French Revolution

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French Revolution
Anonymous - Prise de la Bastille.jpg
Date 1789–1799
Location France
Participants French society
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History of France
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The French Revolution (French: Révolution française) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France from 1789 to 1799 that profoundly affected French and modern history, marking the decline of powerful monarchies and churches and the rise of democracy and nationalism. Popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy and aristocracy grew amidst a financial crisis following two expensive wars and years of bad harvests, motivating demands for change. These were couched in terms of Enlightenment ideals and caused the convocation of the Estates-General in May 1789. The first year of the Revolution saw members of the Third Estate taking control, the assault on the Bastille in July, the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and a march on Versailles that forced the royal court back to Paris in October. A central event of first stage was the abolition of feudalism and the old rules, taxes, courts and privileges left over from the age of feudalism on 4 August 1789.

The next stage was dominated by struggles between various liberal assemblies and right-wing supporters of the monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A republic was proclaimed in September 1792. In a momentous event that led to international condemnation, King Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793.

External threats closely shaped the course of the Revolution. The Revolutionary Wars beginning in 1792 ultimately featured French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine – achievements that had eluded previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular agitation radicalized the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins. The dictatorship imposed by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror, from 1793 until 1794, caused up to 40,000 deaths inside France,[1] abolished slavery in the colonies, and secured the borders of the new republic from its enemies. The Reign of Terror ended with the overthrow and execution of Robespierre and the other leading Jacobins in the Thermidorian Reaction. The Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799. In that year, conventionally seen as the conclusion of the Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire and established the Consulate. The First Empire under Napoleon emerged in 1804 and spread French revolutionary principles all over Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. The First Empire was militarily defeated by an anti-Napoleonic coalition that in 1815 brought about the restoration of the Bourbons, albeit under a constitutional monarchy, and the reversion to France's traditional frontiers.

The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. French society itself underwent a transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges disappeared and old ideas about tradition and hierarchy were abruptly overthrown under the mantra of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité". Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies, the spread of liberalism, nationalism, socialism and secularism, the development of modern political ideologies, and the practice of total war.[2] Some of its central documents, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man, expanded the arena of human rights to include women and slaves.[3]



The French government faced a fiscal crisis in the 1780s, and King Louis XVI was blamed for mishandling these affairs.

Adherents of most historical models identify many of the same features of the Ancien Régime as being among the causes of the Revolution. Historians until the late 20th century emphasized class conflicts from a largely Marxist perspective. Its central theme was the Revolution was caused by the rising bourgeoisie, with support from the sans-culottes, who fought to destroy the aristocracy.[4]

By the 1990s the Marxist class interpretation had largely been abandoned among scholars. However, historians continue to emphasize the economic and fiscal crises of the Old regime. The economy was not healthy; poor harvests, rising food prices, and an inadequate transportation system made food even more expensive. The sequence of events leading to the revolution included the national government's fiscal troubles caused by an inefficient tax system and expenditure on numerous large wars. The attempt to challenge British naval and commercial power in the Seven Years' War was a costly disaster, with the loss of France's colonial possessions in continental North America and the destruction of the French Navy. French forces were rebuilt and performed more successfully in the American Revolutionary War, but only at massive additional cost, and with no real gains for France except the knowledge that Britain had been humbled. France's inefficient and antiquated financial system could not finance this debt. Faced with a financial crisis, the king called an Assembly of Notables in 1787 for the first time in over a century.

Meanwhile, the royal court at Versailles was isolated from, and indifferent to the escalating crisis. While in theory King Louis XVI was an absolute monarch, in practice he was often indecisive and known to back down when faced with strong opposition. While he did reduce government expenditures, opponents in the parlements successfully thwarted his attempts at enacting much needed reforms. The Enlightenment had produced many writers, pamphleteers and publishers who could inform or inflame public opinion. The opposition used this resource to mobilize public opinion against the monarchy, which in turn tried to repress the underground literature.[5]

Many other factors involved resentments and aspirations given focus by the rise of Enlightenment ideals. These included resentment of royal absolutism; resentment by peasants, laborers and the bourgeoisie toward the traditional seigneurial privileges possessed by the nobility; resentment of the Catholic Church's influence over public policy and institutions; aspirations for freedom of religion; resentment of aristocratic bishops by the poorer rural clergy; aspirations for social, political and economic equality, and (especially as the Revolution progressed) republicanism; hatred of Queen Marie-Antoinette, who was falsely accused of being a spendthrift and an Austrian spy; and anger toward the King for firing finance minister Jacques Necker, among others, who were popularly seen as representatives of the people.[6]

