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The French Revolution (1789-1799) was a period in the history of France. During this time, democracy and republicanism replaced the absolute monarchy in France, and the French sector of the Roman Catholic Church was forced to undergo radical restructuring. While France would oscillate among republic, empire, and monarchy for 75 years after the First Republic fell to a coup d'état by Napoleon Bonaparte, the revolution nonetheless spelled a definitive end to the ancien régime. It eclipses the subsequent revolutions of 1830 and 1848 in the popular imagination. It is widely seen as a major turning point in continental European history, from the age of absolutism to that of the citizenry, and even of the masses, as the dominant political force.
Causes
Main article: Causes of the French RevolutionA number of factors led to the revolution; to some extent the old order succumbed to its own rigidity in the face of a changing world; to some extent, it fell to the ambitions of a rising bourgeoisie, allied with aggrieved peasants, wage-earners, and individuals of all classes who had come under the influence of the ideas of the Enlightenment. As the revolution proceeded and as power devolved from the monarchy to legislative bodies, the conflicting interests of these initially allied groups would become the source of conflict and bloodshed.
Causes of the French Revolution include the following:
- Resentment of royal absolutism.
- Resentment of Manorialism (seigneurialism) by peasants, wage-earners, and, to a lesser extent, the bourgeoisie
- The rise of enlightenment ideals.
- An unmanageable national debt, both caused by and exacerbating the burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation.
- Bad economic situation, partly because of France's involvement and aid in the American Revolution.
- Food scarcity in the months immediately before the revolution.
- Resentment at noble privilege and dominance in public life by the ambitious professional classes.
- Resentment of religious intolerance.
- The failure of Louis XVI to deal effectively with these phenomena.
Proto-revolutionary activity started when the French king Louis XVI (reigned 1774-1792) faced a crisis in the royal finances. The French crown, which fiscally equated the French state, owed considerable debt. During the régimes of Louis XV (ruled 1715-1774) and Louis XVI, several different ministers, including Turgot (Controller-General of Finances 1774-1776), and Jacques Necker (Director-General of Finances 1777-1781), unsuccessfully proposed to revise the French tax system to a more uniform system. Such measures encountered consistent resistance from the parlements (law courts), dominated by the "Robe Nobility", which saw themselves as the nation's guardians against despotism, as well as from court factions, and both ministers were ultimately dismissed. Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who became Controller-General of the Finances in 1783, pursued a strategy of conspicuous spending as a means of convincing potential creditors of the confidence and stability of France's finances.
However, Calonne, having conducted a lengthy review of France's financial situation, determined that it was not sustainable, and proposed a uniform land tax as a means of setting France's finances in order in the long term. In the short-term, he hoped that a show of support from a hand-picked Assembly of Notables would restore confidence in French finances, and allow further borrowing until the land tax began to make up the difference and allow the beginning of repayment of the debt.
Although Calonne convinced the king of the necessity of his reforms, the Assembly of Notables refused to endorse his measures, insisting that only a truly representative body, preferably the Estates-General of the Kingdom, could approve new taxes. The King, seeing that Calonne himself was now a liability, dismissed him and replaced him with Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, the Archbishop of Toulouse, who had been a leader of the opposition in the Assembly. Brienne now adopted a thorough-going reform position, granting various civil rights (including freedom of worship to Protestants), and promising the convocation of the Estates-General within five years, but also attempted in the meantime to go ahead with Calonne's plans. When the measures were opposed in the Parlement of Paris (due in part to the King's tactlessness), Brienne went on the attack, attempting to disband the parlements entirely and collect the new taxes in spite of them. This led to massive resistance across many parts of France, including the famous "Day of the Tiles" in Grenoble. Even more importantly, the chaos across France convinced the short-term creditors on whom the French treasury depended to maintain its day-to-day operations to withdraw their loans, leading to a near-default, which forced Louis and Brienne to surrender.
The king agreed on August 8, 1788 to convene the Estates-General in May 1789; for the first time since 1614. Brienne resigned on August 25, 1788, and Necker again took charge of the nation's finances. He used his position not to propose new reforms, but only to prepare for the meeting of the nation's representatives.
See also
- French Revolutionary Calendar
- French Revolutionary Wars
- Glossary of the French Revolution
- History of democracy
- List of people associated with the French Revolution
- List of people granted honorary French citizenship during the French Revolution
- Reactionary
- Timeline of the French Revolution
Other revolutions in French history
- July Revolution
- The Revolutions of 1848 in France
- Paris Commune of 1871
- May 1968, a noteworthy rebellion, though not quite a revolution
References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
This article incorporates text from the public domain History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.
Further reading
- William Doyle: Oxford history of the French Revolution. 2nd ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002 ISBN 0-19-925298-X
- William Doyle: Origins of the French Revolution. 3rd ed.; Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1999 ISBN 0-19-873175-2 ISBN 0-19-873174-4 (pbk)
- Chronicle of the French Revolution 1788-1799. London: Longman, and, Chronicle Communications, 1989 ISBN 0-582051-94-0
- The English-language edition of the collaborative work Chronique de la Révolution 1788-1799 (Paris: Larousse, 1988 ;ISBN 2-03-503250-4), produced under the direction of Jean Favier and others.
- François Furet: La révolution en debat Paris: Gallimard, 1999 ISBN 2-07-040784-5
- a short but important book with a series of articles on the historiography of the revolution
- Peter McPhee: The French Revolution, 1789-1799. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2002 ISBN 0-19-924414-6
- a short but up-to-date and useful book which covers many areas including feminism and environment etc.
- Timothy Tackett: Becoming a Revolutionary: the deputies of the French National Assembly and the emergence of a revolutionary culture (1789-1790). Princeton, N.J. ; Chichester : Princeton University Press, c1996 ISBN 0-691-04384-1
- the most thorough research on the deputies of the Estates General and the National Assembly.
External links
- The Musée de Veygoux is a museum in Auvergne dedicated to the French Revolution and Desaix