ancien regime ? Refer to three specific policies in your answer.

8. Evaluate the relationship between the National Constituent Assembly and the French peasantry and working classes. Did the Assembly implement policies that improved living and working conditions for ordinary people?

9. To what extent did the revolution enjoy popular support around France by the end of 1790? Which people, groups or regions were actively opposing the revolution?

10. What was the ‘flight to Varennes’ and why did it change the political landscape in the new society?

The descent into radicalism

1. What were the causes and outcomes of the Champ de Mars massacre? How and why did this event change the development of the new society?

2. Evaluate the brief life and political impact of the Legislative Assembly. Did this body suffer from internal failings – or was it simply a victim of treacherous times?

3. Discuss the fate of the moderate leaders Mirabeau, Lafayette and Bailly during the radical period. What were the events and factors that undermined their leadership?

4. How did France come to find itself at war with other European powers from 1792 onwards? What impact did war have on the government?

5. Explain how radical writers like Jean-Paul Marat and Camille Desmoulins influenced the development of the new society between 1789 and 1794.

6. What were the political clubs and what role did they play in the evolving new society? Discuss three specific clubs in your answer.

7. Why is August 10th 1792 considered a pivotal day in the course of the revolution? What impact did the events of this day have on French government and society?

8. Evaluate the fate of the king between June 1791 and his execution in January 1793. Could Louis XVI have saved himself – or was he already doomed?

9. Who were the sans-culottes and what were their grievances? Referring to at least three specific events, explain how they influenced the national government between 1791 and 1793.

10. Explain the composition of the National Convention and its various political divisions and factions.

The Terror and beyond

1. In what ways was French society reformed and reinvented between 1792 and 1794? Identify and discuss five elements of the ancien regime and its society that were abolished or reformed by the National Convention.

2. What was the Committee of Public Safety? How did this body come to possess arbitrary power – and what did it do with this power?

3. Identify and discuss three events or factors that you believe were the most significant causes of the Reign of Terror.

4. Explain the purpose and operation of the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal. How did these change as the Terror intensified in late 1793 and 1794?

5. Discuss the arguments advanced by Robespierre and his followers to justify the use of revolutionary terror.

6. What was the Cult of the Supreme Being and how successful was it in achieving its objectives?

7. According to one historian, the revolution began to “eat its own children” in early 1794. Explain the meaning and validity of this statement.

8. Identify and discuss reasons for the arrest and execution of Robespierre and his supporters in July 1794.

9. What steps did the Thermidorian leaders take to wind back the Terror and purge France of Jacobinism?

10. “The leaders of Thermidor attempted to return France to the political, economic and social values of 1789.” To what extent is this true? Discuss, referring to specific policies.

Information and resources on this page are © Alpha History 2018-23. Content on this page may not be copied, republished or redistributed without the express permission of Alpha History. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use .

The French Revolution, Its Outcome, and Legacy

• French Revolution
• Battles & Wars
• Key Figures
• Arms & Weapons
• Naval Battles & Warships
• Aerial Battles & Aircraft
• Vietnam War
• World War I
• World War II
• American History
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• The 20th Century
• Women's History
• M.A., Medieval Studies, Sheffield University
• B.A., Medieval Studies, Sheffield University

The outcome of the French Revolution , which began in 1789 and lasted for more than a decade, had numerous social, economic, and political effects not just in France but also in Europe and beyond. 

Prelude to Revolt

By the late 1780s, the French monarchy was on the brink of collapse. Its involvement in the American Revolution had left the regime of King Louis XVI bankrupt and desperate to raise funds by taxing the wealthy and the clergy. Years of bad harvests and rising prices for basic commodities led to social unrest among the rural and urban poor. Meanwhile, the growing middle class (known as the bourgeoisie ) was chafing under an absolute monarchical rule and demanding political inclusion.

In 1789 the king called for a meeting of the Estates-General—an advisory body of clergy, nobles, and bourgeoisie that had not convened in more than 170 years—to garner support for his financial reforms. When the representatives assembled in May of that year, they couldn't agree on how to apportion representation.

After two months of bitter debate, the king ordered delegates locked out of the meeting hall. In response, they convened on June 20 on the royal tennis courts, where the bourgeoisie, with the support of many clergy and nobles, declared themselves the new governing body of the nation, the National Assembly, and vowed to write a new constitution.

Although Louis XVI agreed in principle to these demands, he began plotting to undermine the Estates-General, stationing troops throughout the country. This alarmed the peasants and middle class alike, and on July 14, 1789, a mob attacked and occupied the Bastille prison in protest, touching off a wave of violent demonstrations nationwide.

On Aug. 26, 1789, the National Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Like the Declaration of Independence in the United States, the French declaration guaranteed all citizens equal, enshrined property rights and free assembly, abolished the absolute power of the monarchy and established representative government. Not surprisingly, Louis XVI refused to accept the document, triggering another massive public outcry.

The Reign of Terror

For two years, Louis XVI and the National Assembly co-existed uneasily as reformers, radicals, and monarchists all jockeyed for political dominance. In April 1792 the Assembly declared war on Austria. But it quickly went badly for France, as Austrian ally Prussia joined in the conflict; troops from both nations soon occupied French soil.

On Aug. 10, French radicals took the royal family prisoner at Tuileries Palace. Weeks later, on Sept. 21, the National Assembly abolished the monarchy entirely and declared France a republic. King Louis and Queen Marie-Antoinette were tried hastily and found guilty of treason. Both would be beheaded in 1793, Louis on Jan. 21 and Marie-Antoinette on Oct. 16.

As the Austro-Prussian war dragged on, the French government and society, in general, were mired in turmoil. In the National Assembly, a radical group of politicians seized control and began implementing reforms, including a new national calendar and the abolition of religion. Beginning in September 1793, thousands of French citizens, many from the middle and upper classes, were arrested, tried, and executed during a wave of violent repression aimed at the Jacobins' opponents, called the Reign of Terror.   

The Reign of Terror would last until the following July when its Jacobin leaders were overthrown and executed. In its wake, former members of the National Assembly who had survived the oppression emerged and seized power, creating a conservative backlash to the ongoing French Revolution .

Rise of Napoleon

On Aug. 22, 1795, the National Assembly approved a new constitution that established a representative system of government with a bicameral legislature similar to that in the U.S. For the next four years, the French government would be beset by political corruption, domestic unrest, a weak economy, and ongoing efforts by radicals and monarchists to seize power. Into the vacuum strode French Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte. On Nov. 9, 1799, Bonaparte backed by the army overthrew the National Assembly and declared the French Revolution over.

Over the next decade and a half, he could consolidate power domestically as he led France in a series of military victories across much of Europe, declaring himself emperor of France in 1804. During his reign, Bonaparte continued the liberalization that had begun during the Revolution, reforming its civil code, establishing the first national bank, expanding public education, and investing heavily in infrastructures like roads and sewers.

As the French army conquered foreign lands, he brought these reforms, known as the Napoleonic Code , with him, liberalizing property rights, ending the practice of segregating Jews in ghettos, and declaring all men equal. But Napoleon would eventually be undermined by his own military ambitions and be defeated in 1815 by the British at the Battle of Waterloo. He would die in exile on the Mediterranean island of St. Helena in 1821.

Revolution's Legacy and Lessons

With the advantage of hindsight, it's easy to see the positive legacies of the French Revolution . It established the precedent of representational, democratic government, now the model of governance in much of the world. It also established liberal social tenets of equality among all citizens, basic property rights, and separation of church and state, much as did the American Revolution. 

Napoleon's conquest of Europe spread these ideas throughout the continent, while further destabilizing the influence of the Holy Roman Empire, which would eventually collapse in 1806. It also sowed the seeds for later revolts in 1830 and 1849 across Europe, loosening or ending the monarchical rule that would lead to the creation of modern-day Germany and Italy later in the century, as well as sow the seeds for the Franco-Prussian war and, later, World War I.

Additional Sources

• Editors of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. " French Revolution ." 7 February 2018.
• History.com staff. " French Revolution ." History.com.
• The Open University staff. " French Revolution ." Open.edu.
• Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media staff. "Legacies of the Revolution." chnm.gmu.edu.

Linton, Marisa. " Ten myths about the French Revolution ." Oxford University Press blog, 26 July 2015. 

• The Rulers of France: From 840 to Present
• 'La Marseillaise' Lyrics in French and English
• The Differences Between Socialism and Communism
• A Beginner's Guide to the French Revolution
• Biography of King Louis XVI, Deposed in the French Revolution
• A Narrative History of the French Revolution - Contents
• Pictures from the French Revolution
• The French Revolution: The 1780s Crisis and the Causes of Revolution
• A History of the Women's March on Versailles
• Overview of the Declaration of Pillnitz
• French Revolution Timeline: 1789 - 1791
• The Many Roles of Women in the French Revolution
• A History of the Palace of Versailles, Jewel of the Sun King
• Key Events in French History
• Biography of Marie Antoinette, Queen Executed in the French Revolution
• French Revolution Timeline: 6 Phases of Revolution

Department of History

The french revolution, 1774-1799 (hi31j): short essays.

First Essay: A dialogue between a liberal and a Marxist

Imagine that Alexis de Tocqueville and Albert Soboul are sitting at a café or pub and having a heated debate about the French Revolution. Assume that they are familiar with each other’s interpretations and perhaps those of the historians we’ve encountered in the seminar. How might their discussion go? Perhaps a Warwick student enrolled in a French Revolution module overhears their discussion from a nearby table and joins in at the end with some opinions.

You should adopt the form of a dialogue:

Tocqueville: bla bla  

Soboul: yada yada

Student: etc.

De Tocqueville and Soboul are unlikely to have texts with them, so they will paraphrase rather than quote. But you (the author) should footnote any specific points so that I can identify where you derived them. (You don’t have to cite overarching views, which run throughout their texts.) While your dialogue should focus primarily on a debate informed by your readings, feel free to embroider the episode with the occasional reference to their surroundings or current events!

The aim of the dialogue is to show your ability to critically compare core historiographical arguments about the French Revolution. To what degree do your characters offer different answers to the same question? To what degree are they asking different questions and perhaps speaking past each other? Since the dialogue must be short (1500 words), your characters will probably focus on one area of debate. Be sure to avoid ‘academese’, i.e., turgid and wordy prose. Remember: they’re chatting in a café or pub.

Assessment is based on the depth and nuance of your understanding of these two major interpretive currents and your ability to identify points of tension. How would the ‘liberal’ de Tocqueville find fault with the Marxist Soboul, and vice-versa? Where might they agree?

Enjoy! Try to make the dialogue insightful but also entertaining!

Essay 2: Primary Source Analysis

Select a primary source, or set of sources, and analyse them closely. You will want to

• Formulate a good question – one that allows you to tease out the significance of your source(s) on several levels. Look for tensions, contradictions, paradoxes. What is puzzling in the source? What begs explanation?
• Formulate a thesis – an overarching argument under which all of your analytical points logically fit.
• Situate your analysis within the historiography. How does your analysis build on or differ from current interpretations?

What counts as a primary source?

Those in the document collections we’ve been consulting throughout the year.

• Be sure to look at ‘Bibliography’ from the module homepage. There is a section on primary sources and document collections.
• Find your own sources, online or in the library.
• You may use a novel or film from a different time period. But be sure to historicise it in its own context. For example, if you write on Renoir’s La Marseillaise film of 1937, then you’ll want to explore what the French Revolution meant to the director or audiences in the 1930s – how the legacy of the French Revolution was being used in a specific historical context.

Short essays may be chosen from the list below or, with the prior consent of the module tutor, designed by students themselves. All essays should address key historiographical questions and/or explore relevant primary sources.  

• Compare the accounts of pre-Revolutionary Paris provided by Jacques-Louis Ménétra and Louis-Sébastien Mercier.
• ‘Travellers are always wrong.’ Discuss in relation to English visitors to France during the Revolution.
• Which was more significant in the Pre-Revolutionary crisis: impending state bankruptcy, aristocratic solidarity or royal incompetence?
• Why did peasants revolt in 1789?
• To what extent and why was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy a turning-point?
• To what extent did the Revolution shape a new administrative structure?
• What were the most significant forms of political participation during the Revolution by EITHER Parisian working people OR women?
• ‘The Haitian Revolution had a more truly global impact than anything that happened in France between 1789 and 1800.’ Do you agree?
• To what extent, and how, was the French Revolution a ‘cultural revolution’?
• Could you explain the role played by war in the French Revolution?
• To what extent did the French Revolution open a period of freedom of speech and new development of printed culture?
• In which ways was the French Revolution a national Revolution?
• Assess the role of theatres and Festivals during the French Revolution.
• To what extent was the French Revolution an intellectual Revolution?
• Assess the role of violence in the revolutionary process.
• Assess the role of public sphere during the Revolution.
• What is the legacy of the French Revolution in Europe?
• What is the legacy of the French Revolution in the world?
• To what extent did the French Revolution shape a new conception of family?
• Did the French Revolution invent ‘total war’?
• What role did emotions play in the French Revolution?  

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Advance articles
• Author Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access
• Why Publish with JSH?
• About Journal of Social History
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Journals Career Network
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

Article Contents

• < Previous

Political History of the French Revolution since 1989

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Paul R Hanson, Political History of the French Revolution since 1989, Journal of Social History , Volume 52, Issue 3, Spring 2019, Pages 584–592, https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shy075

• Permissions Icon Permissions

The French Revolution was a supremely political event. Indeed, it might be seen as marking the invention of modern politics. Broadly speaking, virtually any work of scholarship dealing with the French Revolution might be said to address revolutionary politics. This essay focuses more narrowly, however, on recent works that have explicitly addressed aspects of the political history of the Revolution, paying particular attention to three broad areas. The first is a growing body of work focusing on the French Revolution in the provinces, including important provincial cities, as well as village studies and regional studies. Some of this scholarship explores the dialectical relationship between political currents in Paris and developments in the provinces. Paris has hardly been ignored, however, and a number of important books in recent years have been devoted to important political events centered in the capital. These include works on the Night of August 4, the king’s flight to Varennes, and the massacre on the Champ de Mars. A spate of recent works on the origins and nature of the Terror promise to generate continuing debate on that topic. Finally, an array of historians has produced significant scholarship over the past twenty years on the period of the Directory, making it clear that the revolutionary dynamic did not end with the fall of Robespierre. Thus, the historiography of the Revolution since the bicentennial has broadened our understanding of revolutionary politics both geographically and chronologically.

Among other trends in the historiography of the French Revolution since its bicentennial, we have seen a revived interest in the political history of the period, with important work on both sides of the Atlantic broadening our understanding both geographically and chronologically. With the demise of the Marxist interpretation of the French Revolution as a bourgeois revolution ushering in the capitalist era, 1789 has come to be seen as the birth of modern democracy, a view put forward in contrasting ways by both Lynn Hunt and Keith Baker. 1 Baker’s work explored a variety of ways in which political discourse emerged in the final decades of the Old Regime to both shape and presage the crisis that would erupt in 1789, while Hunt’s work applied both a cultural and a social approach to examining the political experience of the revolutionary decade itself. As Hunt observed, the revolutionary experience of participatory politics had an enduring legacy: “Thousands of men and even many women gained firsthand experience in the political arena: they talked, read, and listened in new ways; the voted; they joined new organizations; and they marched for their political goals. Revolution became a tradition, and republicanism an enduring option.” 2

In the pages to follow, I will explore some of the historical literature devoted to the political history of the Revolution in three broad areas. The first of these is the Revolution in the provinces. For obvious reasons, Paris has loomed large in most histories of the French Revolution, and it has sometimes seemed that little of importance occurred beyond the boundaries of the capital city. But as the Girondin deputies insisted in 1793, Paris was only one of eighty-three departments in France, and over the past three decades, a number of studies have deepened our understanding not only of provincial politics but also of the ways in which the provinces affected developments in Paris. A second area that has drawn considerable attention since 1989 is the political history of the years that we might consider to be the heart of the Revolution, 1789–94. Some of this work has focused on pivotal moments during those years, such as the Night of August 4, the king’s flight to Varennes, and the massacre on the Champ de Mars. In addition, several important works in the past decade have dealt with the origins and nature of the Terror. Third, the period of the Directory, long downplayed as a kind of desultory interregnum between the Jacobin republic and the appearance of Napoleon Bonaparte, has drawn the attention of a number of historians. We now see clearly that the Revolution did not end with the fall of Robespierre and that the Directory regime made its own important contributions to the political legacy of the French Revolution.

