18 Chapter 1) The Crisis of the French Monarchy a) The whole revolution began when the monarchy had to gather the French Estates General to search for adequate revenues. b) The Monarchy Seeks New Taxes i) The dispute between the monarchy and the aristocracy led to the growing debt of France. ii) The aristocracy joined with the wealthy professional and commercial class and used the language of liberty and reform to defend their case. iii) The moral integrity of the monarchy was hurt because of the scandalous acts of some of the kings, which was diff. from what others kings were seen as. c) Necker's Report i) The French debt grew when they helped America defend themselves against Great Britain. ii) Jacques Necker realized that all of the debt was to help America and to pay the aristocrats and royal court favorites, but this angered the nobles and he left office. d) Calonne's Reform Plan and the Assembly of Notables i) Calonne was the minister of finances and wanted to encourage internal trade, lower some taxes, and introduce a new land tax to everyone. ii) He called together the Assembly of Notables, but they refused support for his plan. e) Deadlock and the Calling of the Estates General i) Louis replaced Calonne with Lomenie but he too realized that the land tax was a good idea, so he began to revise that idea. ii) The nobles tried to get some of the power that they used to have back by refusing to give the government loans, Necker came back to being financial minister. 2) The Revolution of 1789 a) The Estates General Becomes the National Assembly i) When the Estates convened, they began to clash with each other. ii) The First Estate was the clergy, the 2 nd was the nobility, and the 3rd was everyone else in the kingdom. iii) The 3rd estate was determined to not let the other estates choose what's best for the nation. iv) Debate over Organization and Voting (1) To quiet the 3rd estate, they decided to have an equal amount of representatives and that each estate had one vote. (2) The 3rd estate experienced carious forms of political and social discrimination from the nobility. v) Doubling the Third (1) The royal council decided to double the size of the 3 rd estate so that their opinion carries the same weight as the others. vi) The Cahiers de Deoleances (1) This was a list of grievances brought to the king by the new 3 rd estate. (2) There was a broad agreement that the French government needed major reform, that greater equality in taxation and other matters was desirable, and that many aristocratic privileges must be abandoned. vii) The Third Estate Creates the National Assembly
(1) The third estate was tired of being separated so they invited the clergy and the nobles to join them in organizing the National Assembly. (2) Slowly the 2nd estate voted to join the assembly viii) The Tennis Court Oath (1) When the assembly was locked out of their meeting place by Louis XVI, they met in a tennis court and agreed to not leave until they had given France a constitution. (2) The assembly renamed themselves the National Constituent Assembly. b) Fall of the Bastille i) Louis began to gather royal troops at Versailles. ii) He was trying to undermine the assembly who was trying to come up with a constitution. iii) The growing population of Paris sided with the Assembly and began to organize militias. iv) The militia marched to the Bastille to get weapons, some died, but the others stormed the fortress and released prisoners and killed officers. v) They renamed themselves the National Guard. c) The "Great Fear" and the Night of August 4 i) Because of the fear of royal troops coming to the countryside, peasants began to take possession of what they considered to be rightfully theirs. ii) Some of the aristocrats from the assembly denounced what rights they thought that they should have and by doing this, all French citizens were subject to the same and equal laws. iii) Economic problems such as wage and food riots helped fan the flames of the revolution. d) The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen i) This declaration drew on the political language of the Enlightenment and the Declaration of Rights of the state of Virginia. ii) The two most powerful, universal political ideas of the declaration were civic equality and popular sovereignty. iii) All of this only applied to men, not women. e) The Parisian Women's March on Versailles i) When Louis took some time to ratify the new declaration, people began to become uneasy a and group of women marched on Versailles. ii) They just mulled around the grounds and some spent the night, and caused Louis to pass the declaration and move back to the heart of Paris. 3) The Reconstruction of France a) Political Reorganization i) The declaration made the monarchy a constitutional one with a legislative body that makes laws. ii) Active and Passive Citizens (1) The citizens were divided into active and passive citizens and only active ones could vote. (2) A movement in power from the hereditary wealthy and the self-made wealthy occurred during this time. iii) Olympe de Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Women (1) She wrote a women's declaration and gave it to Queen Marie Antoinette. iv) Departments Replace Provinces
(1) Regions were divided into departments and then split into smaller segments. b) Economic Policy i) The assembly suppressed the guilds, and established the metric system to make all measurements uniform. ii) Workers' Organizations Forbidden (1) The assembly also didn't allow workers to gather in associations because it would resemble the old regime and thus oppose new values. iii) Confiscation of Church Lands (1) The Assembly decided to finance the debt by confiscating and then selling the land and property of the Roman Catholic Church in France. (2) This resulted in inflation, religious schism, and civil war. iv) The Assignats (1) They were bonds that were guaranteed by the revenue to be generated from the sale of the church property. (2) The Assembly issued too many of the bonds and the value began to fall, causing inflation, and putting stress on the urban poor. c) The Civil Constitution of the Clergy i) It transformed the Roman Catholic Church in France into a branch of the secular state. ii) The pastors and bishops became salaried employees of the state. iii) Some bishops wouldn't swear to the new constitution under oath and they were removed from their positions. iv) The pope condemned the assembly for their constitution and his marked the opening of a Roman Catholic offensive against the revolution. v) This divided the citizens between their religious and secular ties. d) Counterrevolutionary Activity i) Some aristocrats that had left the country, settled along the borders and sought to foment counterrevolution, the most famous being Artois, the king's brother. ii) Flight to Varennes (1) The king and his family tried to flee the country but got caught, showing that they were the chief counterrevolutionary in France. 4) The End of the Monarchy: A Second Revolution a) The assembly broke up when they completed what they set out to, and they made sure that none of them would sit in the new Legislative Assembly they had established. b) Emergence of the Jacobins i) They were the most advanced political group in the National Constituent Assembly and had pressed for a republic more than a constitutional monarchy. ii) The new legislative body (Girondists) was split and a group of Jacobins were determined to oppose the counterrevolution. iii) The Girondists led the assembly to declare war on Prussia which led into years of armed conflict against the west. iv) Louis XVI was fine with the war because he thought that it would show France's executive power or they would be restored to the Old Regime. v) The king was invaded by a large crowd and forced into prison and wasn't able to perform his duties. c) The Convention and the Role of the Sans-Culottes i) The September Massacres (1) The Paris commune murdered about 1,200 people who were in the city jails.
(2) News of this massacre, along with the imprisonment of the royal family gave way to hostility toward the revolutionary government. (3) Then, the Legislative Assembly votes for a new body called the Convention that would write a democratic constitution. (4) The first act of the convention was to declare France a republic. ii) Goals of the Sans-Culottes (1) The Sans-Culottes were middle class workers who were upset that things were going from bad to worse in their lives and were fed up. (2) The Sans-Culottes were so against inequality that they advocated a community of small property owners who would participate in the political nation. iii) The Policies of the Jacobins (1) They hated the aristocracy and favored an unregulated economy. (2) Together with the Sans-Culottes, they wanted to help win the war. iv) Execution of Louis XVI (1) Louis was tried and convicted by the Jacobins (Mountains), and then went to war with almost all of Europe.