Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks • Patricia Buckley Ebrey • Roger B.

Beck •
Jerry Dávila • Clare Haru Crowston • John P. McKay

A History of World Societies

Eleventh Edition

CHAPTER 22
The French Revolution
1789-1815

Copyright © 2018 by Bedford/St. Martin’s

Distributed by Bedford/St. Martin's/Macmillan Higher Education strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
 I. Background to Revolution

A. Social Change
1. Society
2. Elite privilege
3. Food and shelter
 Discussion
1. European society was largely divided into the traditional groups
of the nobility, clergy, and the sub-groups who maintained the
society’s burdens.
2. The French elite enjoyed exemption from taxation and also held
the exclusive rights to hunt, carry swords, and include gold ribbon
in their clothing.
3. The elite across the European continent were able to use their
privileges and establish a monopoly on the economy.
4. Finding affordable food and shelter became difficult for the poor
populations, forcing them to work harder and for longer hours.
 The Old Order
• 3 large social classes, AKA Estates
– Privileged Estates
– Run for political office
– No taxes
– Roman Catholic Church (1st Estate)
• Owned 10% of land
• Helped the poor, paid 2% of income to taxes
 Cont’d
• 2nd Estate
– Rich nobles, 2% of population
– Owned 20% of land
– Paid almost NO taxes
• 1st and 2nd Estate disliked the
Enlightenment
– Why?
– Threatened their privileges
 Cont’d
• 3rd Estate
– 97% of people
– 3 groups within the 3rd Estate
• Bourgeoisie AKA Middle class and peasants
– Factory owners, bankers, merchants…
– Some as rich as the nobles
– Paid high taxes, no privileges
– Wanted better status/power
 I. Background to Revolution—
cont’d
B. Demands for Liberty and Equality
1. Individual human rights
2. Freedom to worship
3. New government
 I. Background to Revolution—
cont’d
B. Demands for Liberty and Equality—
cont’d
4. Inequality
5. Liberal thinker
6. Locke and Montesquieu
7. Revolutions
 Discussion
1. The call for individual human rights became the call for liberty
that frightened even the most enlightened monarchs. Many
monarchs believed the call for liberty should be regulated.
2. The call for liberty was also a call for a new kind of
government. Reformers believed that the people had
sovereignty — that is, that the people alone had the authority
to make laws limiting an individual’s freedom of action.
3. The ideals of liberty called for a new kind of government.
Citizens should have equal rights to special privileges, and
nobility did not have special rights to those privileges simply
because of birth.
4. Demands for liberty were not for all in society. Women could
never have the same political role as men. Even though liberal
thinkers hated the issue of slavery, they were not willing to
abolish the institution due to fears of economic ruin.
 Discussion cont’d
5. The liberal thinker became an advocate of the right to own
private property.
6. Most of the liberal thoughts were established during the
Enlightenment by John Locke and Montesquieu.
7. Revolutions began with the aspirations for equality and liberty,
which characterized the age of revolution.
 III. Revolution in France,
1789–1799
C. Breakdown of the Old Order
1. French debt
2. No national bank
3. Louis XVI
 Discussion
1. The French government also found itself in debt following the
Seven Years’ War. Their efforts to raise money to pay the debt
found the same resistance as did the British in the American
colonies.
2. France did not have a national bank or paper currency and could
not simply print more currency to hold off the debt. This created a
crisis for the monarchy.
3. Louis XV died and was replaced by the inexperienced Louis XVI,
who was a shy, well-intentioned twenty-year-old.
• Economic troubles
– Bad economy, cost of living up
– Heavy taxes made business lose $
– Crop failures
– King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette
spent too much $
– Borrowed lots of $ to help Americans win,
doubled debt
– Banks stopped lending $$
 weakness of the monarchy
• Weak Leader
– Louis XVI indecisive
– Austrian wife-unpopular and giving him bad
advice
• Spent lots on clothes, jewels, gambling
• Nicknamed “Madame Deficit”
– Ran out of $, wanted to tax nobles
– Called a meeting of the Estates General-
reps from all 3 Estates to approve taxes
 III. Revolution in France,
1789–1799—cont’d
D. The National Assembly
1. Assembly of the Estates General
2. Third estate
3. Oath of the Tennis Court
4. Storming of the Bastille
 Discussion
1. Louis XVI called a session of the Estates General, which was
the representative body of the French government.(to reform tax
system –he needed money)) The three estates included the
nobility, the clergy, and the commoners.
2. Delegates of the estates met at the Palace of Versailles to
discuss the national debt crisis
• The twelve hundred delegates of the Estates General met at
Versailles beginning in May 1789, bringing with them the cahiers
de doléances, or list of grievances, that voters had drawn up in
the electoral assemblies that selected the delegates.
• The cahiers generally called for rather moderate reforms of the
judicial, tax, and seigneurial systems and were not on the whole
revolutionary.
 Discussion
• Even before the delegates assembled, a debate arose on how
voting was to be conducted at the Estates General.
• Traditionally, each of the three estates sent the same number of
delegates to the Estates General, and the voting there was by
order, not by head, meaning that the Third Estate, representing
over 95 percent of the population, had only one vote of the three
• In an influential pamphlet entitled “What Is the Third Estate?” a
theretofore obscure priest, Abbé Sieyès, answered the title
question, “Everything,” and suggested a similar formula for
voting