The bicentennial itself produced a plethora of local studies in France, and in the decade that followed, a number of important books appeared. My own work has focused on the federalist revolt, which saw four major provincial cities rebel against the National Convention in the summer of 1793, following the May 31–June 2 journées in Paris that led to the proscription of twenty-nine leading Girondin deputies. 3 I have argued that the federalist revolt was more than a simple reaction to events in Paris. In Lyon and Marseille in particular, resistance to Paris grew out of political conflict that, in both cases, led to armed uprisings that expelled local Jacobins from control of municipal politics, replacing them with moderates, all of which occurred before the insurrection in Paris that consolidated Montagnard control of the National Convention. Although the federalist rebels looked in the end to royalists for support, the movement was not royalist in inspiration but rather grew out of a vision of a republic that rested more on law than on popular sovereignty as championed by Robespierre and the Jacobins. Ultimately the federalist rebels, departmental administrators for the most part, failed because they could not generate popular support for a march on Paris to restore, as they put it, the integrity of the National Convention, violated on June 2, 1793. A differing view of the federalist revolt has been presented by Antonino de Francesco, who characterized the movement as an exercise in popular sovereignty. 4

Others have explored provincial politics through a broader chronological lens. Alan Forrest, certainly among the most prolific historians of the French Revolution in the past forty years, followed up a first book on Bordeaux with a volume devoted to the history of the Revolution throughout the Aquitaine. Forrest emphasized that local politics in the region was more than a pale reflection of, or reaction to, Parisian politics and argued that the region’s reputation for political moderation did at times turn toward outright royalism. He followed that volume with a book that very explicitly attempted to link provincial and Parisian politics over the course of the Revolution. 5

Also worthy of note is Bill Edmonds’ work on the early years of the Revolution in Lyon. In exploring the genesis of the federalist revolt in that city, Edmonds presents a fascinating analysis of the shifting currents in local politics, stressing, among other things, the importance of neighborhood mobilization to the emergence of a radical political movement, and how crucial it was for local authorities to maintain control of weapons depots and the militia. 6 Jacques Guilhaumou has studied another of the federalist cities, Marseille. Drawing on an analysis of discourse and texts, Guilhaumou argues that the effort by Marseille radicals to enlist support in the towns and villages of Provence, by sending out “patriot missionaries” in what he labels a form of “Jacobin federalism,” ended up alienating as many people as it attracted. 7 Aubagne, one of the towns in the hinterland of Marseille, is the subject of a recent book by Donald Sutherland. Sutherland insists that Aubagne politics cannot be understood apart from Marseille Jacobinism, but rather than emphasizing the role of ideology, as does Guilhaumou, he sees violence pure and simple as the driver of radical politics between 1792 and 1794. 8

Jacobinism has long been a focus of Revolutionary historiography, but we should make note here of two books published since the bicentennial that have added to our knowledge of Jacobin politics. The first is the third volume of Michael Kennedy’s magisterial study of the Jacobin clubs, spanning the years from 1789 until their prohibition in 1795 and examining provincial clubs as well as the mother society in Paris. 9 The second, by Patrice Higonnet, associates Jacobinism with the excesses of the Terror and, in contrast with Donald Sutherland’s book on Aubagne, places great stress on the role of Jacobin ideology. 10

The French Revolution was preeminently an urban phenomenon, but revolutionary politics touched the countryside as well. Peter Jones, who has long been among the leading historians of the peasantry in the Revolution, has given us a comparative study of six villages in different regions of France, focusing in one chapter on “sovereignty in the village” and examining in another the manner in which the revolutionary decade produced “a new civic landscape” in the provinces. 11 Peter McPhee has also focused on the Revolution in the provinces, exploring in an early book the decidedly negative impact that the end of the seigneurial system had on the rural environment of the Corbières, a region in southwest France. More recently, McPhee described at a very personal level the impact that the Revolution had on ordinary people in villages, towns, and cities all across France, bringing alive for readers the legacy of participatory politics that Lynn Hunt identified as so important. 12

Symbolically important dates often assist both teachers and students in navigating the complicated political history of the French Revolution, and none looms larger than July 14, 1789. Two important works have appeared since the bicentennial to reshape our thinking about the fall of the Bastille. The first, coauthored by Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt, employed a semiotic approach to examine the symbolic potency of the Bastille leading up to the Revolution and at the time of its fall, both within France and across Europe. 13 More recently, in an essay that appears in his book Logics of History , William Sewell takes the assault on the Bastille as an example to support his argument that historians should borrow from the work of Marshall Sahlins to develop a “theory of the event” that might make more systematic and powerful our analysis of historical contingency. 14

Two more important works draw our attention to another symbolic date from the early Revolution, August 4, 1791. In The Night the Old Regime Ended , Michael Fitzsimmons stresses the altruistic motivations of the aristocrats who stepped forward in a late night session of the National Assembly to renounce their seigneurial dues and an array of other vestigial feudal emoluments, effectively undermining the edifice of privilege that underpinned the structure of the Old Regime monarchy. John Markoff, in The Abolition of Feudalism , agrees with Fitzsimmons about the importance of that night but argues that it was personal interest rather than altruism that motivated the deputies, given the wave of rural violence and château burnings that had spread across much of France that summer in the Great Fear. 15 Rafe Blaufarb has recently added another dimension to this debate, arguing that the Night of August 4 amounted to a fundamental redefinition of property, launching a contentious and complicated process that would extend well into the nineteenth century. 16

No one has contributed more over the past twenty-five years to our understanding of the political history of the French Revolution than Timothy Tackett. Three separate books published during this period moved chronologically toward the Terror. The first offered a collective biography of the members of the Constituent Assembly, challenging the revisionist argument that there was little social basis to the Revolution by presenting evidence of social distinction, and tension, between deputies of the second and third estates. A second book argued that the Flight to Varennes, June 20–21, 1791, marked a crucial turning point in the Revolution, altering the political landscape by tarnishing the reputation of the king, heightening the fear of conspiracy, and laying the groundwork for measures that would be more fully implemented during the year of the Terror. In a third book, examining the origins of the Terror, Tackett presents a complex analysis that centers on rumor and denunciation and the culture of fear whose roots he identified in the aftermath of the king’s flight in 1791. 17

One of the consequences of the king’s flight was the massacre on the Champ de Mars in July 1791, the focus of an important book by David Andress that attempts to sort out the conflicting accounts of the massacre itself, as well as to assess the impact of the killings on revolutionary politics later that summer and fall. Andress has also contributed an overarching treatment of the Terror, a stirring narrative but also an attempt to walk a fine line in the longstanding debate between those who emphasize circumstance and contingency versus those who favor an ideological interpretation of the Terror. 18

The Terror itself has been a topic of renewed interest since 1989. Marisa Linton, like Tackett, has examined the path to Terror by focusing on personal friendships, betrayal of those friendships, and what she calls revolutionary “authenticity,” culminating in the “politicians’ terror,” that moment in late 1793 extending through the summer of 1794, when the deputies of the National Convention turned on each other. 19 Works on the Terror, not surprisingly, are often polemical. Patrice Gueniffey, following in the path of his mentor, François Furet, sees the Terror as the logical culmination of the revolutionary project, a product essentially of Jacobin ideology. 20 In stark contrast, Sophie Wahnich argues that the Terror was a defense of the sovereignty that the people had claimed and won between 1789 and 1792—necessary, then, but not inevitable. 21 Quite recently, Mette Harder has demonstrated that the Terror stretched beyond 9 Thermidor and, extending an element of Linton’s argument, that it was substantially more risky to be a deputy than to be an ordinary citizen in those years. 22

There was more to the Terror than political repression, and two important works have illuminated what we might call the more positive aspects of this period. The first, by Jean-Pierre Gross, follows the footsteps of five representatives on mission who attempted to put Jacobin egalitarian ideals into practice in the provinces through food distribution, land redistribution, tax reform, work programs, and educational reform, laying the foundations for what would become the welfare state in the twentieth century. 23 Michel Biard has given us a more comprehensive study of the representatives on mission, the crucial intermediaries between Paris and the provinces. Some 426 deputies served in this capacity between March 1793 and October 1795, numbers and dates which suggest both the diversity of their political backgrounds and the complexity of their missions. 24

Two other important works have addressed the issue of revolutionary violence more broadly. In his 2006 book, Jean-Clément Martin argued that we still lack a clear definition of what the Terror was and insisted that the National Convention did not declare terror to be “the order of the day” on 5 September 1793, even though Bertrand Barère did use that phrase in debate that day. Martin stressed the need to place revolutionary violence in context, proposing that we should see the Terror not as an extension of popular violence but rather as an effort on the part of the state to control it. 25 Micah Alpaugh has recently published the first extensive study of the Paris crowd in the Revolution since the classic works of George Rudé and Albert Soboul. In an impressive examination of more than 750 events between 1789 and 1795, he shows that the vast majority were peaceful. This is an important study that will force us to rethink our interpretation of violence in the French Revolution. 26 As a whole, this body of work calls for a reconceptualization of the Terror and its place in the Revolution.

The Directory regime, long relatively neglected in the historiography of the French Revolution, has become a fertile field of scholarly research over the past several decades. In Ending the Terror , Bronislaw Baczko argued that those who overthrew Robespierre on 9 Thermidor hoped to move beyond the Terror without repudiating the goals of the Revolution, but he also emphasized that our understanding of the Terror has ever since been indelibly colored by what the Thermidorians had to say about it. 27 Taking up the first of Baczko’s points, James Livesey has asserted that the Directory witnessed the emergence of a “new democratic republicanism,” rooted in liberalism rather than Jacobin egalitarianism. Livesey focused, on the one hand, on the political thought of men such as Benjamin Constant and Nicolas-Louis François de Neufchâteau and, on the other, on economic reforms and the division of common lands in the countryside that led to what he characterizes as “commercial republicanism.” 28 Jon Cowans, more critical of the Directory regime than Livesey, has explored the manner in which public opinion shaped, and was shaped by, representative politics. He argues, in part, that by turning away from the ideal of popular sovereignty, the Directors ultimately undermined their own legitimacy. 29

Howard Brown has proposed a different explanation for the failure of the Directory regime: its inability to maintain civic order and its willingness to resort to extrajudicial measures to repress banditry and rural violence. “Liberal democracy failed and the French Revolution came to an end,” Brown argues, “only after prolonged violence had generated a public sentiment willing to accept exceptional justice and brutal repression as the price of restoring order.” This interpretation suggests an alternative periodization of the revolutionary decade to that which we have long followed: according to Brown, the Directory was as arbitrary and repressive as the Jacobin regime and instituted a “security state” that we generally associate with Napoleon’s government. 30 Bernard Gainot takes a very different view of the Directory than Brown, seeing in this period evidence of a renewed Jacobinism and, like Livesey perhaps, at least the potential foundations for a constitutional democracy. 31

Let me close with a brief discussion of two final books that enrich our understanding of the years of the Directory and Consulate. Andrew Jainchill sees the years between 1794 and 1804 as a “watershed in the transition from classical to modern republicanism.” It was classical republicanism, he argues, that ushered in the policies of the Terror, against which the revolutionaries who led France under the Directory were reacting. Jainchill is interested in discourse, and therefore in political thinkers, but is also attentive to those who were active in the political arena at the time and in the interactions between those two groups. One of the theorists discussed by Jainchill is Benjamin Constant, the subject of a recent book by K. Steven Vincent. He examines Constant alongside his good friend and collaborator Germaine de Staël, the first figures in France to call their thought “liberal.” 32 Vincent sees the final years of the revolutionary decade as crucial to the development of Constant’s “pluralistic liberalism,” which he hoped would mark out a path to achieving a stable political order while preserving the ideals of 1789, a hope that in the short term, of course, proved illusory.

What lies ahead in the political history of the French Revolution? Two potential areas of interest come to mind. Until twenty-five years ago, historians working on or teaching about the Revolution paid little attention to the Haitian revolution. There is now a considerable body of work on Haiti/Saint-Domingue (which is beyond the scope of this essay to address), and the revolution in Haiti is now more integral to our histories of the French Revolution than it once was. But I do not think that we have yet made much headway in considering the impact of the upheaval in Saint-Domingue on the politics of port cities in France and on national politics more broadly, especially between 1792 and 1794.

A recent book by Maxime Kaci suggests a second fruitful possibility. Several years ago, Pierre Serna suggested that “every revolution is a war of independence,” arguing that the struggle for independence among French colonies might be a useful conceptual model for considering the relationship between the provinces and Paris during the Revolution. 33 Kaci’s work does not explicitly take up that task, but it is a fascinating study of three départements along the northern French border. Due to the war with Prussia and Austria, this region was directly impacted by the currents of national politics from 1792 onward, but each department reacted to those currents in different ways, largely due to internal factors. As Kaci describes quite clearly, local authorities sometimes responded to the threats of war by adopting emergency measures (creating surveillance committees, for example) well before such measures were adopted by the national government, thus belying the commonly held notion that the provinces always reacted to events emanating from Paris. 34 As we look in the years ahead to situate the French Revolution more firmly in a global context, we might also look to illuminate national political trends through the lens of provincial politics.

Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, CA, 1984); Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution (Cambridge, 1990); this was also a theme of one of three international conferences in the years leading up to the Bicentennial, the papers from which were published in C. Lucas, ed., The Political Culture of the French Revolution (Oxford, 1988).

Hunt, Politics, Culture and Class : 221.

Paul R. Hanson, Provincial Politics in the French Revolution: Caen and Limoges, 1789–1793 (Baton Rouge, 1989); and Hanson, The Jacobin Republic under Fire: The Federalist Revolt in the French Revolution (University Park, PA, 2003).

Antonino de Francesco, Il Governo Senza Testa (Naples, 1992). For our exchange of views, see A. de Francesco, “Popular Sovereignty and Executive Power in the Federalist Revolt of 1793,” French History 5, no. 1 (1991): 74–101, and P. R. Hanson, “The Federalist Revolt: An Affirmation or Denial of Popular Sovereignty?” French History 6, no. 3 (1992): 335–55.

Alan Forrest, The Revolution in Provincial France: Aquitaine, 1789–1799 (Oxford, 1996), and Paris, the Provinces and the French Revolution (London, 2004). See also his first book, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (Oxford, 1975).

W. D. Edmonds, Jacobinism and the Revolt of Lyon, 1789–1793 (Oxford, 1990).

Jacques Guilhaumou, Marseille républicaine, 1791–1793 (Paris, 1992).

D. M. G. Sutherland, Murder in Aubagne: Lynching, Law, and Justice during the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2009).

M. L. Kennedy, The Jacobin Clubs in the French Revolution, 1793–1795 (New York, 2000). The first two volumes were published by Princeton University Press in 1982 and 1988.

Patrice Higonnet, Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1998).

Peter Jones, Liberty and Locality in Revolutionary France: Six Villages Compared, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 2003).

Peter McPhee, Revolution and Environment in Southern France: Peasants, Lord, and Murder in the Corbières, 1780–1830 (Oxford, 1999); and Living the French Revolution, 1789–1799 (New York, 2006).

Hans Jürgen Lüsebrink and Rolf Reichardt, The Bastille: A History of a Symbol of Despotism and Freedom (Durham, NC, 1997).

William H. Sewell, Jr., “Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille,” in Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago, 2005): 225–70. An early version of this article appeared in Theory and Society 25, no. 6 (1996): 841–81.

M. P. Fitzsimmons, The Night the Old Regime Ended: August 4, 1789 and the French Revolution (University Park, PA, 2003), and J. Markoff, The Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords, and Legislators in the French Revolution (University Park, PA, 1996).

Rafe Blaufarb, The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property (Oxford, 2016).

Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary: The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture, 1789–1790 (Princeton, 1996); When the King Took Flight (Cambridge, MA, 2003); The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2015).

David Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars: Popular Dissent and Political Culture in the French Revolution (Woodbridge, UK, 2000); The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France (New York, 2005).

Marisa Linton, Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution (Oxford, 2013). As the title suggests, Linton sees the Terror as contingent, not inevitable.

P. Gueniffey, La politique de la terreur: essai sur la violence révolutionnaire, 1789–1794 (Paris, 2000).

S. Wahnich, In Defence of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution (London, 2012), first published as La liberté ou la mort: Essai sur la terreur et le terrorisme (Paris, 2003).

Mette Harder, “A Second Terror: The Purges of French Revolutionary Legislators after Thermidor,” French Historical Studies 38, no. 1 (2015): 33–60.

