Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!

The causes and origins of the French revolution were inspired from Enlightenment political thought , where governments held new responsibilities to the citizens of the nation. The French revolution was a radical change: A divorce from existing society. This is a much more revolutionary change than what had happened in the United States. As they called it, ancien régime “the old order” was cast off, and the French Revolutionaries attempted to replace it with new political, social and cultural constructs.

Financial, political, and social problems are what led to the French revolution. The French government spent large sums of money aiding the American Revolution by supporting the war against Great Britain. By the 1780’s half of the French royal government revenues went to pay the national debt, and an additional quarter went to pay for the French Armed forces. France did not have a national banking system to finance loans. France did not have and efficient system of tax collection. The wealthiest French classes included the nobility and clergy. They were exempt from most taxes. So the majority of the tax burden was placed on the peasantry.

By 1787 King Louis XVI turned to the nobility and clergy for help but they refused the King’s requests, to protect their financial status and also as a demonstration to the King of their independence, a power play. The King and the French nobility had clashed over these issues previously but Louis XVI had never compromised on this issue.

The nobility then demanded that Louis summon the Estates General in the hope that Louis would be forced to institute reforms that would be beneficial to the nobility. The Estates General consisted of three, “Estates.” The first estate consisted of approximately 100,000 Roman Catholic clergy. The second estate included about 400,000 nobles. The third estate included about 24,000,000 serfs, free peasants and urban residents. The third estate had as many delegates as the other two estates combined.

When the Estates General were called into session in May 1789 in the royal palace at Versailles, the King hoped this meeting would authorized new taxes. The people of the third estate were dissatisfied with Louis, however. This is where the influence of Enlightenment thought is evident. The middle classes were influenced by calls for political reforms, and resented the nobles’ appropriation of the best offices and jobs within the government. The poorer classes also resented the burden of taxation they carried through economic hardships caused by bad harvests the year prior.
In order to maintain the control of power, the first and second estates insisted that each estate cast only one vote. Thus preserving he balance of power as it had existed. The third estate insisted that the members vote together by head, which would be beneficial for themselves, having the vast majorities of people in their third estate. After weeks of arguing, on June 17, 1789, representatives of the third estate seceded from the Estates General and declared they were to become the “National Assembly,” a new political body. The members of the National Assembly swore not to be disbanded until they had provided France with a new constitution.

On July 14, 1789, a Parisian crowd stormed the Bastille (a royal jail and arsenal). They were searching for weapons to defend themselves in what was perceived as a possible royal crackdown on the members of the National Assembly. The Bastille surrendered but many of the attackers were killed and in retaliation the Parisian attackers killed the defenders of the Bastille, by hacking them to death!

Soon after the news spread, insurrections began erupting throughout France. As the uprisings increased, rumors spread that armed bands were being organized by nobles, causing what was known as a, “Great Fear.” This prompted the peasantry throughout France to burn homes of the nobles, public record offices, and monasteries. The National Assembly quickly moved to produce programs addressing political and social issues fearing that the revolution underway would soon be out of their control.

The National Assembly produced the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, “ which was proclaimed by the National Assembly in August 1789. This document was influenced again by Enlightenment ideas and by American revolutionary concepts, promulgating the rights of all men, rights of the individual and enforcing Enlightenment ideals of sovereignty of the people.

From 1789 to 1791, the National Assembly seized church lands, required clergy to take oaths of loyalty to the state, and abolished the First Estate, defining clergy as citizens. Within the new constitution, property-holding men were given the right to vote and choose legislators in an electoral process. The King was denied the use of any legislative authority, thus France became a constitutional monarchy adopting the ambitious Enlightenment objectives of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Soon after, many Parisians felt the changes of the revolution were not thorough, as the French nobility attempted to treaty with Austria and Prussia in an attempt to reinstate the ancien régime, In April 1792 the Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia to preserve the emerging political and social structures in France. The following year saw an increase in these self-preservative aspirations by the Revolutionary government. They declared was on Spain, Britain and the Netherlands and created the Convention, a new legislative collective, abolishing the monarchy and declaring France as a Republic.

---

On Napoleon Bonaparte

If anyone could title one life, and especially a life as complex and ambitious as that of Napoleon Bonaparte, it would have to be with a context of a particular time period. Certainly Napoleon’s life was brilliant and oppressive with many shades of gray between. Within the question of characterization of this extraordinary leader , my opinion would be that of an Enlightened leader of the time, but not as extreme as a despot. In defining despot: A ruler or other person who holds absolute power, typically one who exercises it in a cruel or oppressive way, I would call Napoleon as perhaps an Enlightened Autocrat, rather than despot. If it weren’t for his intervention with Austria-Russia-British coalition against the French Revolution, perhaps the ancien régime would be reestablished. France would have faced even more tumult than what was occurring at the time.

Napoleon Bonaparte was from a Corsican noble family. He studied at French military schools and became what is described as a brilliant military leader, and by becoming a general at the age of twenty-four he was quite ambitious. He supported the French Revolution, even though he was an officer in the army of King Louis XVI. He defended the Directory against the uprising of 1795, and had a successful campaign in northern Italy to establish French control in the region.
From the class packet, “Napoleon pushed for a single set of written laws that applied to everyone. He appointed a commission to prepare a code of laws. Napoleon wanted this code to be clear, logical, and easily understood by all citizens. The commission, composed of Napoleon and legal experts from all parts of France, met over a period of several years. Enacted on March 21, 1804, the resulting Civil Code of France marked the first major revision and reorganization of laws since the Roman era.” So his efforts to bring Enlightenment ideals to France are clear, although his extreme methods in establishing power today seem extraordinary. Looking back at the time and context of his reign, some of Napoleon Bonaparte’s methods may seem to stand to reason.

Napoleon brought many changes to France, a nation torn apart by Revolution, social upheaval, and war. He changed the way that the Catholic Church, a very important political and social body in the world and especially in France, was dealt with politically, especially after the French Revolution. Napoleon brought stability to French society by his revision of civil law, the Civil Code, which brought changes to the way that equality and social advancements in education and employment were dealt with. This was a shift from advancement based on social status or birth. This merit-based social structure was a confirmation of National Assemblies revolutionary policies.

As Napoleon extended his authority in Europe, he was successful in capturing and conquering the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, and occupied the Netherlands, and defeated the Austrians and Prussians, forcing these nations to ally with him and respect French dominance in Europe. Napoleon’s downfall was marked by his success in capturing Moscow, but with the city burned by the retreating Tsar, leaving Napoleon’s forces no shelter or supplies. This was a disaster to Napoleon’s army. By the time they retreated back to France, his army of thirty thousand soldiers was merely a fragmented collection the battered abused. Later, in April 1814, Napoleon was forced to abdicate his throne to exile. In March of 1815, Napoleon escaped from exile and returned to France to rule for one hundred days. Ultimately he was defeated a the battle of Waterloo, Belgium by the British army and was exiled again to the island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821

---

Works Cited

Bentley, Ziegler, Streets, “Traditions & Encounters A Brief Global History” (New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc, 2008)

Katz, Solomon, “The Decline of Rome and the Rise of Medieval Europe” (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1955) reprinted in “Readings in Global History” (Dubuque, Iowa, Kendall/Hunt Publishing, 1992)