Ancien Régime

Financial crisis


Louis XVI ascended to the throne amidst a financial crisis; the state was nearing bankruptcy and outlays outpaced income.[7] This was because of France’s financial obligations stemming from involvement in the Seven Years' War and its participation in the American Revolutionary War.[8] In May 1776, finance minister Turgot was dismissed, after he failed to enact reforms. The next year, Jacques Necker, a foreigner, was appointed Comptroller-General of Finance. He could not be made an official minister because he was a Protestant.[9]

Necker realized that the country's extremely regressive tax system subjected the lower classes to a heavy burden,[9] while numerous exemptions existed for the nobility and clergy.[10] He argued that the country could not be taxed higher; that tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy must be reduced; and proposed that borrowing more money would solve the country's fiscal shortages. Necker published a report to support this claim that underestimated the deficit by roughly 36 million livres, and proposed restricting the power of the parlements.[9]

This was not received well by the King's ministers, and Necker, hoping to bolster his position, argued to be made a minister. The King refused, Necker was dismissed, and Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed to the Comptrollership.[9] Calonne initially spent liberally, but he quickly realized the critical financial situation and proposed a new tax code.[11]


Estates-General of 1789

The Estates-General was organized into three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of France. It last met in 1614. Elections were held in the spring of 1789; suffrage requirements for the Third Estate were for French-born or naturalised males only, at least 25 years of age, who resided where the vote was to take place and who paid taxes. Strong turnout produced 1,201 delegates, including: 303 clergy, 291 nobles and 610 members of the Third Estate. The First Estate represented 100,000 Catholic clergy; the Church owned about 10 percent of the land and collected its own taxes (the tithe) on peasants. The lands were controlled by bishops and abbots of monasteries, but two-thirds of the 303 delegates from the First Estate were ordinary parish priests; only 51 were bishops.[13] The Second Estate represented the nobility, about 400,000 men and women who owned about 25 percent of the land and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their peasant tenants. About a third of these deputies were nobles, mostly with minor holdings. The Third Estate representation was doubled to 610 men, representing 95 percent of the population. Half were well educated lawyers or local officials. Nearly a third were in trades or industry; 51 were wealthy land owners.[14][15]

To assist delegates, "Books of grievances" (cahiers de doléances) were compiled to list problems.[16] The books articulated ideas which would have seemed radical only months before; however, most supported the monarchical system in general. Many assumed the Estates-General would approve future taxes, and Enlightenment ideals were relatively rare.[17][18]

Pamphlets by liberal nobles and clergy became widespread after the lifting of press censorship.[19] The Abbé Sieyès, a theorist and Catholic clergyman, argued the paramount importance of the Third Estate in the pamphlet Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? ("What is the Third Estate?") published in January 1789. He asserted: "What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something."[17][20]

The meeting of the Estates General on 5 May 1789 at Versailles.

The Estates-General convened in the Grands Salles des Menus-Plaisirs in Versailles on 5 May 1789 and opened with a three-hour speech by Necker. The Third Estate demanded that the verification of deputies' credentials should be undertaken in common by all deputies, rather than each estate verifying the credentials of its own members internally; negotiations with the other estates failed to achieve this.[18] The commoners appealed to the clergy who replied they required more time. Necker stated that each estate should verify its own members' credentials and that "the king was to act as arbitrator."[21] Negotiations with the other two estates to achieve this, however, were unsuccessful.[22]

National Assembly (1789)

The National Assembly taking the Tennis Court Oath (sketch by Jacques-Louis David).

On 10 June 1789, Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate, now meeting as the Communes (English: "Commons") proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so two days later, completing the process on 17 June.[23] Then they voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People." They invited the other orders to join them, but made it clear they intended to conduct the nation's affairs with or without them.[24]



Constitutional Monarchy

National Constituent Assembly (1789–1791)

Storming of the Bastille



On 14 July, the insurgents set their eyes on the large weapons and ammunition cache inside the Bastille fortress, which was also perceived to be a symbol of royal power. After several hours of combat, the prison fell that afternoon. Despite ordering a cease fire, which prevented a mutual massacre, Governor Marquis Bernard de Launay was beaten, stabbed and decapitated; his head was placed on a pike and paraded about the city. Although the fortress had held only seven prisoners (four forgers, two noblemen kept for immoral behavior, and a murder suspect) the Bastille served as a potent symbol of everything hated under the Ancien Régime. Returning to the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) the mob accused the prévôt des marchands (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles of treachery and butchered him.[28]