J. -P. Gross, Fair Shares for All: Jacobin Egalitarianism in Practice (Cambridge, 1997).

M. Biard, Missionnaires de la république (Paris, 2002).

J. -C. Martin, Violence et révolution: Essai sur la naissance d’un mythe national (Paris, 2006).

M. Alpaugh, Non-violence and the French Revolution: Political Demonstrations in Paris, 1787–1789 (Cambridge, 2015).

B. Baczko, Ending the Terror: The French Revolution after Robespierre (Cambridge, 1994), first published as Comment sortir de la terreur (Paris, 1989).

J. Livesey, Making Democracy in the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 2001).

J. Cowans, To Speak for the People: Public Opinion and the Problem of Legitimacy in the French Revolution (New York, 2001).

H. G. Brown, Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression from the Terror to Napoleon (Charlottesville, VA, 2006), 349 for the quotation.

B. Gainot, 1799, un noveau jacobinisme? La démocratie représentative, une alternative à Brumaire (Paris, 2001).

K. S. Vincent, Benjamin Constant and the Birth of French Liberalism (New York, 2011).

Pierre Serna, “Every Revolution is a War of Independence,” in The French Revolution in Global Perspective , eds. Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, and William Max Nelson (Ithaca, NY, 2013): 165–82.

Maxime Kaci, Dans le tourbillon de la révolution: Mots d’ordre et engagements collectifs aux frontières septentrionales (1791–1793) (Rennes, 2016).

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1527-1897
• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• Games & Quizzes
• History & Society
• Science & Tech
• Biographies
• Animals & Nature
• Geography & Travel
• Arts & Culture
• On This Day
• One Good Fact
• New Articles
• Lifestyles & Social Issues
• Philosophy & Religion
• Politics, Law & Government
• World History
• Health & Medicine
• Browse Biographies
• Birds, Reptiles & Other Vertebrates
• Bugs, Mollusks & Other Invertebrates
• Environment
• Fossils & Geologic Time
• Entertainment & Pop Culture
• Sports & Recreation
• Visual Arts
• Demystified
• Image Galleries
• Infographics
• Top Questions
• Britannica Kids
• Saving Earth
• Space Next 50
• Student Center
• Introduction
• Geographic-historical scope
• Gaul under the high empire (c. 50 bce –c. 250 ce )
• Gaul under the late Roman Empire (c. 250–c. 400)
• The end of Roman Gaul (c. 400–c. 500)
• Early Frankish period
• Gaul and Germany at the end of the 5th century
• Frankish expansion
• Conversion of Clovis
• Conquest of Burgundy
• Conquest of southern Germany
• Shrinking of the frontiers and peripheral areas
• Parceling of the kingdom
• Chlotar II and Dagobert I
• The hegemony of Neustria
• Austrasian hegemony and the rise of the Pippinids
• Charles Martel
• The conquests
• The restoration of the empire
• The Treaty of Verdun
• The kingdoms created at Verdun
• Germans and Gallo-Romans
• Social classes
• Diffusion of political power
• The central government
• Local institutions
• The development of institutions in the Carolingian age
• Frankish fiscal law
• Institutions
• Monasticism
• Religious discipline and piety
• Church influence on society and legislation
• Merovingian literature and arts
• Carolingian literature and arts
• French society in the early Middle Ages
• Principalities north of the Loire
• Principalities of the south
• The monarchy
• Economic expansion
• Urban prosperity
• Rural society
• The age of cathedrals and Scholasticism
• Culture and learning
• Philip Augustus
• Later Capetians
• Foreign relations
• John the Good
• Charles VII
• Governmental reforms
• Military reforms
• Regrowth of the French monarchy
• Economic distress
• Culture and art
• Military and financial organization
• Growth of a professional bureaucracy
• Age of the Reformation
• The Wars of Religion
• Political ideology
• The development of central government
• Louis’s religious policy
• Absolutism of Louis
• Foreign affairs
• French culture in the 17th century
• Social order of the ancien régime
• Monarchy and church
• Commitment to modernization
• Agricultural patterns
• Industrial production
• The Enlightenment
• Influence of Montesquieu and Rousseau
• Historical debate
• Foreign policy and financial crisis
• Domestic policy and reform efforts
• King and parlements
• Causes of the French Revolution

The juridical revolution

Parisian revolt, peasant insurgencies, the abolition of feudalism, restructuring france, sale of national lands, religious tensions, political tensions, the second revolution, a republic in crisis, girondins and montagnards, the reign of terror, the jacobin dictatorship, the army of the republic, the thermidorian reaction, sister republics, alienation and coups, the consulate, loss of political freedom, religious policy, napoleonic nobility, the civil code, campaigns and conquests, 1797–1807, the grand empire, the continental system, conscription, napoleon and the revolution.

• Louis XVIII, 1815–24
• Charles X, 1824–30
• The revolution of 1830
• The July Monarchy
• The revolution of 1848
• The Second Republic, 1848–52
• The authoritarian years
• The liberal years
• The Franco-German War
• The Commune of Paris
• Attempts at a restoration
• The constitution of the Third Republic
• Republican factions
• Opportunist control
• The Dreyfus Affair
• Foreign policy
• Prewar years
• World War I
• German reparations
• Financial crisis
• Collective security
• Internal conflict on the left
• The Great Depression and political crises
• German aggressions
• Cultural and scientific attainments
• The Vichy government
• The Resistance
• Constitution of the Fourth Republic
• Political and social changes
• Colonial independence movements
• The Fifth Republic
• France after de Gaulle
• Mitterrand’s first term
• Mitterrand’s second term
• The Chirac administration
• The Sarkozy administration
• The 2012 presidential campaign
• The Hollande administration
• The Macron presidency

The French Revolution and Napoleon, 1789–1815

Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.

• History World - History of France
• Just france - French History
• The Ohio State University - Understanding the history of France and its impact on world history
• Heritage History - "The Story of Modern France"
• History of France
• Francegate.com - History of France
• History World - France
• BBC News - France profile - Timeline
• HistoryWorld - History of France
• University of Kentucky - History of France
• Table Of Contents

The destruction of the ancien régime

The convergence of revolutions, 1789.

Louis XVI’s decision to convene the Estates-General in May 1789 became a turning point in French history . When he invited his subjects to express their opinions and grievances in preparation for this event—unprecedented in living memory—hundreds responded with pamphlets in which the liberal ideology of 1789 gradually began to take shape. Exactly how the Estates-General should deliberate proved to be the pivotal consciousness-raising issue. Each of the three Estates could vote separately (by order) as they had in the distant past, or they could vote jointly (by head). Because the Third Estate was to have twice as many deputies as the others, only voting by head would assure its preponderant influence. If the estates voted by order, the clergy and nobility would effectively exercise a veto power over important decisions. Most pamphleteers of 1789 considered themselves “patriots,” or reformers, and (though some were nobles themselves) identified the excessive influence of “aristocrats” as a chief obstacle to reform. In his influential tract Qu’est-ce que le tiers état? (1789; What Is the Third Estate? ) the constitutional theorist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès asserted that the Third Estate really was the French nation. While commoners did all the truly laborious and productive work of society, he claimed with some exaggeration, the nobility monopolized its lucrative sinecures and honours. As a condition of genuine reform, the Estates-General would have to change that situation.

A seismic shift was occurring in elite public opinion . What began in 1787–88 as a conflict between royal authority and traditional aristocratic groups had become a triangular struggle, with “the people” opposing both absolutism and privilege. A new kind of political discourse was emerging, and within a year it was to produce an entirely new concept of sovereignty with extremely far-reaching implications .

Patriots were driven to increasingly bold positions in part by the resistance and bad faith of royal and aristocratic forces. It is not surprising that some of the Third Estate’s most radical deputies came from Brittany, whose nobility was so hostile to change that it finally boycotted the Estates-General altogether. Hoping that the king would take the lead of the patriot cause, liberals were disappointed at the irresolute, business-as-usual attitude of the monarchy when the Estates opened at Versailles in May 1789. While the nobility organized itself into a separate chamber (by a vote of 141 to 47), as did the clergy (133 to 114), the Third Estate refused to do so. After pleading repeatedly for compromise and debating their course of action in the face of this deadlock, the Third Estate’s deputies finally acted decisively. On June 17 they proclaimed that they were not simply the Third Estate of the Estates-General but a National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale), which the other deputies were invited to join. A week later 150 deputies of the clergy did indeed join the National Assembly, but the nobility protested that the whole notion was illegal.

Now the king had to clarify his position. He began by closing the hall assigned to the Third Estate and ordering all deputies to hear a royal address on June 23. The deputies, however, adjourned to an indoor tennis court on the 20th and there swore a solemn oath to continue meeting until they had provided France with a constitution. Two days later they listened to the king’s program for reform. In the “royal session” of June 23, the king pledged to honour civil liberties , agreed to fiscal equality (already conceded by the nobility in its cahiers , or grievance petitions), and promised that the Estates-General would meet regularly in the future. But, he declared, they would deliberate separately by order. France was to become a constitutional monarchy , but one in which “the ancient distinction of the three orders will be conserved in its entirety.” In effect the king was forging an alliance with the nobility, whose most articulate members—the judges of the parlements —only a year before had sought to hobble him. For the patriots this was too little and too late.

In a scene of high drama, the deputies refused to adjourn to their own hall. When ordered to do so by the king’s chamberlain, the Assembly’s president, astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736–93), responded—to the official’s amazement—that “the assembled nation cannot receive orders.” Such defiance unnerved the king. Backing down, he directed the nobles several days later to join a National Assembly whose existence he had just denied. Thus, the Third Estate, with its allies in the clergy and nobility, had apparently effected a successful nonviolent revolution from above. Having been elected in the bailliages (the monarchy’s judicial districts, which served as electoral circumscriptions) to represent particular constituents to their king, the deputies had transformed themselves into representatives of the entire nation. Deeming the nation alone to be sovereign , they, as its representatives, claimed sole authority to exercise that sovereignty. This was the juridical revolution of 1789.

In fact, the king had by no means reconciled himself to this revolutionary act. His concession was a strategic retreat until he could muster the military power to subdue the patriots. Between June 27 and July 1 he ordered 20,000 royal troops into the Paris region, ostensibly to protect the assembly and to prevent disorder in the restive capital. The assembly’s pleas to the king to withdraw these menacing and unnecessary troops fell on deaf ears. For all of their moral force, the deputies utterly lacked material force to counter the king’s obvious intentions. The assembly was saved from likely dissolution only by a massive popular mobilization.

During the momentous political events of 1788–89, much of the country lay in the grip of a classic subsistence crisis. Bad weather had reduced the grain crops that year by almost one-quarter the normal yield. An unusually cold winter compounded the problem, as frozen rivers halted the transport and milling of flour in many localities. Amid fears of hoarding and profiteering, grain and flour reserves dwindled. In Paris the price of the four-pound loaf of bread—the standard item of consumption accounting for most of the population’s calories and nutrition—rose from its usual 8 sous to 14 sous by January 1789. This intolerable trend set off traditional forms of popular protest. If royal officials did not assure basic food supplies at affordable prices, then people would act directly to seize food. During the winter and spring of 1789, urban consumers and peasants rioted at bakeries and markets and attacked millers and grain convoys. Then, in July, this anxiety merged with the looming political crisis at Versailles. Parisians believed that food shortages and royal troops would be used in tandem to starve the people and overwhelm them into submission. They feared an “aristocratic plot” to throttle the patriot cause.

When the king dismissed the still-popular finance minister Necker on July 11, Parisians correctly read this as a signal that the counterrevolution was about to begin. Instead of yielding, however, they rose in rebellion. Street-corner orators such as Camille Desmoulins stirred their compatriots to resist. Confronting royal troops in the streets, they won some soldiers to their side and induced officers to confine other potentially unreliable units to their barracks. On July 13, bands of Parisians ransacked armourers’ shops in a frantic search for weapons. The next day a large crowd invaded the Hôtel des Invalides and seized thousands of rifles without resistance. Then they moved to the Bastille , an old fortress commanding the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which had served as a notorious royal prison earlier in the century but was now scheduled for demolition. Believing that gunpowder was stored there, the crowd laid siege to the Bastille. Unlike the troops at the Invalides, the Bastille’s tiny garrison resisted, a fierce battle erupted, and dozens of Parisians were killed. When the garrison finally capitulated , the irate crowd massacred several of the soldiers. In another part of town two leading royal officials were lynched for their presumed role in the plot against the people. Meanwhile, the electors of Paris, who had continued to meet after choosing their deputies to the Estates-General, ousted the royal officials of the city government, formed a revolutionary municipality, and organized a citizens’ militia, or national guard, to patrol the streets. Similar municipal revolutions occurred in 26 of the 30 largest French cities, thus assuring that the capital’s defiance would not be an isolated act.

By any standard, the fall of the Bastille to the Parisian crowd was a spectacular symbolic event—a seemingly miraculous triumph of the people against the power of royal arms. The heroism of the crowd and the blood of its martyrs—ordinary Parisian artisans, tradesmen, and workers—sanctified the patriot cause. Most important, the elites and the people of Paris had made common cause, despite the inherent distrust and social distance between them. The mythic unity of the Third Estate—endlessly invoked by patriot writers and orators—seemed actually to exist, if only momentarily. Before this awesome material and moral force, Louis XVI capitulated. He did not want civil war in the streets. The Parisian insurrection of July 14 not only saved the National Assembly from dissolution but altered the course of the Revolution by giving it a far more active, popular, and violent dimension. On July 17 the king traveled to Paris, where he publicly donned a cockade bearing a new combination of colours: white for the Bourbons and blue and red for the city of Paris. This tricolour was to become the new national flag .

Peasants in the countryside, meanwhile, carried on their own kind of rebellion, which combined traditional aspirations and anxieties with support of the patriot cause. The peasant revolt was autonomous , yet it reinforced the urban uprising to the benefit of the National Assembly.

Competition over the ownership and use of land had intensified in many regions. Peasants owned only about 40 percent of the land, leasing or sharecropping the rest from the nobility, the urban middle class, and the church. Population growth and subdivision of the land from generation to generation was reducing the margin of subsistence for many families. Innovations in estate management—the grouping of leaseholds, conversion of arable land to pasture, enclosure of open fields, division of common land at the lord’s initiative , discovery of new seigneurial dues or arrears in old ones—exasperated peasant tenants and smallholders. Historians debate whether these were capitalistic innovations or traditional varieties of seigneurial extraction, but in either case the countryside was boiling with discontent over these trends as well as over oppressive royal taxes and food shortages. Peasants were poised between great hopes for the future raised by the calling of the Estates-General and extreme anxiety—fear of losing land, fear of hunger (especially after the catastrophic harvest of 1788), and fear of a vengeful aristocracy .

In July peasants in several regions sacked the castles of nobles and burned the documents that recorded their feudal obligations. This peasant insurgency eventually merged into the movement known as the Great Fear . Rumours abounded that these vagrants were actually brigands in the pay of nobles, who were marching on villages to destroy the new harvest and coerce the peasants into submission. The fear was baseless, but hundreds of false alarms and panics stirred up hatred and suspicion of nobles, led peasants to arm themselves as best they could, and set off widespread attacks on châteaus and feudal documents. The peasant revolt suggested that the unity of the Third Estate against “aristocrats” extended from Paris to villages across the country. The Third Estate truly seemed invincible.

Of course the violence of peasant insurgency worried the deputies of the National Assembly; to some it seemed as if the countryside were being engulfed by anarchy that threatened all property. But the majority were unwilling to turn against the rebellious peasants. Instead of denouncing the violence, they tried to appease peasant opinion. Liberal nobles and clergy began the session of August 4 by renouncing their ancient feudal privileges. Within hours the Assembly was propelled into decreeing “the abolition of feudalism ” as well as the church tithe, venality of office, regional privilege, and fiscal privilege. A few days later, to be sure, the Assembly clarified the August 4 decree to assure that “legitimate” seigneurial property rights were maintained. While personal feudal servitudes such as hunting rights, seigneurial justice , and labour services were suppressed outright, most seigneurial dues were to be abolished only if the peasants paid compensation to their lords, set at 20 to 25 times the annual value of the obligation. The vast majority of peasants rejected that requirement by passive resistance , until pressure built in 1792–93 for the complete abolition of all seigneurial dues without compensation.

The abolition of feudalism was crucial to the evolution of a modern, contractual notion of property and to the development of an unimpeded market in land. But it did not directly affect the ownership of land or the level of ordinary rents and leases. Seigneurs lost certain kinds of traditional income, but they remained landowners and landlords. While all peasants gained in dignity and status, only the landowning peasants came out substantially ahead economically. Tenant farmers found that what they had once paid for the tithe was added on to their rent. And the Assembly did virtually nothing to assure better lease terms for renters and sharecroppers, let alone their acquisition of the land they tilled.

