French Revolution: The Basics

Darius von Güttner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367744236
• eBook ISBN: 9781000486872
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

French Revolution: The Basics is an accessible and concise introduction to the history of the revolution in France.

Combining a traditional narrative with documents of the era and references to contemporary imagery of the revolution, the book traces the long-and short-term causes of the French Revolution as well as its consequences up to the dissolution of the Convention and the ascendancy of Napoleon. The book is written with an explicit aim for its reader to acquire understanding of the past whilst imparting knowledge using underlying historical concepts such as evidence, continuity and change, cause and effect, significance, empathy, perspectives, and contestability.

Key topics discussed within the book include:

• The structure of French society before 1789.
• The long- and short-term factors that contributed to the French Revolution.
• How ordinary French people, including women and slaves, participated in the revolution.
• What brought about the end of the ancien régime.
• The major reforms of the National Assembly, 1789–1791, and how they lead to the division and radicalisation of the revolution.
• How the alternative visions of the new society divided the revolution and what were the internal and external pressures on the revolution that contributed to its radicalisation.
• The forms of terror which enabled reality to triumph over the idealism.
• The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as military leader and Emperor.

This book is an ideal introduction for anyone wishing to learn more about this influential revolution in the shaping of modern Europe and the world.

1

THE ORIGINS OF THE REVOLUTION

DOI: 10.4324/9781003157748-1

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the very roots of the long-established social, political and economic foundations of French society, based on privilege, hierarchy and tradition, were being challenged. The French king, Louis XVI, faced with pressure from elite groups in his kingdom, recognised the need for reform, which in his assessment was limited to the issue of taxation. In 1781, the Compte rendu, the first ever statement of the Crown’s finances, reflected and encouraged the growing interest by the French public in economic affairs. These challenges, together with the Crown’s financial difficulties as a result of France’s involvement in costly foreign wars, convinced Louis XVI and his successive finance ministers to implement a range of radical reforms to increase the income of the Crown. Although there is no consensus among historians on the causes of the revolution, there is a broad acknowledgement of the complex nature of the tensions and problems that became apparent when an unfolding political crisis brought them to the surface.

FRANCE IN EUROPE

In the early eighteenth century, France was an absolute monarchy ruled by the Bourbon dynasty, which claimed the throne by divine right. As the century progressed, France’s system of government, and indeed the whole structure of society, came under increasing pressure for change. It made the crisis possible, but not unavoidable; it was not evident that France was on the brink of a revolution. The fluctuating economic activity in the 1770s and 1780s had not made most peasants poorer and had not prevented the bourgeoisie from increasing its wealth. The need for change was caused mainly by the financial difficulties King Louis XVI’s government faced as a result of France’s involvement in foreign wars such as the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the Seven Years’ War (1754–1763) and the American War of Independence (1775–1783). When the Crown could no longer afford to finance the operation of the government, the king attempted to force through a reform of the fiscal system. At this critical point, the financial crisis turned into a political crisis, with various sections of French society demanding a constitution to regulate the relationship between those governing and those being governed. When the monarchy and the nobility resisted such a change in 1789, the revolution began.

For centuries, France held a dominant position in European politics. Maintaining that status caused a permanent deficit in the royal finances, in particular because of an increasingly costly rivalry with Britain. While Britain’s fast-growing economy allowed it to concentrate on building its colonial empire, France’s overseas expansion always came second to competition with other European states on the Continent, such as Austria and Britain’s ally, Prussia. The French monarchy was badly affected by the eighteenth century’s most extensive conflict, the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), perhaps indicating that the French monarchs were unable to cope with the challenges posed by the growth of Prussia and the British capture of French colonial possessions in India, Quebec and the Caribbean. Another sign of France’s decreasing international influence was its inability, just prior to Louis XVI’s accession in 1774, to prevent annexation of territories belonging to Poland, one of its traditional allies, by Prussia, Austria and Russia. At the beginning of Louis XVI’s reign, France attempted to recover its pride from these foreign policy defeats by supporting Britain’s American colonies in their war for independence. A small French contingent significantly aided the Americans, and France hosted the peace conference at which Britain conceded the colonies’ independence in 1783. Britain lost their thirteen colonies, but while France won a propaganda victory over Britain, its financial losses were huge. This diplomatic success brought no tangible rewards for France and its costs added to the growing pressure for reform of France’s fiscal system, which by 1789, had developed into a political crisis.

The chain of events which brought about the political crisis surprised not only the elites of the kingdom but even more so the ruler of France and his immediate family. The Bourbon dynasty, which ruled France at the time of the revolution, was one of the most ancient European royal houses. It is a branch of the dynasty founded in 987 by Hugh Capet (c. 941–996), who was elected ‘King of the Franks’ after the death of Louis V, the last king of the Carolingian dynasty. In 1328, when direct male descendants of Hugh Capet did not produce a surviving male heir to the French throne, the succession passed to their cousin, the head of the younger branch of the House of Capet, the Valois dynasty. Similarly, in 1589, the Valois died out and the throne passed to Henry IV (1553–1610), the first French monarch of the Bourbon dynasty. The reign of Henry’s grandson, Louis XIV (1643–1715), provided the rest of Europe with an example of an absolutist style of government. During 72 years on the throne, Louis had personally ruled France for more than 50 years. This longest reign in European history was marked by the growth of France as one of the great powers of the Continent. Louis reformed the administration of justice and promoted commerce and industry, including the development of overseas colonies. As king, he established royal academies for architecture, art, literature, science and music, and built the royal palaces of the Louvre, now an art gallery, and Versailles, where he based the French court. Louis XIV outlived all of his immediate family with the exception of his grandson, Philip V of Spain, and a great-grandson, who became Louis XV when the Sun-King died in 1715. The name of Louis XIV became synonymous with greatness, power, splendour and glory.