As civil authority rapidly deteriorated, with random acts of violence and theft breaking out across the country, members of the nobility, fearing for their safety, fled to neighboring countries; many of these émigrés, as they were called, funded counter-revolutionary causes within France and urged foreign monarchs to offer military support to a counter-revolution.[30]


Abolishing the old order

Abolition of feudalism

On the night of 4 August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism (sufficient peasant revolts had almost already ended feudalism) in the August Decrees, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithes (a 10% tax for the Church) gathered by the First Estate. During a few hours nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies and cities lost their special privileges.[32]

Historian Georges Lefebvre summarizes the night's work:



Furet emphasizes that the decisions of August 1789 survived and became an integral part of:



Declaration of the Rights of Man

On 26 August 1789, the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution with legal effect. The Declaration was directly influenced by Thomas Jefferson working with General LaFayette, who introduced it.[39]


Writing the first constitution



Women's March on Versailles

Engraving of the Women's March on Versailles, 5 October 1789

Fueled by rumors of a reception for the King's bodyguards on 1 October 1789 at which the national cockade had been trampled upon, on 5 October 1789 crowds of women began to assemble at Parisian markets. The women first marched to the Hôtel de Ville, demanding that city officials address their concerns.[41] The women were responding to the harsh economic situations they faced, especially bread shortages. They also demanded an end to royal efforts to block the National Assembly, and for the King and his administration to move to Paris as a sign of good faith in addressing the widespread poverty.

Getting unsatisfactory responses from city officials, as many as 7,000 women joined the march to Versailles, bringing with them cannons and a variety of smaller weapons. Twenty thousand National Guardsmen under the command of La Fayette responded to keep order, and members of the mob stormed the palace, killing several guards.[42] La Fayette ultimately persuaded the king to accede to the demand of the crowd that the monarchy relocate to Paris.

On 6 October 1789, the King and the royal family moved from Versailles to Paris under the "protection" of the National Guards, thus legitimizing the National Assembly.

Revolution and the Church


The Revolution caused a massive shift of power from the Roman Catholic Church to the state.[43] Under the Ancien Régime, the Church had been the largest single landowner in the country, owning about 10% of the land in the kingdom.[44] The Church was exempt from paying taxes to the government, while it levied a tithe—a 10% tax on income, often collected in the form of crops—on the general population, only a fraction of which it then redistributed to the poor.[44] The power and wealth of the Church was highly resented by some groups. A small minority of Protestants living in France, such as the Huguenots, wanted an anti-Catholic regime and revenge against the clergy who discriminated against them. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire helped fuel this resentment by denigrating the Catholic Church and destabilizing the French monarchy.[45] As historian John McManners argues, "In eighteenth-century France throne and altar were commonly spoken of as in close alliance; their simultaneous collapse ... would one day provide the final proof of their interdependence."[46]

This resentment toward the Church weakened its power during the opening of the Estates General in May 1789. The Church composed the First Estate with 130,000 members of the clergy. When the National Assembly was later created in June 1789 by the Third Estate, the clergy voted to join them, which perpetuated the destruction of the Estates General as a governing body.[47] The National Assembly began to enact social and economic reform. Legislation sanctioned on 4 August 1789 abolished the Church's authority to impose the tithe. In an attempt to address the financial crisis, the Assembly declared, on 2 November 1789, that the property of the Church was "at the disposal of the nation."[48] They used this property to back a new currency, the assignats. Thus, the nation had now also taken on the responsibility of the Church, which included paying the clergy and caring for the poor, the sick and the orphaned.[49] In December, the Assembly began to sell the lands to the highest bidder to raise revenue, effectively decreasing the value of the assignats by 25% in two years.[50] In autumn 1789, legislation abolished monastic vows and on 13 February 1790 all religious orders were dissolved.[51] Monks and nuns were encouraged to return to private life and a small percentage did eventually marry.[52]

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on 12 July 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the state. This established an election system for parish priests and bishops and set a pay rate for the clergy. Many Catholics objected to the election system because it effectively denied the authority of the Pope in Rome over the French Church. Eventually, in November 1790, the National Assembly began to require an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution from all the members of the clergy.[52] This led to a schism between those clergy who swore the required oath and accepted the new arrangement and those who remained loyal to the Pope. Overall, 24% of the clergy nationwide took the oath.[53] Widespread refusal led to legislation against the clergy, "forcing them into exile, deporting them forcibly, or executing them as traitors."[50] Pope Pius VI never accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, further isolating the Church in France.