The new regime

By sweeping away the old web of privileges, the August 4 decree permitted the Assembly to construct a new regime. Since it would take months to draft a constitution, the Assembly on August 27 promulgated its basic principles in a Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen . A rallying point for the future, the declaration also stood as the death certificate of the ancien régime . The declaration’s authors believed it to have universal significance. “In the new hemisphere, the brave inhabitants of Philadelphia have given the example of a people who reestablished their liberty,” conceded one deputy, but “France would give that example to the rest of the world.” At the same time, the declaration responded to particular circumstances and was thus a calculated mixture of general principles and specific concerns. Its concept of natural rights meant that the Revolution would not be bound by history and tradition but could reshape the contours of society according to reason—a position vehemently denounced by Edmund Burke in England.

The very first article of the declaration resoundingly challenged Europe’s old order by affirming that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility.” Most of its articles concerned individual liberty , but the declaration’s emphasis fell equally on the prerogatives of the state as expressed through law. (Considering how drastically the erstwhile delegates to the Estates-General had exceeded their mandates , they certainly needed to underscore the legitimacy of their new government and its laws.) The declaration, and subsequent Revolutionary constitutions, channeled the sovereignty of the nation into representative government, thereby negating claims by parlements , provincial estates, or divine-right monarchs as well as any conception of direct democracy . Though the declaration affirmed the separation of powers , by making no provision for a supreme court, it effectively left the French legislature as the ultimate judge of its own actions. The declaration defined liberty as “the ability to do whatever does not harm another…whose limits can only be determined by law.” The same limitation by positive law was attached to specific liberties, such as freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of expression, and freedom of religious conscience . The men of 1789 believed deeply in these liberties, yet they did not establish them in autonomous, absolute terms that would ensure their sanctity under any circumstances.

From 1789 to 1791 the National Assembly acted as a constituent assembly, drafting a constitution for the new regime while also governing from day to day. The constitution established a limited monarchy, with a clear separation of powers in which the king was to name and dismiss his ministers. But sovereignty effectively resided in the legislative branch, to consist of a single house, the Legislative Assembly , elected by a system of indirect voting. (“The people or the nation can have only one voice, that of the national legislature,” wrote Sieyès. “The people can speak and act only through its representatives.”) Besides failing to win a bicameral system , the moderate Anglophile, or monarchien , faction lost a bitter debate on the king’s veto power: the Assembly granted the king only a suspensive or delaying veto over legislation; if a bill passed the Legislative Assembly in three successive sessions, it would become law even without royal approval.

Dismayed at what he deemed the ill-considered radicalism of such decisions, Jean-Joseph Mounier, a leading patriot deputy in the summer of 1789 and author of the Tennis Court Oath , resigned from the Assembly in October. In a similar vein, some late-20th-century historians (notably François Furet) suggested that the Assembly’s integral concept of national sovereignty and legislative supremacy effectively reestablished absolutism in a new guise, providing the new government with inherently unlimited powers. Nor, they believed, is it surprising that the revolutionaries abused those powers as their pursuit of utopian goals encountered resistance. In theory this may well be true, but it must be balanced against the actual institutions created to implement those powers and the spirit in which they were used. With a few exceptions—notably the religious issue—the National Assembly acted in a liberal spirit, more pragmatic than utopian, and was decidedly more constructive than repressive.

The revolutionaries took civil equality seriously but created a limited definition of political rights. They effectively transferred political power from the monarchy and the privileged estates to the general body of propertied citizens. Nobles lost their privileges in 1789 and their titles in 1790, but, as propertied individuals, they could readily join the new political elite. The constitution restricted the franchise to “active” citizens who paid a minimal sum in taxes, with higher property qualifications for eligibility for public office (a direct-tax payment equivalent to 3 days’ wages for voters and 10 days’ wages for electors and officeholders). Under this system about two-thirds of adult males had the right to vote for electors and choose certain local officials directly. Although it favoured wealthier citizens, the system was vastly more democratic than Britain’s.

Predictably, the franchise did not extend to women, despite delegations and pamphlets advocating women’s rights. The Assembly responded brusquely that, because women were too emotional and easily misled, they must be kept out of public life and devote themselves to their nurturing and maternal roles. But the formal exclusion of women from politics did not keep them on the sidelines. Women were active combatants in local conflicts that soon erupted over religious policy, and they agitated over subsistence issues—Parisian women, for example, made a mass march to Versailles in October that forced the king to move back to the capital. In the towns, they formed auxiliaries to local Jacobin clubs and even a handful of independent women’s clubs, participated in civic festivals, and did public relief work.

The Assembly’s design for local government and administration proved to be one of the Revolution’s most durable legacies . Obliterating the political identity of France’s historic provinces, the deputies redivided the nation’s territory into 83 départements of roughly equal size. Unlike the old provinces, each département would have exactly the same institutions; départements were in turn subdivided into districts, cantons, and communes (the common designation for a village or town). On the one hand, this administrative transformation promoted decentralization and local autonomy: citizens of each département , district, and commune elected their own local officials. On the other hand, these local governments were subordinated to the national legislature and ministries in Paris. The départements therefore became instruments of national uniformity and integration , which is to say, centralization. This ambiguity the legislators fully appreciated, assuming that a healthy equilibrium could be maintained between the two tendencies. That the Revolutionary government of 1793 and Napoleon would later use these structures to concentrate power from the centre was not something they could anticipate.

The new administrative map also created the parameters for judicial reform. Sweeping away the entire judicial system of the ancien régime, the revolutionaries established a civil court in each district and a criminal court in each département . At the grass roots they replaced seigneurial justice with a justice of the peace in each canton. Judges on all of these tribunals were to be elected. While rejecting the use of juries in civil cases, the Assembly decreed that felonies would be tried by juries; if a jury convicted, judges would merely apply the mandatory sentences set out in the Assembly’s tough new penal code of 1791. Criminal defendants also gained the right to counsel , which had been denied them under the jurisprudence of the ancien régime. In civil law , the Assembly encouraged arbitration and mediation to avoid the time-consuming and costly processes of formal litigation. In general, the revolutionaries hoped to make the administration of justice more accessible and expeditious.

Guided by laissez-faire doctrine and its hostility to privileged corporations, the Assembly sought to open up economic life to unimpeded individual initiative and competition. Besides proclaiming the right of all citizens to enter any trade and conduct it as they saw fit, the Assembly dismantled internal tariffs and chartered trading monopolies and abolished the guilds of merchants and artisans. Insisting that workers must bargain in the economic marketplace as individuals, the Le Chapelier Law of June 1791 (named after reformer Jean Le Chapelier ) banned workers’ associations and strikes. The precepts of economic individualism extended to rural life as well. In theory, peasants and landlords were now free to cultivate their fields as they wished, regardless of traditional collective routines and constraints. In practice, however, communal restraints proved to be deep-rooted and resistant to legal abolition.

The Assembly had not lost sight of the financial crisis that precipitated the collapse of absolutism in the first place. Creating an entirely new option for its solution, the Assembly voted to place church property—about 10 percent of the land in France—“at the disposition of the nation.” This property was designated as biens nationaux , or national lands. The government then issued large-denomination notes called assignats , underwritten and guaranteed by the value of that land. It intended to sell national lands to the public, which would pay for it in assignats that would then be retired. Thus, church property would in effect pay off the national debt and obviate the need for further loans. Unfortunately, the temptation to print additional assignats proved too great. Within a year the assignat evolved into a paper currency in small and large denominations, with sharp inflationary effects.

As the national lands went on sale, fiscal needs took priority over social policy. Sales were arranged in large lots and at auction in the district capitals—procedures that favoured wealthier buyers. For about a year in 1793–94, after émigré property was added to the biens nationaux , large lots were divided into small parcels. In addition, small-scale peasants acquired some of this land through resale by the original buyers. But overall the urban middle classes and large-scale peasants emerged with the bulk of this land, to the intense frustration of small-scale peasants. The French historian Georges Lefebvre ’s study of the Nord département , for example, found that 7,500 bourgeois purchased 48 percent of the land, while 20,300 peasants bought 52 percent. But the top 10 percent of these peasant purchasers accounted for 60 percent of the peasants’ total. Whatever the social origins of the buyers, however, they were likely to be reliable supporters of the Revolution if only to guarantee the security of their new acquisitions.

Seeds of discord

Security could not be taken for granted, however, because the Revolution progressively alienated or disappointed important elements of French society. Among the elites, opposition began almost immediately when some of the king’s close relatives left the country in disgust after July 14, thus becoming the first émigrés. Each turning point in the Revolution touched off new waves of emigration, especially among the nobility. By 1792 an estimated two-thirds of the royal officer corps had resigned their commissions, and most had left the country. A contentious royalist press bitterly denounced the policies of the Assembly as spoliation and the Revolutionary atmosphere as a form of anarchy. Abroad, widespread enthusiasm for the events in France among the general public from London to Vienna was matched by intense hostility in ruling circles fearful of revolutionary contagion within their own borders.

After the first months of solidarity, long-standing urban-rural tensions took on new force. Though peasants might vote in large numbers, the urban middle classes predictably emerged with the lion’s share of the new district and département offices after the first elections of 1790. Administrative and judicial reform gave these local officials more powers for intrusion into rural society than royal officials ever had, with battalions of armed national guards to back them up. Peasants might easily view urban revolutionary elites as battening on political power and national lands. And, while the Assembly made the tax system more uniform and equitable , direct taxes remained heavy and actually rose in formerly privileged regions, while nothing was done to relieve the plight of tenant farmers. Later, when the Revolutionary government sought to draft young men into the army, another grievance was added to the list.

It was religious policy that most divided French society and generated opposition to the Revolution. Most priests had initially hoped that sweeping reform might return Roman Catholicism to its basic ideals, shorn of aristocratic trappings and superfluous privileges, but they assumed that the church itself would collaborate in the process. In the Assembly’s view, however, nationalization of church property gave the state responsibility for regulating the church’s temporal affairs, such as salaries, jurisdictional boundaries, and modes of clerical appointment. On its own authority the Assembly reduced the number of dioceses and realigned their boundaries to coincide with the new départements , while requesting local authorities redraw parish boundaries in conformity with population patterns. Under the Assembly’s Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 1790), bishops were to be elected by départements ’ electoral assemblies, while parish priests were to be chosen by electors in the districts. Clerical spokesmen deplored the notion of lay authority in such matters and insisted that the Assembly must negotiate reforms with a national church council.

In November 1790 the Assembly forced the issue by requiring all sitting bishops and priests to take an oath of submission. Those who refused would lose their posts, be pensioned off, and be replaced by the prescribed procedures. Throughout France a mere seven bishops complied, while only 54 percent of the parish clergy took the oath. Contrary to the Assembly’s hopes, the clergy had split in two, with “constitutional” priests on one side and “refractory” priests on the other. Regional patterns accentuated this division: in the west of France, where clerical density was unusually high, only 15 percent of the clergy complied.

The schism quickly engulfed the laity. As refractories and constitutionals vied for popular support against their rivals, parishioners could not remain neutral. Intense local discord erupted over the implementation of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. District administrations backed by urban national guards intervened to install “outsiders” chosen to replace familiar or even beloved refractory priests in many parishes; villagers responded by badgering or boycotting the hapless priests who took the oath. Opinion on both sides tended to fateful extremes, linking either the Revolution with impiety or the Roman Catholic Church with counterrevolution.

The political life of the new regime was also proving more contentious than the revolutionaries had anticipated. With courage and consistency, the Assembly had provided that officials of all kinds be elected. But it was uncertain whether these officials, once the ballots were cast, could do their duty free from public pressure and agitation. Nor was it clear what the role of “public opinion” and the mechanisms for its expression would be. The spectacular development of a free press and political clubs provided an answer. Fearful that these extra-parliamentary institutions could be abused by demagogues , the Assembly tried to curb them from time to time but to no avail. Freed entirely from royal censorship, writers and publishers rushed to satisfy the appetite for news and political opinion. The first journalists included deputies reporting to their constituents by means of a newspaper . Paris, which had only 4 quasi-official newspapers at the start of 1789, saw more than 130 new periodicals by the end of the year, most admittedly short-lived, including 20 dailies. As the journalist Jacques-Pierre Brissot put it, newspapers are “the only way of educating a large nation unaccustomed to freedom or to reading, yet looking to free itself from ignorance.” Provincial publishers were as quick to found new periodicals in the larger towns. Bordeaux , for example, had only 1 newspaper in 1789, but 16 appeared within the next two years. While some papers remained bland and politically neutral, many had strong political opinions.

Like the National Assembly, revolutionary clubs also began at Versailles, when patriot deputies rallied to a caucus of outspoken Third Estate deputies from Brittany. Thus began the Club Breton—complete with bylaws, minutes, committees, correspondence, and membership requirements—which later reorganized as the Society of the Friends of the Constitution. Soon it was known as the Jacobin Club , after the Dominican convent where the club met when the assembly transferred to Paris in October. Most prominent revolutionaries belonged to the Jacobin Club, from constitutional royalists such as the comte de Mirabeau , the marquis de Lafayette , and the comte de Barnave to radicals such as Brissot, Alexandre Sabès Pétion , and Maximilien Robespierre . By mid-1791, however, moderates became uncomfortable with the Jacobin Club, where Robespierre was emerging as a dominant figure.

The Jacobin Club was pushed from the left by the Club of the Cordeliers , one of the neighbourhood clubs in the capital. The Cordeliers militants rejected the Assembly’s concept of representation as the exclusive expression of popular sovereignty. They held to a more direct vision of popular sovereignty as relentless vigilance and participation by citizens through demonstrations, petitions, deputations, and, if necessary, insurrection. In his newspaper L’Ami du peuple (“The Friend of the People”) Jean-Paul Marat injected an extreme rhetoric about alleged conspiracies and the need for violence against counterrevolutionaries that exceeded anything heard in the Assembly’s political discourse.

Like the press, clubs quickly spread in the provinces. Building, no doubt, on old-regime patterns of sociability—reading clubs, Freemasonry, or confraternities—political clubs became a prime vehicle for participation in the Revolution. More than 300 towns had clubs by the end of 1790 and 900 by mid-1791. Later clubs spread to the villages as well: a study has counted 5,000 localities that had clubs at one time or another between 1790 and 1795. Many clubs affiliated with the Paris Jacobin Club, the “mother club,” in an informal nationwide network. Most began with membership limited to the middle class and a sprinkling of liberal nobles, but gradually artisans, shopkeepers, and peasants joined the rolls. Initially the clubs promoted civic education and publicized the Assembly’s reforms. But some became more activist, seeking to influence political decisions with petitions, exercise surveillance over constituted authorities, and denounce those they deemed remiss.

By 1791 the Assembly found itself in a cross fire between the machinations of counterrevolutionaries—émigrés, royalist newspapers, refractory clergy—and the denunciations of radicals. Its ability to steer a stable course depended in part on the cooperation of the king. Publicly Louis XVI distanced himself from his émigré relatives, but privately he was in league with them and secretly corresponded with the royal houses of Spain and Austria to enlist their support. On June 21, 1791, the royal family attempted to flee its “captivity” in the Tuileries Palace and escape across the Belgian border. Rashly, Louis left behind a letter revealing his utter hostility to the Revolution. At the last minute, however, the king was recognized at the town of Varennes near the border, and the royal party was forcibly returned to Paris.

A great crisis for the Revolution ensued. While the Assembly reinforced the frontiers by calling for 100,000 volunteers from the national guard, its moderate leaders hoped that this fiasco would end Louis’s opposition once and for all. To preserve their constitutional compromise, they turned a blind eye to the king’s manifest treason by inventing the fiction that he had been kidnapped. As Antoine Barnave put it, “Are we or are we not going to terminate the Revolution? Or are we going to start it all over again?” Outside the Assembly, however, Jacobins and Cordeliers launched a petition campaign against reinstating the king. A mass demonstration on July 17 at the Champ de Mars against the king ended in a bloody riot, as the authorities called out the national guard under Lafayette’s command to disperse the demonstrators. This precipitated vehement recriminations in the Jacobin Club, which finally split apart under the pressure. The mass of moderate deputies abandoned the club to a rump of radicals and formed a new association called the Club of the Feuillants . Under the leadership of Robespierre and Jérôme Pétion (who later became mortal enemies), the purged Jacobin Club rallied most provincial clubs and emerged from the crisis with a more unified, radical point of view. For the time being, however, the moderates prevailed in the Assembly. They completed the Constitution of 1791 , and on the last day of September 1791 the National Assembly dissolved itself, having previously decreed the ineligibility of its members for the new Legislative Assembly .

