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 Outline on the  French Revolution
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  The French Revolution (FR) lasted from 1789 to 1799, and had far-reaching effects on the rest of Europe  
  The FR brought about great changes in the society and government of France  
  The FR introduced democratic ideals to France but did not make the nation a democracy  
  However, the FR did end supreme rule by French kings and strengthened the middle class  
  After the revolution began, no European kings, nobles, or other privileged groups could ever again take their powers for granted or ignore the ideals of liberty and equality  
 
 The 100 yrs. of the Fr transition to democracy was extremely violent & it was not until the late 1800's that stability returned Napoleon III was defeated by Prussia in 1870
 
  Various social, political, and economic conditions led to the FR  
  The conditions which led to the FR included dissatisfaction among the lower and middle classes, interest in new ideas about government, and financial problems caused by the costs of wars  
  During the time of the FR, legal divisions among social groups that had existed for hundreds of years created much discontent  
  According to law, French society consisted of three groups called estates  
  Members of the clergy made up the first estate, nobles the second, and the rest of the people the third  
  The peasants formed the largest group in the third estate  
  Many of the peasants in France in the 1700s earned so little that they could barely feed their families  
  The third estate also included the working people of the cities and a large and prosperous middle class made up chiefly of merchants, lawyers, and government officials  
  The third estate resented certain advantages of the first two estates
 
 
 The clergy and nobles did not have to pay most taxes
 
 
 The third estate, especially the peasants, had to provide almost all the country's tax revenue
 
 
 At the time of the Fr Rev, many members of the middle class were also troubled by their social status because while they were among the most important people in French society, they were not recognized as such because they belonged to the third estate
 
 
 The new ideas about govt challenged France's absolute monarchy
 
 
 At the time of the Fr Rev, under the Fr monarchical system, the king had almost unlimited authority
 
 
 He governed by divine right, that is, the monarch's right to rule was thought to come from god
 
 
 There were checks on the king, but these came mainly from a few groups of aristocrats in the parliaments (high courts)
 
 
 During the 1700's, French writers called philosophes and philosophers from other countries raised new ideas about freedom  
  Some of these thinkers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, suggested that the right to govern came from the people
 
  The revolution began with a government financial crisis but quickly became a movement of reform and violent change
 
 
 The financial crisis developed because the nation had gone deeply into debt to finance fighting in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) and the Revolutionary War in America (1775-1783)
 
  By 1788, the government was almost bankrupt, but the Parliament of Paris insisted that King Louis XVI could borrow more money or raise taxes only by calling a meeting of the Estates-General  
  The Estates-General was made up of representatives of the three estates, and had last met in 1614 & the king unwillingly called the meeting  
  The third estate, the peasants, insisted that all the estates be merged into one national assembly and that each representative have one vote & it also wanted the Estates-General to write a constitution  
  The king and the first two estates, the clergy & the nobles, refused the demands of the third estate, the peasants  
  In June 1789, the representatives of the third estate declared themselves the National Assembly of France & gathered at a tennis court and pledged not to disband until they had written a constitution.   
  The vow of the third estate to form a constitution became known as the Oath of the Tennis Court  
  Louis XVI then allowed the three estates to join together as the National Assembly, but at the same time began to gather troops to break up the Assembly  
  While the National Assembly negotiated a constitution & while King Louis secretly gathered troops the masses of France also took action by gathering at the Bastille  
 
 In July, 1789, a huge crowd of Parisians rushed to the Bastille, a royal fortress and hated symbol of oppression
 
  The masses believed they would find arms and ammunition there for use in defending themselves against the king's army  
  The people captured the Bastille and began to tear it down & at the same time, leaders in Paris formed a revolutionary city govt  
  Massive peasant uprisings against nobles also broke out in the countryside  
  A few nobles, who were called émigrés because they emigrated, decided to flee France & many more followed in the next five years  
  The uprisings in town and countryside saved the National Assembly from being disbanded by the king  
 
 During the revolution, French armies suffered military defeats & Parisians feared that the invading armies would soon reach the city
 
 
 Parisians also feared an uprising by the large number of people in the city's prisons
 
  In August 1789, the Assembly adopted the Decrees of August 4 and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which abolished some feudal dues that the peasants owed their landlords, the tax advantages of the clergy and nobles, and regional privileges  
  The declaration guaranteed the same basic rights to all citizens, including "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression" as well as representative government  
  The Assembly later drafted a constitution that made France a limited monarchy with a one-house legislature  
 
 In the first week of September, small numbers of Parisians took the law into their own hands and executed more than 1,000 prisoners
 
 
 In 1789, the "September Massacres occurred when ordinary citizens in France executed over 1,000 prisoners who were mostly clergy & nobles
 
 
 The September Massacres, turned many people in France and Europe against the revolution
 
