The French Revolution, and Napoleon.

The ideals of Enlightenment thinkers, which had influenced the American’s war for
independence, also played a part in the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. French
society was based on feudal ideas, economic inequality, special class privileges, and the
absolute rule of kings. The French Revolution overthrew long-established customs and
institutions and proclaimed the ideals of liberty and equality. Individual rights were
recognized and representative government was established, bringing lasting reforms to
French society and government.

Napoleon Bonaparte who became emperor of French, carried the ideas of the Revolution to
other nations but was stopped in his attempts to dominate Europe. The French Revolution
and Napoloen’s conquests changes the course of European history.

This chapter describes the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era that
followed and spread revolutionary ideas throughout the continent of Europe.

Many problems lead to revolution in France

In America, revolutionaries had sought independence from Britain but had retained many
British political ideas and institutions. The revolutionaries in France had far more
ambitious goals. They wanted to overthrow traditions that were centuries old and to
reshape French society completely. These goals were a result of the conditions in France in
the Old Regime, the period just before the French Revolution. Discontent in all levels of
society finally erupted in violence that ended this way of life.

1. French society has three classes.

The social structure in eighteenth-century France was a legacy of a feudalism of the

Middle Ages. French society was divided into three classes, called estates. The First
Estate consisted of the clergy; the Second Estate, the nobility. Everyone else
belonged to the Third Estate. The First and Second Estates together included only
500,000 people, out of a total population of 24 million. Both the nobility and the
clergy enjoyed special privileges. The privileged stutus of the first two estates
aroused growing resentment among the lss privileged.
2. Many of the clergy live in luxury.

The First Estate, the clergy, played a prominent role in French life. In addition to
providing religious services, village priests operated schools and helped the poor.
The Church collected a large tax from the peasants and owned perhaps 10 percent
of the land in France. Although these landholdings brought in a huge income, the
Church did not pay taxes to the governmen. The Church itself determined how large
that gift would be.

The First Estate was divided into two groups, higher clergy and lower clergy. The
higher clergy held the important posts in the Church – archibishops, bishops, and
abbots (the head of the monasteries). By the late eighteenth century only nobles
were named to these high Church positions. Like other aristocrats the higher clergy
usually lived in luxury, spending huge sums on hunting dogs, horses, carriages,
entertainment, fine furniture, and works of art. Some members of the clergy (such as
Cardinal Richelieu and Cardinal Mazarin) had also acquired great political power.

The lower clergy were parish priests who came from the middle and lower classes.
Many parish priests lived in poverty. They resented the luxurious lives of the higher
clergy and were symphatetic to the concerns of the people.

3. Many nobles seek more power.

Members of the Second Estate also were highly privileged. The nobility owned about
a quarter of the land in France. They held the highest offices in the Church, the
government, and the army, and many of them received generous gifts and pensions
from the king. Some nobles owned large estates but paid almost no taxes. As in
feudal times, nobles continued to receive produce, labor, and fees for various
services from the peasants on their estates. Not all nobles were wealthy or powerful,
however. Many lived on run-down country estates, which brought in such small
incomes that the nobles could barely afford to maintain them.

The French nobility had often sought to undermine the king’s absolute rule. In the
last part of the seventeenth century, Louis XIV had established nearly unchallenged
 personal rule. Under the weaker kings who suceeded him in the eighteenth century,
- Louis XV and Louis XVI – the nobles again tried to regain their power. They insisted
on keeping and expanding their privileges at the expense of the peasants.

4. Most of the third estate live in poverty.

The tree groups that made up the Third Estate – peasants, city workers, and the
middle class – included both rich and poor. The majority, the peasants, were poor.
Even though peasants owned about half the land in France, often their farms were
too small to support a family. Many peasants owned no land at all and worked as
day laborers.

Old-fashioned ways of farming were one reason for the poverty of the French
peasant. Agricultural methods in France had changed little since the Middle Ages,
and the crop yield per acre land was low. Another reason for rural poverty was
taxation. Because the clergy and the nobles paid almost no taxes, the heaviest tax
burden fell on the peasants. The peasants paid taxes to both the Church and the
king. In some regions, taxes took almost 60 percent of a peasant family’s income.
Every time the government needed more money, it raised the peasant’s taxes. An
army of government tax collectors terrorized peasants into paying by threatening
them with loss of their homes, whipping, imprisonment, or forced labor.

French peasants were better off than the peasants in most Central and Eastern
European countries, where serfdom was still common. Nevertheless, even though
most French peasants were no longer serfs, they still had to grind their grain in the
lord’s mill, bake their bread in the lord’s winepress. As in the Middle Ages, their
labor and part of the crops they raised were owned to the lord as payment for using
these facilities.

By 1789, French peasants were in an anrgy mood. They wanted a fairer tax system
and an end to the payment of fees to the lords of the manors. A poor harvest in
1788, followed by a hard winter, added to their distress and anger.

5. City workers also live in poverty.

 In the cities the working class consisted of laborers in small-scale industries and
artisans who worked for masters in their craft. The bad harvest of 1788 caused a
grain shortage that drove up food prices in the city markets. A worker’s family might
have to spend half its income just to buy bread. Unrest quickly spread among the
hungry people of the cities.

6. The middle class is well-to-do and ambitious.

The middle class, or bourgeoisie (boor-zhwah-zee), consisted of merchants,

bankers, lawyers, doctors, intellectuals, and government officials below the top
ranks. Unlike the rest of the Third Estate, the bourgeoisie had money, education, and
the chance to achieve many of their ambitions. They did not, however, have the
prestigious or influence that came with membership in the nobility. This meant they
could not hope to hold the highest positions in the government, the army, or the
church.

Wealthy bourgeoisie had once been able to buy some government positions (such as
judgeships) that gave them titles of nobility. In te late 1700’s the old nobility tried to
stop this practice. It became almost impossible for the bourgeoisie to move into the
nobility.

Many of the bourgeoisie were attracted by the Enlightenment ideas of the

philosophes. The philosophes (most of the members were the middle class)
challenged the basic idea of the Old Regime – that monarchs, clergy, and nobility
were the natural leaders of society. From Locke onwards, Enlightenment thinkers
had stressed ideas of equality and liberty. Such ideas soon became a powerful force
in France.

7. France faces financial ruin.

In addition to the different discontents of the members of the three estates, France
in the 1700’s was virtually bankrupt. Louis XIV, who died in 1715, had left
enourmous debts created by wars and luxurious living. France’s debts continued to
grow. Further European wars, as well as aid to the colonists during the American
Revolution, emptied the royal treasury. Both Louis XV and Louis XVI borrowed
heavily from bankers. They still spent lavishly on luxuries and on gifts for favorite
nobles.

France’s inefficient and unfair system of taxation made it impossible for the
government to raise enough money to covert these expenses or repay its debts. Few
of the wealthy, including the bourgeoisie, paid a fair share of taxes. The tax burden
fell most heavily on the peasants, who were least able to pay. France was in a
peculiar position – it was a prosperous nation with an empty treasury. The only
answer seemed to be to tax the nobility and clergy. Louis XVI appealed to the First
and Second Estates to agree to a tax on their lands, but they refused. The financial
crisis that followed was the final cause leading to revolution.