When the newly elected Legislative Assembly convened in October, the question of counterrevolution dominated its proceedings. Such Jacobin deputies as Brissot argued that only war against the émigré army gathering at Coblenz across the Rhine could end the threat: “Do you wish at one blow to destroy the aristocracy, the refractory priests, and the malcontents: then destroy Coblenz.” Whereas the Feuillants opposed this war fever, Lafayette saw a successful military campaign as a way to gain power, while the king’s circle believed that war would bring military defeat to France and a restoration of royal authority. On the other side, the Habsburg monarch, Leopold II , had resisted the pleas of his sister Marie-Antoinette and opposed intervention against France, but his death in March 1792 brought his bellicose son Francis II to the throne, and the stage was set for war.

In April 1792 France went to war against a coalition of Austria, Prussia , and the émigrés. Each camp expected rapid victory, but both were disappointed. The allies repulsed a French offensive and soon invaded French territory. The Legislative Assembly called for a new levy of 100,000 military volunteers, but, when it voted to incarcerate refractory clergy, the king vetoed the decree. Though many Frenchmen remained respectful of the king, the most vocal elements of public opinion denounced Louis and demonstrated against him; but the Legislative Assembly refused to act. As Prussian forces drove toward Paris, their commander, the duke of Brunswick, proclaimed his aim of restoring the full authority of the monarchy and warned that any action against the king would bring down “exemplary and memorable vengeance” against the capital. Far from terrifying the Parisians, the Brunswick Manifesto enraged them and drove them into decisive action.

Militants in the Paris Commune, the Revolutionary government of Paris set up by the capital’s 48 wards, or sections, gave the Legislative Assembly a deadline in which to suspend the king. When it passed unheeded, they organized an insurrection. On August 10, 1792, a huge crowd of armed Parisians stormed the royal palace after a fierce battle with the garrison. The Legislative Assembly then had no choice but to declare the king suspended. That night more than half the deputies themselves fled Paris, for the Legislative Assembly, too, had lost its mandate . Those who remained ordered the election by universal male suffrage of a National Convention . It would judge the king, draft a new republican constitution, and govern France during the emergency. The constitution of 1791 had lasted less than a year, and the second revolution dreaded by the Feuillants had begun.

The First French Republic

The insurrection of August 10, 1792, did not, of course, stop the Prussian advance on the capital. As enthusiastic contingents of volunteers left for the front, fear of counterrevolutionary plots gripped the capital. Journalists such as Jean-Paul Marat pointed to the prisons bursting with vagrants and criminals as well as refractory clergy and royalists and asked what would happen if traitors forced open the jails and released these hordes of fanatics and brigands. In response, Parisians took the law into their own hands with an orgy of mass lynching.

On their own initiative, citizens entered the prisons, set up “popular tribunals” to hold perfunctory trials, and summarily executed between 1,100 and 1,400 prisoners out of a total of 2,800, stabbing and hacking them to death with any instruments at hand. These prison massacres were no momentary fit of frenzy but went on for four days. At the time, no one in authority dared try to stop the slaughter. Officials of the provisional government and the Paris Commune “drew a veil” over this appalling event as it ran its course, though soon political rivals were accusing each other of instigating the massacres. In a different vein, Robespierre among others concluded that popular demands for vengeance and terror had to be channeled into legal forms; to prevent such anarchy, the state itself must become the orderly instrument of the people’s punitive will.

The next two weeks brought this period of extreme uncertainty to a close. On September 20 the French army turned back the invaders at the Battle of Valmy , and in November at the Battle of Jemappes it won control of the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium). On September 21 the National Convention convened, ending the vacuum of authority that had followed the August 10 insurrection. Its first major task was to decide the fate of the ex-king. The Convention’s trial of Louis became an educational experience for the French people in which the institution of monarchy was to be completely desacralized.

Hard evidence of Louis’s treason produced a unanimous guilty verdict, but the issue of punishment divided the deputies sharply. In a painstaking and solemn debate each deputy cast his vote individually and explained it. At the end the Convention voted the death sentence, 387 to 334. A motion for reprieve was defeated (380 to 310), and one to submit the verdict to a national referendum was rejected (425 to 286). This ill-considered proposal left the impression that certain deputies were frantic to save the king’s life, and their Jacobin opponents were quick to raise vague accusations of treasonous intent against them. In any event, the former king Louis XVI , now known simply as “Citizen Capet,” was executed on January 21, 1793, in an act of immense symbolic importance. For the deputies to the National Convention, now regicides, there could be no turning back. Laws to deport the refractory clergy, to bar the émigrés forever upon pain of death, and to confiscate their property rounded out the Convention’s program for eliminating the Revolution’s most determined enemies.

By the spring of 1793, however, the republic was beleaguered. In the second round of the war, the coalition—now reinforced by Spain, Piedmont, and Britain—routed French forces in the Austrian Netherlands and the Rhineland and breached the Pyrenees. Fighting on five different fronts and bereft of effective leadership, French armies seemed to be losing everywhere. Even General Charles-François du Périer Dumouriez , the hero of the first Netherlands campaign, had gone over to the enemy in April after quarreling with the Convention. Meanwhile, civil war had broken out within France. Rural disaffection in western France, especially over the religious question referred to earlier, had been building steadily, leaving republicans in the region’s cities and small towns an unpopular and vulnerable minority. Rural rage finally erupted into armed rebellion in March 1793 when the Convention decreed that each département must produce a quota of citizens for the army. In four départements south of the Loire River , the Vendée rebellion began with assaults on the towns and the massacre of patriots. Gradually, royalist nobles assumed the leadership of the peasants and weavers who had risen on their own initiative. Forging them into a “Catholic and Royalist Army,” they hoped to overthrow the republic and restore the Bourbons.

The Convention could take no comfort from the economic situation either. An accelerating depreciation of the assignats compounded severe shortages of grain and flour in 1793. Inflation, scarcity, and hoarding made life unbearable for the urban masses and hampered efforts to provision the republic’s armies. In reaction to such economic hardships and to the advance of antirepublican forces at the frontiers and within France, Parisian radicals clamoured relentlessly for decisive action such as price controls and the repression of counterrevolutionaries.

The Convention was bitterly divided almost to the point of paralysis. From the opening day, two outspoken groups of deputies vied for the support of their less factional colleagues. The roots of this rivalry lay in a conflict between Robespierre and Brissot for leadership of the Jacobin Club in the spring and summer of 1792. At that time Robespierre had argued almost alone against the war that Brissot passionately advocated. Later, when the war went badly and the Brissotins, anxious to wield executive power, acted equivocally in their relations with the king, the Jacobins turned on them. Brissot was formally expelled from the club in October, but his expulsion merely formalized a division that had already crystallized during the elections to the Convention in the previous month.

The Paris electoral assembly sent Robespierre, Marat, Georges Danton , and other stalwarts of the Paris Commune and the Jacobin Club to the Convention, while systematically rejecting Brissot and his allies such as the former mayor of Paris, Pétion. The Parisian deputies and their provincial supporters, numbering between 200 and 300 (depending on which historian’s taxonomy one accepts), took seats on the Convention’s upper benches and came to be known as the Montagnards .

Supported by a network of journalists and by politicians such as Interior Minister Jean-Marie Roland , however, the Brissotins retained their popularity in the provinces and were returned as deputies by other départements . In the Convention the Brissotin group included most deputies from the département of the Gironde, and the group came to be known by their opponents as the Girondins . The inner core of this loose faction, who often socialized in Roland’s salon, numbered about 60 or, with their supporters, perhaps 150 to 175.

At bottom the Girondin-Montagnard conflict stemmed from a clash of personalities and ambitions. Over the years, historians have made the case for each side by arguing that their opponents constituted the truly aggressive or obstructive minority seeking to dominate the Convention. Clearly most deputies were put off by the bitter personal attacks that regularly intruded on their deliberations. The two factions differed most over the role of Paris and the best way to deal with popular demands. Though of a middle-class background similar to that of their rivals, the Montagnards sympathized more readily with the sansculottes (the local activists) of the capital and proved temperamentally bolder in their response to economic, military, and political problems. United by an extreme hostility to Parisian militance, the Girondins never forgave the Paris Commune for its inquisitorial activity after August 10. Indeed, some Girondins did not feel physically secure in the capital. They also appeared more committed to political and economic liberties and therefore less willing to adopt extreme revolutionary measures no matter how dire the circumstances. Ready to set aside similar constitutional scruples, the Montagnards tailored their policies to the imperatives of “revolutionary necessity” and unity.

While the Girondins repeatedly attacked Parisian militants—at one point demanding the dissolution of the Paris Commune and the arrest of its leaders—the Montagnards gradually forged an informal alliance with the sansculottes. Similarly, the Montagnards supported deputies sent “on mission” to the départements when they clashed with locally elected officials, while the Girondins tended to back the officials. The Montagnards therefore alienated many moderate republicans in the provinces. As deputies of the centre, or “Plain,” such as Bertrand Barère , vainly tried to mediate between the two sides, the Convention navigated through this factionalism as best it could and improvised new responses to the crisis: a Revolutionary Tribunal to try political crimes; local surveillance committees to seek out subversives; and a Committee of Public Safety to coordinate measures of revolutionary defense. By the end of May 1793 a majority seemed ready to support the Montagnards.

Believing that the Girondins had betrayed and endangered the republic, the Paris sections (with the connivance of the Montagnards and the Paris Jacobin Club) demanded in petitions that the Convention expel the “perfidious deputies.” On May 31 they mounted a mass demonstration, and on June 2 they forced a showdown by deploying armed national guards around the convention’s hall. Backed by a huge crowd of unarmed men and women, their solid phalanx of fixed bayonets made it impossible for the deputies to leave without risking serious violence. Inside, the Montagnards applauded this insurrection as an expression of popular sovereignty, akin to that of July 14 or August 10. When the people thus spoke directly, they argued, the deputies had no choice but to comply. Centrists did everything they could to avoid a purge but in the end decided that only this fateful act could preserve the Revolution’s unity. Barère composed a report to the French people justifying the expulsion of 29 Girondins. Later 120 deputies who signed a protest against the purge were themselves suspended from the Convention , and in October the original Girondins stood trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal, which sentenced them to death. The Montagnard ascendancy had begun.

Though the deadlock in the Convention was now broken, the balance of forces in the country was by no means clear. The Parisian sansculottes might well have continued to intimidate the Convention and emerge as the dominant partner in their alliance with the Montagnards—just as Girondin orators had warned. Conversely, provincial opinion might have rebelled against this mutilation of the National Convention by Paris and its Montagnard partisans. Purged of the Girondins, the Convention itself was able to reach consensus more readily, but the nation as a whole was more divided than ever.

At first it seemed as if the expulsion of the Girondins would indeed backfire. More than half of the departmental directories protested against the purge. But, faced with pleas for unity and threats from the Convention, most of this opposition subsided quickly. Only 13 départements continued their defiant stance, and only 6 of these passed into overt armed rebellion against the Convention’s authority. Still, this was a serious threat in a country already beleaguered by civil war and military reversals. The Jacobins stigmatized this new opposition as the heresy of federalism—implying that the “federalists” no longer believed in a unified republic. Jacobin propaganda depicted the federalists as counterrevolutionaries. In fact, most were moderate republicans hostile to the royalists and committed to constitutional liberties. They did not intend to overthrow the republic or separate from it. Rather they hoped to wrest power back from what they deemed the tyrannical alliance of Montagnards and Parisian sansculottes.

In Lyon , Marseille , Toulon, and Bordeaux, bitter conflicts between local moderates and Jacobins contributed decisively to the rebellion. Uprisings in Lyon and Marseille (France’s second and third largest cities, respectively) began in late May when moderates seized power from local Jacobin authorities who had threatened their lives and property—Jacobins such as the firebrand Marie-Joseph Chalier in Lyon, who was supported by Montagnard representatives-on-mission. The expulsion of the Girondins was merely the last straw. Whatever its causes, however, “federalist” rebellion did threaten national unity and the Convention’s sovereign authority. Royalists, moreover, did gain control of the movement in Toulon and opened that port to the British. Holding out no offer of negotiation, the Convention organized military force to crush the rebellions and promised the leaders exemplary punishment. “Lyon has made war against liberty,” declared the Convention, “Lyon no longer exists.” When the republic’s forces recaptured the city in October, they changed its name to “Liberated City,” demolished the houses of the wealthy, and summarily executed more than 2,000 Lyonnais, including many wealthy merchants.

After their victory in expelling the Girondins, Parisian militants “regenerated” their own sectional assemblies by purging local moderates, while radicals such as Jacques-René Hébert and Pierre-Gaspard Chaumette tightened their grip on the Paris Commune. On September 5, 1793, they mounted another mass demonstration to demand that the Convention assure food at affordable prices and “place terror on the order of the day.” Led by its Committee of Public Safety, the Convention placated the popular movement with decisive actions. It proclaimed the need for terror against the Revolution’s enemies, made economic crimes such as hoarding into capital offenses, and decreed a system of price and wage controls known as the Maximum. The Law of Suspects empowered local revolutionary committees to arrest “those who by their conduct, relations or language spoken or written, have shown themselves partisans of tyranny or federalism and enemies of liberty.” In 1793–94 well over 200,000 citizens were detained under this law; though most of them never stood trial, they languished in pestiferous jails, where an estimated 10,000 perished. About 17,000 death sentences were handed down by the military commissions and revolutionary tribunals of the Terror, 72 percent for charges of armed rebellion in the two major zones of civil war—the federalist southeast and the western Vendée region. One-third of the départements , however, had fewer than 10 death sentences passed on their inhabitants and were relatively tranquil.

The Convention authorized local authorities to create paramilitary forces to help police the Maximum and requisition grain in the countryside, as well as to carry out arrest warrants and guard political prisoners. About 50 such armées révolutionnaires came into being as ambulatory instruments of the Terror in the provinces. Fraternizing with peasants and artisans in the hinterland, these forces helped raise revolutionary enthusiasm but ultimately left such village sansculottes vulnerable to the wrath of the wealthy citizens whom they harassed.

Back in June the Convention had quickly drafted a new democratic constitution, incorporating such popular demands as universal male suffrage, the right to subsistence, and the right to free public education. In a referendum this Jacobin constitution of 1793 was approved virtually without dissent by about two million voters. Because of the emergency, however, the Convention placed the new constitution on the shelf in October and declared that “the provisional government of France is revolutionary until the peace.” There would be no elections, no local autonomy , no guarantees of individual liberties for the duration of the emergency. The Convention would rule with a sovereignty more absolute than the old monarchy had ever claimed. Nor would serious popular protest be tolerated any longer, now that the Jacobins had used such intervention to secure power. The balance in the alliance between Montagnards and sansculottes gradually shifted from the streets of Paris to the halls and committee rooms of the Convention.

From the beginning a popular terrorist mentality had helped shape the Revolution. Peasants and townspeople alike had been galvanized by fear and rage over “aristocratic plots” in 1789. Lynchings of “enemies of the people” punctuated the Revolution, culminating in the September massacres, which reflected an extreme fear of betrayal and an unbridled punitive will. Now the Revolution’s leaders were preempting this punitive will in order to control it: they conceived of terror as rational rather than emotional and as organized rather than instinctive. Paradoxically they were trying to render terror lawful—legality being an article of faith among most revolutionaries—but without the procedural safeguards that accompanied the regular criminal code of 1791.

For the more pragmatic Montagnards that deviation was justified by the unparalleled emergency situation confronting France in 1793: before the benefits of the Revolution could be enjoyed, they must be secured against their enemies by force. (“Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.…Is force made only to protect crime?” declared Robespierre.) For the more ideologically exalted Jacobins such as Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just , however, the Terror would also regenerate the nation by promoting equality and the public interest. In their minds a link existed between terror and virtue: “virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless.” Whoever could claim to speak for the interests of the people held the mantle of virtue and the power of revolutionary terror.

One of the changes affected by the Convention was the creation of the French republican calendar to replace the Gregorian calendar , which was viewed as nonscientific and tainted with religious associations. The Revolutionary calendar was proclaimed on 14 Vendémiaire, year II (October 5, 1793), but its starting point was set to be about a year prior, on 1 Vendémiaire, year I (September 22, 1792). The new calendar featured a 10-day week called the décade , designed to swallow up the Christian Sunday in a new cycle of work and recreation. Three décades formed a month of 30 days, and 12 months formed a year, with 5 to 6 additional days at the end of each year.