• Sieyes new pamphlet :“If the privileged order were abolished,”

he wrote, “the nation would be not something less but
something more.”
 Discussion
3. The third estate was the largest but always was defeated by the
unified first and second estates. When the time to vote arrived, the
third estate delegates found the door locked and immediately
believed they had been intentionally locked out of the political
process.
4. The delegates moved to a tennis court and established
themselves as the National Assembly. The king ordered the
National Assembly to be dissolved by force.
5. The people of Paris and the members of the National Assembly
had moved into a revolutionary state of political mind.
6. Citizens stormed the Bastille, a royal prison, hoping to obtain
weapons, gunpowder, and any other military supplies.
 The fall of Bastille
• The fall of the Bastille, like the fall of the
Berlin Wall two hundred years later,
became an important symbol of the
Revolution, and that day, Bastille Day, is
still celebrated as a French national
holiday, complete with fireworks and
parades.
 III. Revolution in France,
1789–1799—cont’d
D. The National Assembly—cont’d
E. Peasant revolt
F. Declaration of the Rights of Man and
of the Citizen
 Discussion
7. French peasants began to rise against their landlords. In fear of
the peasant revolt, the National Assembly decreed that all the old
laws that enabled serfdom were to be repealed. The peasants
were now on the side of the National Assembly.
8. The National Assembly moved ahead to restructure the French
government and issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of
the Citizen. The declaration was to establish equality for all under
French law.
• King Louis XVI refused to sign the declaration, and most
of the deputies at this point still assumed that his signature
was necessary before the document could become
official.
• Once again, the Parisian crowd took action, feeling that
the king would be more responsive to the will of the
people if he were in Paris rather than Versailles.
• A crowd of six thousand women, aggravated by the
short supply of bread in city markets, marched the
fifteen miles to Versailles and escorted the king back to
Paris
 III. Revolution in France,
1789–1799—cont’d
E. Constitutional Monarchy
1. Abolishment of the nobility
2. More, but still limited, rights for
women
3. Religious reorganization
 Constitutional monarchy
• For the next two years, a kind of stalemate prevailed,
with the Constituent Assembly working on a new
constitution, debating the powers of the monarchy, and
wrestling with the country’s continuing financial crisis,
while Louis looked on as a sort of de facto
constitutional monarch.
• In an effort to deal with the country’s continuing debts, the
assembly confiscated all properties belonging to the
church.
 Discussion
1. The National Assembly abolished the nobility but allowed the
king to remain the head of the state. The National Assembly now
had all the lawmaking power.
2. Women now had the right to seek divorce and obtain financial
support for their children, but were excluded from political office
and denied the right to vote.
3. Reorganization of religious life was imposed granting freedom to
the French Jews and Protestants. Catholic Church property was
confiscated by the state and the monasteries were abolished.
4. Priests were now to be elected by the population, which was
formally condemned by the pope. Many sincere Christians were
upset by the forced changes in religious organizations.
Finally, in June 1791, the new constitution was presented to the
public, providing for an elected legislative assembly and granting
the king only a suspensive veto; that is, the power to delay
legislation but not to defeat it.
Dismayed by these developments, Louis XVI fled Paris disguised as
a commoner and attempted to reach the French border to rally
those opposed to the Revolution.
Among them were virtually all of the European monarchs, who
saw events in France as an ominous portent for their own rule. The
empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, declared that “the affairs
of France were the concern of all crowned heads.” But Louis was
captured and brought back to Paris.