In the course of the eighteenth century the Bourbons relied on the reflected glory of the Sun-King, yet for all the ostentatious display of power during the reign of his grandson, Louis XV, France could no longer halt the decline of its super-power status, as demonstrated in the series of military and diplomatic defeats. Shortly after the death of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI in 1742, France in alliance with Prussia and Bavaria challenged the right of his daughter, Maria Theresa (1717–1780), to succeed to the hereditary lands of the Habsburg dynasty. In this War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748), supporting Maria Theresa’s claim were Britain, the Dutch Republic, Sardinia and Saxony. France aimed at weakening Austria, her long-standing rival, through supporting various claimants to parts of the Habsburg inheritance, including election of Charles Albert of Bavaria as Holy Roman Emperor in 1742, in opposition to Maria Theresa’s husband, Francis, grand duke of Tuscany. The war ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, which confirmed Maria Theresa’s right of succession. France after some initial territorial gains was left without any material gains but Prussia acquired Silesia from Austria.

The Treaty did not resolve the French claims to hegemony in Europe and worldwide, and within a decade another major military conflict, which Winston Churchill called ‘the first world war’, began when the European powers sought to extend, and compete for, their influence both in Europe and overseas. The Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) also became known as the ‘French and Indian War’, as fighting between Britain and France took place on the American and Canadian frontiers and in India. In the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war in 1763, France acknowledged the loss of all of its territory on the North American mainland and the Indian subcontinent, and Britain emerged as the dominant European colonial power. The French had been humiliated.

Under the direction of Count Vergennes (1719–1787), an influential foreign minister, French diplomacy began to pursue any means of revenge on Britain and her imperial ambitions. This opportunity arrived with a critical event, which had a major impact on Europe and the development of revolution in France. A rebellion against taxation without representation started in the British possessions on the other side of the Atlantic in 1773. The revolt turned to a revolutionary war and, on 2 July 1776, a convention of delegates from the thirteen British colonies in North America met in Philadelphia and adopted a resolution declaring the colonies’ independence from Britain. Two days later, the delegates approved the Declaration of Independence in which they outlined the reasons for their renunciation of British sovereignty, providing the moral rationale for their decision and a list of grievances against King George III. The authors of the Declaration were influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, and in particular the theories of English thinker John Locke and French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In a clear break from the past, the colonists declared ‘that all men are created equal’ and were ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights’. They declared these rights to be ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. In defiance of the divine right of kings, the American colonists argued that governments derive their powers from ‘the consent of the governed’, who have the right to abolish them when ‘any form of government becomes destructive’. The ideals proclaimed in the Declaration and the subsequent development of the Constitution of the United States of America (ratified in 1788) had a profound impact on the ancien régimes of Europe. The American War of Independence, which began in April 1775, ended in June 1783 with the Treaty of Paris when Britain recognised the establishment of the United States.

The court of Louis XVI celebrated the humbling of the British as a major victory. In reality, the support given by France to the American rebels stretched France’s ability to finance operation of its administration beyond breaking point. Unaware of the consequences for France, Parisians were greatly interested in the revolt of the American colonies against Britain. The American agent Silas Deane (1737–1789) arrived in France in 1776 to lobby the French for aid. Deane was involved in recruiting officers and engineers and sourcing supplies to support the rebellion. The first foreign volunteers, writes historian Adam Zamoyski, were French. Officially, France maintained its neutrality, but some of the French officers, who desired glory on the battlefield or who had little chance of advancement in the French army, enlisted to help the Americans. Perhaps the best example is Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834), who had no hope of gaining meaningful military experience as a soldier in peacetime, but his American experiences not only exposed him to the ideals of ‘Liberty, Equality and the pursuit of Happiness’, but also positively instilled the ‘spirit of America’ in his psyche. Lafayette and other returning European volunteers who had served in the American War of Independence spread the ideas of liberty and popular sovereignty.

For Zamoyski, the American revolt was seen by Europeans as a ‘dramatic condemnation of the evils of Europe’, and this echoes the earlier assessment of Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote in 1835 that ‘the Americans appeared to be doing no more than carrying out what our writers had conceived’. Indeed, Tocqueville suggests a direct link between the ideas of the philosophes and the revolutionary action. The American rebellion demonstrated to the world that there was an alternative to the ancien régime and, even more significantly, it was within reach.

KEY INDIVIDUAL: MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE (1757–1834)

Lafayette was a volunteer who served on the side of the rebels during the American War of Independence. He was influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment and was one of the liberal nobles who recognised the need for reform. During the Assembly of Notables, Lafayette supported summoning the Estates-General. He was elected as a Second Estate deputy and, due to his popularity with the Parisian crowds, was acclaimed the commander of the newly formed National Guard. His actions perhaps saved Marie Antoinette during the dramatic October Days of 1789. He supported the constitutional monarchy and lost all public support after the royal family’s flight to Varennes in 1791 when he ordered the shooting of unarmed demonstrators ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• Preface Page
• Introduction Page
• 1 The origins of the revolution
• 2 The revolution of 1789
• 3 The reform and restructuring of France, 1789–1792
• 4 The Republic and beyond
• 5 The Terror and the Thermidorian reaction
• 6 Epilogue: revolutionary ideals and the rise of Napoleon
• 7 Historians and the French Revolution
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index