The Convention consolidated its revolutionary government in the Law of 14 Frimaire, year II (December 4, 1793). To organize the Revolution and promote confidence and compliance , efficiency and control, this law centralized authority in a parliamentary dictatorship, with the Committee of Public Safety at the helm. The committee already controlled military policy and patronage; henceforth local administrators (renamed national agents), tribunals, and revolutionary committees also came under its scrutiny and control. The network of Jacobin clubs was enlisted to monitor local officials, nominate new appointees, and in general serve as “arsenals of public opinion.”

Opposed to “ultrarevolutionary” behaviour and uncoordinated actions even by its own deputies-on-mission, the committee tried to stop the de-Christianization campaigns that had erupted during the anarchic phase of the Terror in the fall of 1793. Usually instigated by radical deputies, the de-Christianizers vandalized churches or closed them down altogether, intimidated constitutional priests into resigning their vocation, and often pressured them into marrying to demonstrate the sincerity of their conversion. Favouring a deistic form of civil religion , Robespierre implied that the atheism displayed by some de-Christianizers was a variant of counterrevolution. He insisted that citizens must be left free to practice the Roman Catholic religion, though for the time being most priests were not holding services.

The committee also felt strong enough a few months later to curb the activism of the Paris sections, dissolve the armées révolutionnaires , and purge the Paris Commune—ironically what the Girondins had hoped to do months before. But in this atmosphere no serious dissent to official policy was tolerated. The once vibrant free press had been muzzled after the purge of the Girondins. In March 1794 Hébert and other “ultrarevolutionaries” were arrested, sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal, and guillotined. A month later Danton and other so-called “indulgents” met the same fate for seeking to end the Terror—prematurely in the eyes of the committee. Then the Convention passed the infamous law of 22 Prairial, year II (June 10, 1794), to streamline revolutionary justice, denying the accused any effective right to self-defense and eliminating all sentences other than acquittal or death. Indictments by the public prosecutor, now virtually tantamount to a death sentence, multiplied rapidly.

The Terror was being escalated just when danger no longer threatened the republic—after French armies had prevailed against Austria at the decisive Battle of Fleurus on 8 Messidor (June 26) and long after rebel forces in the Vendée, Lyon, and elsewhere had been vanquished. By that time the Jacobin dictatorship had forged an effective government and had mobilized the nation’s resources, thereby mastering the crisis that had brought it into being. Yet, on 8 Thermidor (July 26), Robespierre took the rostrum to proclaim his own probity and to denounce yet another unnamed group as traitors hatching “a conspiracy against liberty.” Robespierre had clearly lost his grip on reality in his obsession with national unity and virtue. An awkward coalition of moderates, Jacobin pragmatists, rival deputies, and extremists who rightly felt threatened by the “Incorruptible” (as he was known) finally combined to topple Robespierre and his closest followers. On 9 Thermidor, year II (July 27, 1794), the Convention ordered the arrest of Robespierre and Saint-Just, and, after a failed resistance by loyalists in the Paris Commune, they were guillotined without trial the following day. The Terror was over.

The Jacobin dictatorship had been an unstable blend of exalted patriotism, resolute political leadership, ideological fanaticism, and populist initiatives . The rhetoric and symbolism of democracy constituted a new civic pedagogy , matched by bold egalitarian policies. The army was a primary focal point of this democratic impetus . In 1790 the National Assembly had opted for a small military of long-term professionals. One-year volunteers bolstered the line army after the outbreak of war, and in March 1793 the Convention called for an additional 300,000 soldiers, with quotas to be provided by each département . Finally, in August 1793 it decreed the lévee en masse —a “requisition” of all able-bodied, unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 25. Despite massive draft evasion and desertion, within a year almost three-quarters of a million men were under arms, the citizen-soldiers merged with line-army troops in new units called demibrigades. This huge popular mobilization reinforced the Revolution’s militant spirit. The citizen-soldiers risking their lives at the front had to be supported by any and all means back home, including forced loans on the rich and punitive vigilance against those suspected of disloyalty.

Within the constraints of military discipline , the army became a model of democratic practice. Both noncommissioned and commissioned officers were chosen by a combination of election and appointment, in which seniority received some consideration, but demonstrated talent on the battlefield brought the most rapid promotion. The republic insisted that officers be respectful toward their men and share their privations. Jacobin military prosecutors enforced the laws against insubordination and desertion but took great pains to explain them to the soldiers and to make allowances for momentary weakness in deciding cases. Soldiers received revolutionary newspapers and sang revolutionary songs, exalting the citizen-soldier as the model sansculotte. Meanwhile, needy parents, wives, or dependents of soldiers at the front received subsidies, while common soldiers seriously wounded in action earned extremely generous veterans’ benefits.

The Revolution’s egalitarian promise never involved an assault on private property, but its concept of “social limitations” on property made it possible for the Convention to abolish all seigneurial dues without compensation, abolish slavery in the colonies (where rebellions of enslaved people had already achieved that result in practice), endorse the idea of progressive taxation, and temporarily regulate the economy in favour of consumers. In 1793–94 the Convention enacted an unprecedented national system of public assistance entitlements , with one program allocating small pensions to poor families with dependent children and another providing pensions to aged and indigent farm workers, artisans, and rural widows—the neediest of the needy. “We must put an end to the servitude of the most basic needs, the slavery of misery, that most hideous of inequalities,” declared Barère of the Committee of Public Safety. The Convention also implemented the Revolution’s long-standing commitment to primary education with a system of free public primary schooling for both boys and girls. The Lakanal Law of November 1794 authorized public schools in every commune with more than 1,000 inhabitants, the teachers to be selected by examination and paid fixed salaries by the government.

With control passing from the Montagnards after Robespierre’s fall, moderates in the Convention hoped to put the Terror and sansculotte militance behind them while standing fast against counterrevolution and rallying all patriots around the original principles of the Revolution. But far from stabilizing the Revolution, the fall of “the tyrant” on 9 Thermidor set in motion a brutal struggle for power. Those who had suffered under the Terror now clamoured for retribution , and moderation quickly gave way to reaction. As federalists were released, Jacobins were arrested; as the suspended Girondins were reinstated, Montagnards were purged; as moderates could feel safe, Jacobins and sansculottes were threatened. Like the Terror, the Thermidorian Reaction had an uncontrollable momentum of its own. Antiterrorism—in the press, the theatre, the streets—degenerated into a “white terror” against the men of year II. In the south, especially in Provence and the Rhône valley, the frontier between private feuds and political reaction blurred as law and order broke down. Accounts were settled by lynchings, murder gangs, and prison massacres of arrested sansculottes.

In addition to these political consequences, the Thermidorian Reaction set off a new economic and monetary crisis. Committed to free-trade principles, the Thermidorians dismantled the economic regulation and price controls of year II, along with the apparatus of the Terror that had put teeth into that system. The depreciation of the assignats, which the Terror had halted, quickly resumed. By 1795 the cities were desperately short of grain and flour, while meat, fuel, dairy products, and soap were entirely beyond the reach of ordinary consumers. By the spring of 1795 scarcity was turning into famine for working people of the capital and other cities. Surviving cadres of sansculottes in the Paris sections mobilized to halt the reaction and the economic catastrophe it had unleashed. After trying petitions and demonstrations, a crowd of sansculottes invaded the Convention on 1 Prairial, year III (May 20, 1795), in the last popular uprising of the French Revolution. “Bread is the goal of their insurrection, physically speaking,” reported a police observer, “but the Constitution of 1793 is its soul.” This rearguard rebellion of despair was doomed to fail, despite the support of a few remaining Montagnard deputies, whose fraternization with the demonstrators was to cost them their lives after the insurgents were routed the following day.

Instead of implementing the democratic Constitution of 1793, the Thermidorian Convention was preparing a new, more conservative charter. Anti-Jacobin and antiroyalist, the Thermidorians clung to the elusive centre of the political spectrum . Their constitution of year III (1795) established a liberal republic with a franchise based on the payment of taxes similar to that of 1791, a two-house legislature to slow down the legislative process, and a five-man executive Directory to be chosen by the legislature. Within a liberal framework, the central government retained great power , including emergency powers to curb freedom of the press and freedom of association. Departmental and municipal administrators were to be elected but could be removed by the Directory, and commissioners appointed by the Directory were to monitor them and report on their compliance with the laws.

The Directory

The new regime, referred to as the Directory , began auspiciously in October 1795 with a successful constitutional plebiscite and a general amnesty for political prisoners. But as one of its final acts the Convention added the “Two-thirds Decree” to the package, requiring for the sake of continuity that two-thirds of its deputies must sit by right in the new legislature regardless of voting in the départements . This outraged conservatives and royalists hoping to regain power legally, but their armed uprising in Paris was easily suppressed by the army. The Directory also weathered a conspiracy on the far left by a cabal of unreconciled militants organized around a program of communistic equality and revolutionary dictatorship. The Babeuf plot was exposed in May 1796 by a police spy, and a lengthy trial ensued in which François-Noël (“Gracchus”) Babeuf , the self-styled “Tribune of the People,” was sentenced to death.

Apart from these conspiracies, the political life of the Directory revolved around annual elections to replace one-third of the deputies and local administrators. The spirit of the Two-thirds Decree haunted this process, however, since the directors believed that stability required their continuation in power and the exclusion of royalists or Jacobins. The Directory would tolerate no organized opposition. During or immediately after each election, the government in effect violated the constitution in order to save it, whenever the right or the left seemed to be gaining ground.

As a legacy of the nation’s revolutionary upheavals, elections under the Directory displayed an unhealthy combination of massive apathy and rancorous partisanship by small minorities. When the elections of 1797 produced a royalist resurgence, the government responded with the coup of Fructidor, year V (September 1797), ousting two of the current directors, arresting leading royalist politicians, annulling the elections in 49 départements , shutting down the royalist press, and resuming the vigorous pursuit of returned émigrés and refractory clergy. This heartened the Neo-Jacobins, who organized new clubs called “constitutional circles” to emphasize their adherence to the regime. But this independent political activism on the left raised the spectre of 1793 for the Directory, and in turn it closed down the Neo-Jacobin clubs and newspapers, warned citizens against voting for “anarchists” in the elections of 1798, and promoted schisms in electoral assemblies when voters spurned this advice. When democrats (or Neo-Jacobins) prevailed nonetheless, the Directory organized another purge in the coup of Floréal, year VI (May 1798), by annulling all or some elections in 29 départements . Ambivalent and fainthearted in its republican commitment, the Directory was eroding political liberty from within. But as long as the Constitution of 1795 endured, it remained possible that political liberty and free elections might one day take root.

Meanwhile the Directory regime successfully exported revolution abroad by helping to create “sister republics” in western Europe. During the Revolution’s most radical phase, in 1793–94, French expansion had stopped more or less at the nation’s self-proclaimed “natural frontiers”—the Rhine, Alps, and Pyrenees. The Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium) and the left bank of the Rhine had been major battlefields in the war against the coalition, and French victories in those sectors were followed by military occupation, requisitions, and taxation but also by the abolition of feudalism and similar reforms. In 1795 Belgium was annexed to France and divided into departments, which would henceforth be treated like other French départements .

Strategic considerations and French national interest were the main engines of French foreign policy in the Revolutionary decade but not the only ones. Elsewhere in Europe, native patriots invited French support against their own ruling princes or oligarchies . Europe was divided not simply by a conflict between Revolutionary France and other states but by conflicts within various states between revolutionary or democratic forces and conservative or traditional forces. Indeed, abortive revolutionary movements had already occurred in the Austrian Netherlands and in the United Provinces (Dutch Netherlands). When French troops occupied their country in 1795, Dutch "Patriots" set up the Batavian Republic , the first of what became a belt of "sister republics" along France’s borders.

By 1797 Prussia and Spain had made peace with France, but Austria and Britain continued the struggle. In 1796 the French had launched an attack across the Alps aimed at Habsburg Lombardy, from which they hoped to drive north toward Vienna. Commanded by General Napoleon Bonaparte, this campaign succeeded beyond expectations. In the process, northern Italy was liberated from Austria, and the Habsburgs were driven to the peace table, where they signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 26 Vendémiaire, year VI (October 17, 1797). Italian revolutionaries under French protection proclaimed the Cisalpine Republic in northern Italy, later joined by the Helvetic Republic in Switzerland, and two very shaky republics—the Roman Republic in central Italy and the Parthenopean Republic in the south around Naples. All these republics were exploited financially by the French, but then again their survival depended on the costly presence of French troops. The French interfered in their internal politics, but this was no more than the Directory was doing at home. Because these republics could not defend themselves in isolation, they acted like sponges on French resources as much as they provided treasure or other benefits to France. France’s extended lines of occupation made it extremely vulnerable to attack when Britain organized a second coalition in 1798 that included Russia and Austria. But when the battles were over, Switzerland, northern Italy, and the Netherlands remained in the French sphere of influence.

The treasure coming from the sister republics was desperately needed in Paris since French finances were in total disarray. The collapse of the assignats and the hyperinflation of 1795–96 not only destroyed such social programs as public assistance pensions and free public schooling but also strained the regime’s capacity to keep its basic institutions running. In 1797 the government finally engineered a painful return to hard currency and in effect wrote down the accumulated national debt by two-thirds of its value in exchange for guaranteeing the integrity of the remaining third.

After the Fructidor coup of 1797 the Directory imprudently resumed the republic’s assault on the Roman Catholic religion. Besides prohibiting the outward signs of Catholicism, such as the ringing of church bells or the display of crosses, the government revived the Revolutionary calendar, which had fallen into disuse after the Thermidorian Reaction. The Directory ordered in 1798 that décadi (the final day of the 10-day week, or décade ) be treated as the official day of rest for workers and businesses as well as public employees and schoolchildren. Forbidding organized recreation on Sundays, the regime also pressured Catholic priests to celebrate mass on décadis rather than on ex-Sundays. This aggressive confrontation with the habits and beliefs of most French citizens sapped whatever shreds of popularity the regime still had.

French citizens were already alienated by the Directory’s foreign policy and its new conscription law. Conscription became a permanent obligation of young men between the ages of 20 and 25 under the Jourdan Law of 19 Fructidor, year VI (September 5, 1798), named for its sponsor, the comte de Jourdan . To fight the War of the Second Coalition that began in 1799, the Directory mobilized three “classes,” or age cohorts, of young men but encountered massive draft resistance and desertion in many regions. Meanwhile, retreating armies in the field lacked rations and supplies because, it was alleged, corrupt military contractors operated in collusion with government officials. This war crisis prompted the legislature to oust four of the directors in the coup on 30 Prairial, year VII (June 18, 1799), and allowed a brief resurgence of Neo-Jacobin agitation for drastic emergency measures.

In reality the balance of power was swinging toward a group of disaffected conservatives. Led by Sieyès, one of the new directors, these “revisionists” wished to escape from the instability of the Directory regime, especially its tumultuous annual elections and its cumbersome separation of powers. They wanted a more reliable structure of political power, which would allow the new elite to govern securely and thereby guarantee the basic reforms and property rights of 1789. Ironically, the Neo-Jacobins stood as the constitution’s most ardent defenders against the maneuvers of these “oligarchs.”

Using mendacious allegations about Neo-Jacobin plots as a cover, the revisionists prepared a parliamentary coup to jettison the constitution. To provide the necessary military insurance, the plotters sought a leading general. Though he was not their first choice, they eventually enlisted Napoleon —recently returned from his Egyptian campaign, about whose disasters the public knew almost nothing. Given a central role in the coup, which occurred on 18 Brumaire, year VIII (November 9, 1799), General Bonaparte addressed the legislature, and, when some deputies balked at his call for scrapping the constitution, his troopers cleared the hall. A rump of each house then convened to draft a new constitution, and during these deliberations Napoleon shouldered aside Sieyès and emerged as the dominant figure in the new regime. The Brumaire event was not really a military coup and did not at first produce a dictatorship. It was a parliamentary coup to create a new constitution and was welcomed by people of differing opinions who saw in it what they wished to see. The image of an energetic military hero impatient with the abuses of the past must have seemed reassuring.

The Napoleonic era

The revisionists who engineered the Brumaire coup intended to create a strong, elitist government that would curb the republic’s political turmoil and guarantee the conquests of 1789. They had in mind what might be called a senatorial oligarchy rather than a personal dictatorship. General Bonaparte, however, advocated a more drastic concentration of power. Within days of the coup, Napoleon emerged as the dominant figure, an insistent and persuasive presence who inspired confidence. Clearly outmaneuvered, Sieyès soon withdrew from the scene, taking with him his complex notions of checks and balances . While the regime, known as the Consulate, maintained a republican form, Napoleon became from its inception a new kind of authoritarian leader.