During the Reign of Terror, extreme efforts of de-Christianization ensued, including the imprisonment and massacre of priests and destruction of churches and religious images throughout France. An effort was made to replace the Catholic Church altogether, with civic festivals replacing religious ones. The establishment of the Cult of Reason was the final step of radical de-Christianization. These events led to a widespread disillusionment with the Revolution and to counter-rebellions across France. Locals often resisted de-Christianization by attacking revolutionary agents and hiding members of the clergy who were being hunted. Eventually, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety were forced to denounce the campaign,[55] replacing the Cult of Reason with the deist but still non-Christian Cult of the Supreme Being. The Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon and the Church ended the de-Christianization period and established the rules for a relationship between the Catholic Church and the French State that lasted until it was abrogated by the Third Republic via the separation of church and state on 11 December 1905. The persecution of the Church led to a counter-revolution known as the Revolt in the Vendée, whose suppression is considered by some to be the first modern genocide.[56]

Intrigues and radicalism


The "National Party", representing the centre or centre-left of the assembly, included Honoré Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Bailly; while Adrien Duport, Barnave and Alexandre Lameth represented somewhat more extreme views. Almost alone in his radicalism on the left was the Arras lawyer Maximilien Robespierre. Abbé Sieyès led in proposing legislation in this period and successfully forged consensus for some time between the political centre and the left. In Paris, various committees, the mayor, the assembly of representatives, and the individual districts each claimed authority independent of the others. The increasingly middle-class National Guard under La Fayette also slowly emerged as a power in its own right, as did other self-generated assemblies.





This period also saw the rise of the political "clubs" in French politics. Foremost among these was the Jacobin Club; 152 members had affiliated with the Jacobins by 10 August 1790. The Jacobin Society began as a broad, general organization for political debate, but as it grew in members, various factions developed with widely differing views. Several of these fractions broke off to form their own clubs, such as the Club of '89.[59]


Royal flight to Varennes

Main article: Flight to Varennes


Louis cast his lot with General Bouillé, who condemned both the emigration and the Assembly, and promised him refuge and support in his camp at Montmédy. On the night of 20 June 1791, the royal family fled the Tuileries Palace dressed as servants, while their servants dressed as nobles.

However, late the next day, the King was recognised and arrested at Varennes and returned to Paris. The Assembly provisionally suspended the King. He and Queen Marie Antoinette remained held under guard.[61] To flee to the enemy was to be a traitor.

Completing the constitution


However, Jacques Pierre Brissot drafted a petition, insisting that in the eyes of the nation Louis XVI was deposed since his flight. An immense crowd gathered in the Champ de Mars to sign the petition. Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins gave fiery speeches. The Assembly called for the municipal authorities to "preserve public order". The National Guard under La Fayette's command confronted the crowd. The soldiers responded to a barrage of stones by firing into the crowd, killing between 13 and 50 people.[62] The incident cost La Fayette and his National Guard much public support.


Meanwhile, a new threat arose from abroad: the King's brother in law Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, Frederick William II of Prussia, and the King's brother Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which proclaimed the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his absolute liberty and hinted at an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions.[64] Although Leopold himself sought to avoid war and made the declaration to satisfy the Comte d'Artois and the other émigrés, the reaction within France was ferocious. The French people expressed no respect for the dictates of foreign monarchs, and the threat of force merely hastened their militarisation.[65]


Legislative Assembly (1791–1792)

Failure of the constitutional monarchy


The Legislative Assembly consisted of about 165 Feuillants (constitutional monarchists) on the right, about 330 Girondists (liberal republicans) and Jacobins (radical revolutionaries) on the left, and about 250 deputies unaffiliated with either faction.[citation needed] Early on, the King vetoed legislation that threatened the émigrés with death and that decreed that every non-juring clergyman must take within eight days the civic oath mandated by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Over the course of a year, such disagreements would lead to a constitutional crisis.