 
 A series of elected legislatures then took control of the government
 
 
 King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were executed
 
 
 Thousands of others met the same fate in a period called the Reign of Terror
 
  The Assembly seized the property of the Roman Catholic Church  
  By September 1791, the National Assembly believed that the revolution was over s it disbanded at the end of the month to make way for the newly elected Legislative Assembly  
  The new Assembly, made up mainly of representatives of the middle class, opened in Oct. of 1791  
  The New Assembly faced the challenges of creating internal stability as well as facing a foreign threat  
  Stability during the FR depended on the cooperation btwn the King & the Assembly but Louis remained opposed to the   & so he asked other rulers for help in stopping it, and plotted with aristocrats and émigrés to overthrow the new govt  
  Public opinion became bitterly divided:  the revolution's religious policy angered many Catholics while other people demanded stronger measures against opponents of the revolution.   
  In April 1792, the new govt went to war against Austria and Prussia & these nations wished to restore the king and émigrés to their positions  
  While Louis XVI and his supporters clearly hoped for the victory of the invaders, the foreign armies defeated French forces in the early fighting and invaded France  
  As a result of the defeat of the French armies, angry revolutionaries in Paris and other areas demanded that the king be dethroned & in August 1792, the people of Paris took custody of Louis XVI and his family and imprisoned them  
  Louis's removal ended the constitutional monarchy & the Assembly then called for a National Convention to be chosen in an election open to nearly all French males age 21 or older, and for a new constitution  
  In Sept 1792, French forces defeated a Prussian army in the Battle of Valmy, which prevented the Prussians from advancing on Paris, helped end the crisis  
  In time, the radicals began to struggle for power among themselves  
  Most of the democratic reforms of the past two years were abolished in what became known as the Thermidorian Reaction  
  The Convention replaced the democratic constitution it had adopted in 1793 with a new one in 1795   
  With the 1795 Constitution, France was still a republic, but once again only citizens who paid a certain amount of taxes could vote  
 
 The revolution ended when Napoleon Bonaparte, a French general, took over the government in Nov of 1799
 
  The French Revolution brought France into opposition with much of Europe because the monarchs who ruled the other nations feared the spread of democratic ideals  
  The revolution left the French people in extreme disagreement about the best form of government for their country but the revolution created the long-lasting foundations for a unified state, a strong central government, and a free society dominated by the middle class and the landowners  
  Analysis of the French Rev:  
 
 LeBon studied the collective behavior of the people & offered theories to explain the crowd behavior & violence in his study, The Crowd:  A Study of the Popular Mind, 1895  
 
 LeBon noted that in the French Revolts, people engaged in criminal acts were cheered & they later demanded medals for their patriotism, & he thought this was irrational behavior  
 
 "May you be cursed to live in interesting times"  
 
 France had irreversibly changed in almost every way during the period from the FR of 1789 & LeBon thought much of this was due to social contagion
 
  The French Rev is seen as historically important because, as Tocqueville noted, the freedoms, etc. which the rev embraced were a historically new model for society  
  The French Rev validates many of Farley's necessary conditions for rev in that  
  -  the peasants, the third estate, was dissatisfied because of high taxes, poverty, oppression of the populace by the military, etc.  
  -  while communications were difficult in the late 1700s, it was still possible given the mail, newspapers, etc. & since much of the rev occurred in the cities, the people were close to each other  
  -  the people & leaders had survived several attempts at repression by the French monarchy  
  -  while the people feared the French Monarchy because it was so powerful, they had their beliefs in justice & equality to inspire them  
  -  the French peasants had barely adequate resources, but were bolstered by the support of the bourgeoisie class  
  The French Rev validates many of Marx's factors affecting rev in that  
  -  the French peasants experienced the contradiction of monarchical feudalism & democratic capitalism  
  -  the French peasants had class consciousness in that they understood the contradiction because the French Enlightenment had spread ideals of individualism, freedom, etc. to the general populace  
  -  the historical circumstances of the weakness of the French Monarchy, the rise of the bourgeoisie class, & the loss of wars by the French all contributed to the success of the French Rev  
  -  the French peasants had a strong political org in the form of the Parisian govts  
  -  there was a high level of class conflict btwn the clergy, the monarchy, the peasants, & the bourgeoisie & the clergy & the monarchy banded together while the peasants, & the bourgeoisie banded together  
  The French Rev validates Johnson's theory in that 18th century France was in disequilibrium because of the contradiction btwn democratic & free-mkt values, & the econ system, btwn monarchical values & econ system, & democratic values & econ system  
  Johnson notes that loss in a war sets the old regime up for rev, & in the case of the French Rev, they had 
-  lost the Seven Years War
-  lost the French & Indian War
-  gone into debt funding the Am Rev War
-  won some & lost some battles during the actual French Rev from 1789 to 1799		  

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