Approved almost unanimously in a plebiscite by 3,000,000 votes (of which half may have been manufactured out of thin air), the Constitution of the year VIII created an executive consisting of three consuls, but the first consul wielded all real power. That office was, of course, vested in Napoleon. In 1802, after a string of military and diplomatic victories, another plebiscite endowed him with the position for life. By 1804 Napoleon’s grip on power was complete, and belief in his indispensability was pervasive in the governing class. In April 1804 various government bodies agreed “that Napoleon Bonaparte be declared Emperor and that the imperial dignity be declared hereditary in his family.” The constitution of the year XII (May 1804), establishing the empire, was approved in a plebiscite by more than 3,500,000 votes against about 2,500. (After this point General Bonaparte was known officially as Emperor Napoleon I.)

The constitution of 1791, the Convention, and the Directory alike had been organized around representation and legislative supremacy, the fundamental political principles first proclaimed in June 1789 by the National Assembly. This tradition came to an end with the Consulate. Its new bicameral legislature lost the power to initiate legislation; now the executive branch drafted new laws. One house (the Tribunate) debated such proposals, either endorsed or opposed them, and then sent deputies to present its opinion to the other house, the Corps Législatif , which also heard from government spokesmen. Without the right to debate, the Corps Législatif then voted on whether to enact the bill. Even these limited powers were rarely used independently, since both houses were appointed in the first instance by the government and later renewed by co-option. When certain tribunes such as Benjamin Constant did manifest a critical spirit, they were eventually purged, and in 1807 the Tribunate was suppressed altogether. On the whole, then, the legislative branch of government became little more than a rubber stamp.

After the Brumaire coup, Sieyès had envisaged an independent institution called the Senate to conserve the constitution by interpreting it in the light of changing circumstances. In practice, the Senate became the handmaiden of Napoleon’s expanding authority, sanctioning changes such as the life consulship, the purge of the Tribunate, and Napoleon’s elevation to the rank of hereditary emperor. For creating “legislation above the laws” at Napoleon’s behest, its 80 handpicked members were opulently rewarded with money and honours. As power shifted decisively to the executive branch, Napoleon enlisted a new institution called the Conseil d’État (Council of State) to formulate policy, draft legislation, and supervise the ministries. Appointed by the first consul, this body of experienced jurists and legislators was drawn from across the former political spectrum. Talent and loyalty to the new government were the relevant criteria for these coveted posts.

The Consulate did not entirely eliminate the electoral principle from the new regime, but voters were left with no real power, and elections became an elaborate charade . Citizens voted only for electoral colleges, which in turn created lists of candidates from which the government might fill occasional vacancies in the Conseil d’État or Senate. In the event, the primary assemblies of voters were rarely convened, and membership in the electoral colleges became a kind of honorific lifetime position. The judiciary, too, lost its elective status. In the hope of creating a more professional and compliant judiciary, the Consulate’s sweeping judicial reform provided for lifetime appointments of judges—which did not prevent Napoleon from purging the judiciary in 1808. Napoleon was also disposed to eliminate criminal juries as well, but the Conseil d’État prevailed on him to maintain them.

Successive Revolutionary regimes had always balanced local elections with central control, but the Consulate destroyed that balance completely. The Local Government Act of February 1800 eliminated elections for local office entirely and organized local administration from the top down. To run each département , the Consulate appointed a prefect, reminiscent of the old royal intendants, who was assisted by subprefects on the level of the arrondissements (subdistricts of the départements ) and by appointed mayors in each commune. The original Revolutionary commitment to local autonomy gave way before the rival principles of centralization and uniformity. The prefect became the cornerstone of the Napoleonic dictatorship, supervising local government at all levels, keeping careful watch over his département ’s “public spirit,” and above all assuring that taxes and conscripts flowed in smoothly. While even the most trivial local matter had to be referred to the prefect, all major decisions taken by the prefect had in turn to be sanctioned by the interior ministry in Paris.

Politics during the Directory had been marked by an unwholesome combination of ferocious partisanship and massive apathy. Weary of political turmoil and disillusioned by politicians of all kinds, most Frenchmen now accepted the disappearance of political freedom and participation with equanimity . The few who still cared passionately enough to resist collided with the apparatus of a police state. A regime that entirely avoided genuine elections would scarcely permit open political dissent. Where the Directory had been ambivalent about freedom of association, for example, the Consulate simply banned political clubs outright and placed Jacobin and royalist cadres under surveillance by the police ministry. In 1801, blaming democratic militants for a botched attempt to assassinate him with a bomb as his carriage drove down the rue Saint-Nicaise—a plot actually hatched by fanatical royalists—Napoleon ordered the arrest and deportation to Guiana of about 100 former Jacobin and sansculotte militants. In 1804 he had the duc d’Enghien , a member of the Bourbon family, abducted from abroad, convicted of conspiracy by a court-martial, and executed.

Outspoken liberals also felt the lash of Napoleon’s intolerance for any kind of opposition. After he purged the Tribunate, the consul registered his displeasure with the salon politics of liberal intellectuals by dissolving the Class of Moral and Political Science of the National Institute in 1803. One of the most principled liberals, Madame de Staël , chose to go into exile rather than exercise the self-censorship demanded by the regime. Meanwhile, the only newspapers tolerated were heavily censored. Paris, for example, had more than 70 newspapers at the time of the Brumaire coup; by 1811 only 4 quasi-official newspapers survived, ironically the same number as had existed before 1789. In the provinces each département had at most 1 newspaper, likewise of quasi-official character. The reimposition of censorship was matched by Napoleon’s astute management of news and propaganda.

Society in Napoleonic France

If the Consulate’s motto was “Authority from above, confidence from below,” Napoleon’s religious policy helped secure that confidence. The concordat negotiated with the papacy in 1802 reintegrated the Roman Catholic Church into French society and ended the cycle of bare toleration and persecution that had begun in 1792. Having immediately halted the campaign to enforce the republican calendar (which was quietly abolished on January 1, 1806), the Consulate then extended an olive branch to the refractory clergy. The state continued to respect the religious freedom of non-Catholics, but the concordat recognized Catholicism as “the preferred religion” of France—in effect, though not in name, the nation’s established religion. Upkeep of the church became a significant item in local budgets, and the clergy regained de facto control over primary education. The state, however, retained the upper hand in church-state relations. By signing the concordat, the pope accepted the nationalization of church property in France and its sale as biens nationaux . Bishops, though again consecrated by Rome, were named by the head of state, and the government retained the right to police public worship.

The most conservative Catholics looked askance at the concordat, which in their eyes promoted an excessively national or Gallican church rather than a truly Roman Catholic Church. They correctly suspected that Napoleon—personally a religious skeptic—would use it as a tool of his own ambitions. Indeed, he claimed that the clergy would become his “moral prefects,” propagating traditional values and obedience to authority. Later, for example, the clergy was asked to teach an imperial catechism, which would “bind the consciences of the young to the august person of the Emperor.”

The Napoleonic regime also organized France’s approximately 1,000,000 Calvinists into hierarchical “consistories” subject to oversight by the state. Protestant pastors, paid by the state, were designated by the elders who led local congregations and consistories; the more democratic tendencies of Calvinism were thus weakened in exchange for official recognition. France’s 60,000 Jews, residing mainly in Alsace and Lorraine, were also organized into consistories. Like priests and pastors, their rabbis were enlisted to promote obedience to the laws, though they were not salaried by the state. Napoleon’s convocation in 1807 of a "Grand Sanhedrin" of Jewish religious authorities to reconcile French and Jewish law attracted widespread attention. Official recognition, however, did not prevent discriminatory measures against Jews. A law of 1808, ostensibly for “the social reformation of the Jews,” appeased peasant debtors in Alsace by canceling their debts to Jewish moneylenders.

Napoleon cultivated the loyalty of the nation’s wealthy landed proprietors by a system of patronage and honours. He thereby facilitated the emergence of a ruling class drawn from both the middle classes and the nobility of the old regime, which had been divided by the artificial barriers of old-regime estates and privileges. The principal artifacts of Napoleon’s social policy were the lists he ordered of the 600 highest-paid taxpayers in each département , most having incomes of at least 3,000 livres a year. Inclusion on these lists became an insignia of one’s informal status as a notable. Members of the electoral colleges and departmental advisory councils were drawn from these lists. Although such honorific positions had little power and no privileges, the designees were effectively co-opted into the regime. Napoleon’s Legion of Honour , meanwhile, conferred recognition on men who served the state, primarily military officers who largely stood outside the ranks of the landed notables. By 1814 the Legion had 32,000 members, of whom only 1,500 were civilians.

After Napoleon had himself crowned emperor in 1804, he felt the need for a court aristocracy that would lend lustre and credibility to his new image. He also reasoned that only by creating a new nobility based on merit could he displace and absorb the old nobility, which had lost its titles in 1790 but not its pretensions. By 1808 a new hierarchy of titles had been created, which were to be hereditary provided that a family could support its title with a large annual income—30,000 livres, for example, in the case of a count of the empire. To facilitate this, the emperor bestowed huge landed estates and pensions on his highest dignitaries. The Napoleonic nobility, in other words, would be a veritable upper class based on a combination of service and wealth. Predictably, the new nobility was top-heavy with generals (59 percent altogether), but it also included many senators, archbishops, and members of the Conseil d’État; 23 percent of the Napoleonic nobility were former nobles of the ancien régime. These social innovations endured after Napoleon’s fall—the Bourbons adopted the system of high-status electoral colleges, maintained the Legion of Honour, and even allowed the Napoleonic nobles to retain their titles alongside the restored old-regime nobility.

The Napoleonic Code had a far greater impact on postrevolutionary society than did the social innovations. This ambitious work of legal codification, perhaps the crowning glory of the Conseil d’État, consolidated certain basic principles established in 1789: civil equality and equality before the law; the abolition of feudalism in favour of modern contractual forms of property; and the secularization of civil relations. Codification also made it easier to export those principles beyond the borders of France. In the area of family relations, however, the Napoleonic Code was less a codification of Revolutionary innovations than a reaction against them. By reverting to patriarchal standards that strengthened the prerogatives of the husband and father, it wiped out important gains that women had made during the Revolution. The code’s spirit on this subject was summed up in its statement that “a husband owes protection to his wife; a wife owes obedience to her husband.” Wives were again barred from signing contracts without their husbands’ consent, and a wife’s portion of the family’s community property fell completely under her husband’s control during his lifetime. The code also curbed the right of equal inheritance, which the Revolution had extended even to illegitimate children, and increased the father’s disciplinary control over his children.

The code also rolled back the Revolution’s extremely liberal divorce legislation. When marriage became a civil rite rather than an obligatory religious sacrament in 1792, divorce became possible for the first time. Divorce could be obtained by mutual consent but also for a range of causes including desertion and simple incompatibility. Under the Napoleonic Code, contested divorce was possible only for unusually cruel treatment resulting in grave injury and for adultery on the part of the wife. Faced with an unfaithful husband, however, “the wife may demand divorce on the ground of adultery by her husband [only] when he shall have brought his concubine into their common residence.”

Napoleonic policy frequently reacted against the Revolution’s liberal individualism. While the regime did not restore the guilds outright, for example, it reimposed restrictive or even monopolistic state regulation on such occupational groups as publishers and booksellers, the Parisian building trades, attorneys, barristers, notaries, and doctors. Napoleon wished to strengthen the ties that bound individuals together, which derived from religion, the family, and state authority. Napoleon’s domestic innovations—the prefectorial system, with its extreme centralization of administrative authority; the university, a centralized educational bureaucracy that scrutinized all types of teachers; the concordat with the Vatican that reversed the secularizing tendencies of the Revolution; the civil code, which strengthened property rights and patriarchal authority; and the Legion of Honour, which rewarded service to the state—all endured in the 19th century despite a succession of political upheavals. Historians who admire Napoleon consider these innovations the “granite masses” on which modern French society developed.

Napoleon’s sway over France depended from the start on his success in war . After his conquest of northern Italy in 1797 and the dissolution of the first coalition, the Directory intended to invade Britain, France’s century-long rival and the last remaining belligerent . Concluding that French naval power could not sustain a seaborne invasion, however, the government sent Napoleon on a military expedition to Egypt instead, hoping to choke off the main route to Britain’s Indian empire. When the expedition bogged down in disease and military stalemate, its commander quietly slipped past a British naval blockade to return to France, where (in the absence of accurate news from Egypt) he was received as the nation’s leading military hero.

At the time of the Brumaire coup, the republic’s armies had been driven from Italy by a second coalition, but they had halted a multifront assault on France by the armies of Russia, Austria, and Britain. The republic, in other words, was no longer in imminent military danger, but the prospect of an interminable war loomed on the horizon. After Brumaire the nation expected its new leader to achieve peace through decisive military victory. This promise Napoleon fulfilled, once again leading French armies into northern Italy and defeating Austria at the Battle of Marengo in June 1800. Subsequent defeats in Germany drove Austria to sign the peace treaty of Lunéville in February 1801. Deprived of its Continental allies for the second time, a war-weary Britain finally decided to negotiate. In March 1802 France and Britain signed the Treaty of Amiens , and for the first time in 10 years Europe was at peace.

Within two years, however, the two rivals were again in a state of war. Most historians agree that neither imperial power was solely responsible for the breakdown of this peace, since neither would renounce its ambitions for supremacy. Napoleon repeatedly violated the treaty’s spirit—by annexing Piedmont, occupying the Batavian Republic, and assuming the presidency of the Cisalpine Republic. To Britain, the balance of power in Europe required an independent Italy and Dutch Netherlands. Britain violated the letter of the treaty, however, by failing to evacuate the island of Malta as it had promised.

Once again, British naval power frustrated Napoleon’s attempt to take the war directly to British soil, and there was little actual fighting until Britain was able to form a new Continental coalition in 1805. At the Battle of Trafalgar (October 21, 1805), British naval gunners decimated the French and Spanish fleets, ending all thought of a cross-Channel invasion. Napoleon turned instead against Britain’s Austrian and Russian allies. He surprised the Austrians at Ulm and then smashed them decisively at the Battle of Austerlitz (December 2, 1805), probably his most brilliant tactical feat. Under the Treaty of Pressburg (criticized by the French foreign minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand as entirely too harsh), Austria paid a heavy indemnity, ceded its provinces of Venetia and Tyrol, and allowed Napoleon to abolish the Holy Roman Empire . Prussia, kept neutral for a time by vague promises of sovereignty over Hanover, finally mobilized against France, only to suffer humiliating defeats at the Battles of Jena and Auerstädt in October 1806. The French occupied Berlin, levied a huge indemnity on Prussia, seized various provinces, and turned northern Germany into a French sphere of influence. The ensuing campaign against Russia’s army in Europe resulted in a bloody stalemate at the Battle of Eylau (February 8, 1807), leaving Napoleon in precarious straits with extremely vulnerable lines of supply. But, when fighting resumed that spring, the French prevailed at the Battle of Friedland (June 14, 1807), and Tsar Alexander I sued for peace. The Treaty of Tilsit , negotiated by the two emperors, divided Europe into two zones of influence, with Napoleon pledging to aid the Russians against their Ottoman rivals and Alexander promising to cooperate against Britain.

Napoleon now had a free hand to reorganize Europe and numerous relatives to install on the thrones of his satellite kingdoms. The result was known as the Grand Empire. Having annexed Tuscany, Piedmont, Genoa, and the Rhineland directly into France, Napoleon placed the Kingdom of Holland (which until 1806 was the Batavian Commonwealth) under his brother Louis , the Kingdom of Westphalia under his brother Jérôme , the Kingdom of Italy under his stepson Eugène as his viceroy, the Kingdom of Spain under his brother Joseph , and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw (carved out of Prussian Poland) under the nominal sovereignty of his ally the king of Saxony, Frederick Augustus I . To link his allied states in northern and southern Germany, Napoleon created the Confederation of the Rhine . Even Austria seemed to fall into Napoleon’s sphere of influence, with his marriage to Archduchess Marie-Louise in 1810. (Since the emperor had no natural heirs from his marriage to Joséphine Beauharnais , he reluctantly divorced her and in 1810 married the Austrian princess, who duly bore him a son the following year.)

Britain, however, was insulated from French military power; only an indirect strategy of economic warfare remained possible. Thus far Britain had driven most French merchant shipping from the high seas , and in desperation French merchants sold most of their ships to neutrals, allowing the United States to surpass France in the size of its merchant fleet. But after his string of military victories, Napoleon believed that he could choke off British commerce by closing the Continent to its ships and products. With limited opportunities to sell its manufactured goods, he believed, the British economy would suffer from overproduction and unemployment, while the lack of foreign gold in payment for British exports would bankrupt the treasury. As France moved into Britain’s foreign markets, Britain’s economic crisis would drive its government to seek peace. Accordingly, Napoleon launched the “Continental System”: in the Berlin Decree of November 1806, he prohibited British trade with all countries under French influence, including British products carried by neutral shipping. When the British retaliated by requiring all neutral ships to stop at British ports for inspection and licenses, Napoleon threatened to seize any ship stopping at English ports. Thus, a total naval war against neutrals erupted.

Economic warfare took its toll on all sides. While France did make inroads in cotton manufacturing in the absence of British competition, France and especially its allies suffered terribly from the British blockade, in particular from a dearth of colonial raw materials. The great Atlantic ports of Nantes, Bordeaux, and Amsterdam never recovered, as ancillary industries such as shipbuilding and sugar refining collapsed. The axis of European trade shifted decisively inland. The Continental System did strain the British economy, driving down exports and gold reserves in 1810, but the blockade was extremely porous. Because Europeans liked British goods, smugglers had incentive to evade the restrictions in such places as Spain and Portugal. By 1811, moreover, a restive Tsar Alexander withdrew from the Continental System. Thus, the most dire effect of the Continental System was the stimulus it gave Napoleon for a new round of aggression against Portugal, Spain, and Russia.

By 1810 almost 300,000 imperial troops were bogged down in Iberia, struggling against a surprisingly vigorous Spanish resistance and a British expeditionary force. Then, in 1812, Napoleon embarked on his most quixotic aggression—an invasion of Russia designed to humble “the colossus of Northern barbarism” and exclude Russia from any influence in Europe. The Grand Army of 600,000 men that crossed into Russia reached Moscow without inflicting a decisive defeat on the Russian armies. By the time Napoleon on October 19 belatedly ordered a retreat from Moscow, which had been burned to the ground and was unfit for winter quarters, he had lost two-thirds of his troops from disease, battle casualties, cold, and hunger. The punishing retreat through the Russian winter killed most of the others. Yet this unparalleled disaster did not humble or discourage the emperor. Napoleon believed that he could hold his empire together and defeat yet another anti-French coalition that was forming. He correctly assumed that he could still rely on his well-honed administrative bureaucracy to replace the decimated Grand Army.

Building on the Directory’s conscription law of September 1798, the Napoleonic regime, after considerable trial and error, had created the mechanisms for imposing on the citizens of France and the annexed territories the distasteful obligation of military service . Each year the Ministry of War Administration assigned a quota of conscripts for every département . Using communal birth registers, the mayor of each commune compiled a list of men reaching the age of 19 that year. After a preliminary examination to screen out the manifestly unfit and those below the minimum height of 5 feet 1 inch (1.5 metres), the young men drew numbers in a lottery at the cantonal seat. Doctors in the departmental capitals later ruled on other claims for medical exemptions, and in all about a third of the youths avoided military service legally as physically unfit. Though married men were not exempt from the draft, two other means of avoiding induction remained, apart from drawing a high number: the wealthy could purchase a replacement, and the poor could flee.

For Napoleon’s prefects, the annual conscription levy was the top priority and draft evasion the number-one problem in most départements . Persistence, routine stepped-up policing, and coercion gradually overcame the chronic resistance. Napoleon had begun by drafting 60,000 Frenchmen annually, but by 1810 the quota hit 120,000, and the first of many “supplementary levies” was decreed to call up men from earlier classes who had drawn high numbers. In January 1813, after the Russian disaster, Napoleon replenished his armies by calling up the class of 1814 a year early and by repeated supplementary levies. Because he could still rely on his conscription machine, Napoleon consistently rebuffed offers by the allies to negotiate peace. Only after he lost the decisive Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 and was driven back across the Rhine did the machine break down. His call of November 1813 for 300,000 more men went largely unfilled. With the troops at his disposal, the emperor fought the Battle of France skillfully, but he could not stop the allies. Shortly after Paris fell, he abdicated , on April 6, 1814, and departed for the island of Elba . France was reduced to its 1792 borders, and the Bourbons returned to the throne. Altogether—along with large levies of Italians, Germans, and other foreigners from the annexed territories and satellite states—nearly 2,500,000 Frenchmen had been drafted by Napoleon, and at least 1,000,000 of these conscripts never returned, roughly half that number being casualties and the other half imprisoned or missing.

The most sympathetic explanation for Napoleon’s relentless aggression holds that he was responding to the irreducible antagonism of Britain: French power and glory were the only antidotes to John Bull’s arrogance . Others have argued that Napoleon’s vendetta against Britain was merely a rationalization for a mad 10-year chase across Europe to establish a new version of Charlemagne’s empire. This “imperial design” thesis, however, makes sense only in 1810, as a way Napoleon might have organized his conquests and not as the motivation for them. (Only retrospectively did Napoleon write, “There will be no repose for Europe until she is under only one Head…an Emperor who should distribute kingdoms among his lieutenants.”) In the end, one is thrown back on the explanation of temperament. In his combination of pragmatism and insatiable ambition, this world-historic figure remains an enigma . Increasingly “aristocratic” at home and “imperial” abroad, Napoleon was obviously something more than the “general of the Revolution.” And yet, with civil code in one hand and sabre in the other, Napoleon could still be seen by Europeans as a personification on both counts of the French Revolution’s explosive force.

The Revolutionary legacy for Napoleon consisted above all in the abolition of the ancien régime’s most archaic features—“feudalism,” seigneurialism, legal privileges, and provincial liberties. No matter how aristocratic his style became, he had no use for the ineffective institutions and abuses of the ancien régime. Napoleon was “modern” in temperament as well as destructively aggressive. But in either guise he was an authoritarian with little patience for argument, who profited from the Revolution’s clearing operations to construct and mobilize in his own fashion. His concept of reform exaggerated the Revolution’s emphasis on uniformity and centralization. Napoleon also accepted the Revolutionary principles of civil equality and equality of opportunity , meaning the recognition of merit. Other rights and liberties did not seem essential. Unlike others before him who had tried and failed, Napoleon terminated the Revolution, but at the price of suppressing the electoral process and partisan politics altogether. Toward the end of the empire, his centralizing vision took over completely, reinforcing his personal will to power. France was merely a launching pad for Napoleon’s boundless military and imperial ambition, its prime function being to raise men and money for war. In utter contrast to the Revolution, then, militarism became the defining quality of the Napoleonic regime.

Napoleon’s ambiguous legacy helps explain the dizzying events that shook France in 1814 and 1815. Even before Napoleon’s abdication , the Imperial Senate, led by the former foreign minister Talleyrand, had begun negotiations with the allies to ensure a transition to a regime that would protect the positions of those who had gained from the Revolution and the Napoleonic period. Louis XVI’s long-exiled brother was allowed to return as King Louis XVIII , but he had to agree to rule under a constitution (called the Charter) that provided for legislative control over budgets and taxes and guaranteed basic liberties. However, the Bourbons alienated the officer corps by retiring many at half pay and frightened many citizens by not making clear how much of their property and power the church and émigrés would regain. As the anti-Napoleonic allies argued among themselves about the spoils of war, Napoleon slipped back to France for a last adventure, believing that he could reach Paris without firing a shot. At various points along the way, troops disobeyed royalist officers and rallied to the emperor, while Louis fled the country. Between March and June 1815—a period known as the Hundred Days —Napoleon again ruled France. Contrary to his expectation, however, the allies patched up their differences and were determined to rout “the usurper.” At the Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815) British and Prussian forces defeated Napoleon’s army decisively, and he abdicated again a few days later. Placed on the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, he died in 1821. The “Napoleonic legend”—the retrospective version of events created by Napoleon during his exile—burnished his image in France for decades to come. But in the final analysis Napoleon’s impact on future generations was not nearly as powerful as the legacy of the French Revolution itself.

• Library of Congress
• Research Guides

France: Women in the Revolution

Pauline léon.

• Introduction
• Print Bibliography & Primary Sources
• Primary and Secondary Sources
• External Websites
• Germaine de Staël
• Manon Roland
• Sophie de Condorcet
• Olympe de Gouges
• Charlotte Corday
• Juliette Récamier
• Théroigne de Méricourt
• Claire Lacombe
• Louise-Reine Audu
• Marie Antoinette
• Élisabeth of France
• Agathe de Rambaud
• Images of Women in the French Revolution
• Satirical Images of the French Revolution
• Adaptations: Film, Theater, Music & Novels
• Women in the American Revolution
• Women in the Haitian Revolution
• Revolutions in France: 1789, 1830, 1848
• The Paris Commune
• Social Media
• European Reading Room

Pauline Léon was born on September 28, 1768 in Paris and died on October 5, 1838 in La Roche-sur-Yon. A complicated character, Léon is most remembered for her militancy and enthusiasm for taking action (often violent) to defend the Revolution against the tyranny of the monarchy. Her father's death as a young girl left her in charge of helping her mother raise her five siblings and run the family business of making chocolate. This had the natural consequence of instilling Léon with an independence and confidence that brought her into direct conflict not only with the more moderate liberals (she had a visceral hatred of Marquis de Lafayette for example), but with the traditional views on how women should be allowed to behave. Léon was born into a lower-middle-class family and her father had taught her to read-a rarity for someone of her situation and influential in her increased awareness of Parisian politics. However, unlike the more circumspect salonnières, Leon was a fille sans-culotte who wanted to be in the fray, carrying her pike, literally fighting for the Revolution. She advocated strongly for the right of women to bear arms, but at the same time was constrained in subconscious ways by the established notions of the French patriarchy. For this reason she is remembered as a warrior for the Revolution first and foremost, and only secondarily as an advocate for women's rights. Her emphasis was on defending the Revolution (even if you are a woman) rather than fighting specifically for the rights of women in society. Like Olympe de Gouge, these strong and fiercely independent women still existed in the context of the day. Despite their protestations, on some level (as seen in select quotes) they still subscribed to the Enlightenment notion that women were second to men, and were meant to be primarily in the home. Her drive to fight was motivated by her desperation to defend her patrie regardless of her gender. Léon and her close friend, Claire Lacombe- the co-founder of their Société des Citoyennes Républicaines Révolutionnaires (Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women)- were primarily focused on the preservation of republican values. Her political activism and dedication to the Revolution was close to the fever pitch of the enragés (madmen). Indeed she married the leader of the enragés, Théophile Leclerc. Not long after her marriage she took a step back from politics and ultimately devoted herself to the domestic care of her husband and household, largely distanced from radical activity.

Because of Léon's status as a working-class woman she did not publish works, nor does she have scholarly biographies dedicated solely to her; however there are resources listed below which contain first-hand accounts of her life, words and actions. There are also books which include her as one of the many women active in the Revolution.

For an overview of French women in history and the evolution of the French feminist movement, please see the research guide Feminism & French Women in History .

To find more works about Pauline Léon: Women revolutionaries--France--History--18th century

Selected Resources

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog . Links to additional online content are included when available.

External Website

• Letters Written in France by Helen Maria Williams External Available in full text from google books and other online sources.
• << Previous: Théroigne de Méricourt
• Next: Claire Lacombe >>
• Last Updated: Jul 1, 2024 3:59 PM
• URL: https://guides.loc.gov/women-in-the-french-revolution

How Revolutionary Was the French Revolution? Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Thesis Statement

Introduction, works cited.

The French Revolution (1789 – 1799) was the most revolutionary era in the history of France as the country underwent radical reforms. The intention of the revolution was to do away with monarchies and aristocratic privileges, with the aim of emerging as an enlightened nation that embraced human rights, citizenship and nationalism.

When the French Revolution began, there was the hope of not only political changes but also societal changes. There was an imbalance in the French society, so much so that it caused significant friction between the two main social strata; the upper and middle classes. This situation was further aggravated by the lack of a correlation between intellectual and economic development. There were two main effects of the revolution on French society; governmental and secular effects.

As a result of the revolution, the French constitution was enacted in 1791, which effectively made France a Constitutional monarchy. This meant that event the king was under the Constitution (Butler, 2005). One of the greatest landmark revolutions was the spread of the Napoleonic culture and some of the most prominent features of this culture were modernization, even in warfare, and an increased fashion sense. So much so were these effects that to date, France is the fashion centre of the world. There was also the introduction of the metric measuring system (Butler, 2005).

Interestingly, the current French Constitution was mostly crafted by the First President of France, Charles De Gaulle. It comes as no surprise that the president of France is very powerful, with many executive decisions being bestowed upon him. Unfortunately, this has seen many French presidents carry their affairs in absolute disregard for the law and conduct themselves like blood blooded aristocrats. Jacque Chirac was well known for financial crimes and abuse of office, yet the law granted him immunity from prosecution. The buck does not stop there as the similarities between the present political fronts and the pre-evolutionary elite. The first group of culprits is of the French members of Parliament. This group is known for their exorbitance, affluence and abuse of power. The second lot is the alumnae of Les Grandes Ecoles; elitist universities that bred pedigrees. A graduate from these universities is readily embraced into the job market and end up dominating high-end jobs. The third group consists of the majority of the country’s population. Even though they are the biggest taxpayers, they are conspicuously omitted from important political and national decision-making processes. All this is extremely reminiscent of the pre-revolutionary era (Infoplease, 2008).

In conclusion, the French revolution was in fact and indeed a revolutionary era. However, it is not as extensive as it has so often been made to seem. The main objective was to fight for social equality; power was to be demystified from a bourgeois affair. Under the Napoleon Code, feudalism was abolished and its place contractual relations and general social order were adopted (Infoplease, 2008). The long-standing ancient European structures were abolished and in their place, democracy, which was a precedent for constitutions, government and elections. It is a well-known fact that prior to the French Revolution, France was far from the sophisticated nation that it is now. But although historians may differ greatly on what exactly transpired and what the exact effects of the revolutionary war, one thing remains constant across the board; the French revolution revolutionized the world as a whole.

Butler A. (2005). A Revolutionary Change: The French Revolution and the Metric System . 2008. Web.

Infoplease (2008) encyclopedia – French Revolution . Web.

• Treaty of Versailles Consequences
• The Enlightenment and Religion Relations
• Mixed Monarchies in Machiavelli's "The Prince"
• The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804
• French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars: Idea of Nation
• The Effect of the Industrial Revolution 1700 in Society
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the Mediterranean Region in the 15th-16th Century
• A Comparison of the Battles of the Somme and Verdun
• Western Civilization in the Middle Ages
• Fascism in Italy, Spain, Germany in the 1920-30s
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, September 30). How Revolutionary Was the French Revolution? https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-revolutionary-was-the-french-revolution/

"How Revolutionary Was the French Revolution?" IvyPanda , 30 Sept. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/how-revolutionary-was-the-french-revolution/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'How Revolutionary Was the French Revolution'. 30 September.

IvyPanda . 2021. "How Revolutionary Was the French Revolution?" September 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-revolutionary-was-the-french-revolution/.

1. IvyPanda . "How Revolutionary Was the French Revolution?" September 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-revolutionary-was-the-french-revolution/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "How Revolutionary Was the French Revolution?" September 30, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/how-revolutionary-was-the-french-revolution/.

• Share full article

Advertisement

The Morning

The assassination attempt against donald trump.

What we know about the shooting in Pennsylvania.

By the staff of The Morning

Authorities have identified the gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump yesterday but are still racing to understand what the shooter’s motives were and how he was able to get so close to Trump.

The F.B.I. named the gunman as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pa., roughly 40 miles from Butler, the small city in western Pennsylvania where the attack occurred. Crooks was a registered Republican, though records show that he had donated money to a liberal voter turnout group in 2021. Here is the latest on Crooks.

The attack killed one spectator at the scene and left two others critically injured, officials said. Trump had blood on his face as he was escorted from the stage but was safe this morning.

The assassination attempt added a shocking and violent turn to a presidential campaign that had already been more tumultuous than any in decades. In today’s newsletter, we’ll help you understand what we know this morning.

What happened

Our colleague Simon Levien was at the rally during the shooting. “Trump had just started to talk about immigration in his stump speech when several shots rang out from the bleachers to his right,” he wrote . “Everyone immediately ducked — myself included.”

There were two bursts of fire — first three shots, and then five.

Trump put his hand to his ear and then ducked, before Secret Service agents rushed the stage to shield him. As they began to move him offstage, Trump told them to wait and defiantly pumped his fist, with blood on his face, while the crowd chanted, “U.S.A.” ( Watch the video here .)

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and  log into  your Times account, or  subscribe  for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber?  Log in .

Want all of The Times?  Subscribe .