Lyons argues that the Constituent Assembly had liberal, rational and individualistic goals that seem to have been largely achieved by 1791. However it failed to consolidate the gains of the Revolution, which not only continued but gathered increasing momentum and escalating radicalism until 1794. Lyons identifies six reasons. First the king did not accept the limitations on his powers, and mobilized support from foreign monarchs to reverse it. Second the effort to overthrow the Roman Catholic Church, sell off its lands, close its monasteries and its charitable operations, and replace it with an unpopular makeshift system caused deep consternation among the pious and the peasants. Third the economy was badly hurt by the issuance of ever increasing amounts of paper money (called "assignants") which caused more and more inflation; the rising prices hurt the urban poor who spent most of their budget on bread. Fourth the rural peasants demanded liberation from the heavy system of taxes and dues owed to local seignors (landowners). Fifth, the working class of Paris and the other cities—the sans-culottes—rejected how the property owners and professionals took all the spoils of the Revolution. Finally, the wars by reactionary powers threatened to overthrow the Revolution and it responded with extremism and systematic violence.[68]

Constitutional crisis

On 10 August 1792 the Paris Commune stormed the Tuileries Palace and massacred the Swiss Guards

On the night of 10 August 1792, insurgents and popular militias, supported by the revolutionary Paris Commune, assailed the Tuileries Palace and massacred the Swiss Guards who were assigned for the protection of the king.[69] The royal family ended up prisoners and a rump session of the Legislative Assembly suspended the monarchy; little more than a third of the deputies were present, almost all of them Jacobins.[70]

What remained of a national government depended on the support of the insurrectionary Commune. With enemy troops advancing, the Commune looked for potential traitors in Paris. The Commune sent gangs of National Guardsmen and fereres into the prisons to kill 10 or more victims, mostly nonjuring priests. The Commune then sent a circular letter to the other cities of France inviting them to follow this example, and many cities launched their own massacres of prisoners and priests in the September massacres." The Assembly could offer only feeble resistance. In Ocvtober, however , there was a counterattack accusing the instigators, especially Marat, of being terrorists. This led to a political contest between the more moderate Girondists and the more radical Montagnards inside the Convention,with rumor used as a weapon by both sides. The Girondists lost ground when they seemed too conciliatory. But the pendulum swung again and after Thermidor, the men who had endorsed the massacres were denounced as terrorists,[71][72]


French Revolutionary Wars

From 1793 to 1815, France was engaged almost continuously (with two short breaks) and wars with Britain and a changing coalition of other major powers. The many French successes led to the spread of the French revolutionary ideals into neighboring countries, and indeed across much of Europe. However, the final defeat of Napoleon in 1814 (and 1815) brought a reaction that reversed some – but not all – of the revolutionary achievements in France and Europe. The Bourbons were restored to the throne, with the brother of executed King Louis XVI becoming King Louis XVII.





Colonial Uprisings

Although the French Revolution had a dramatic impact in numerous areas of Europe, the French colonies felt a particular influence. As the Martincian author Aimé Césaire put it, “there was in each French colony a specific revolution, that occurred on the occasion of the French Revolution, in tune with it.”[75] The Haitian Revolution (Saint Domingue) became a central example of slave uprisings in French colonies.

First Republic

National Convention (1792–1795)

Main article: National Convention

Execution of Louis XVI






Reign of Terror

Main article: Reign of Terror

The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror (1793–1794). According to archival records, at least 16,594 people died under the guillotine or otherwise after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities.[82] As many as 40,000 accused prisoners may have been summarily executed without trial or died awaiting trial.[82][83]

On 2 June 1793, Paris sections — encouraged by the enragés ("enraged ones") Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to sans-culottes alone.[84] With the backing of the National Guard, they managed to persuade the Convention to arrest 31 Girondin leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot. Following these arrests, the Jacobins gained control of the Committee of Public Safety on 10 June, installing the revolutionary dictatorship.[85]



War in the Vendée

Main article: War in the Vendée

In Vendée, peasants revolted against the French Revolutionary government in 1793. They resented the changes imposed on the Roman Catholic Church by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and broke into open revolt in defiance of the Revolutionary government's military conscription.[87] This became a guerrilla war, known as the War in the Vendée.[88] North of the Loire, similar revolts were started by the so-called Chouans (royalist rebels).[89]

The revolt and its suppression, including both combat casualties and massacres and executions on both sides, are thought to have taken between 117,000 and 250,000 lives (170,000 according to the latest estimates).[90] Because of the extremely brutal forms that the Republican repression took in many places, certain historians such as Reynald Secher have called the event a "genocide". This description has become popular in the mass media,[91] but has largely been rejected by mainstream scholars.[92] Furet concludes that the repression in the Vendee "not only revealed massacre and destruction on an unprecedented scale but also a zeal so violent that it has bestowed as its legacy much of the region's identity."[93]



Systematic executions


The Festival of the Supreme Being on 8 June 1794.


Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the installment of the Republican Calendar on 24 October 1793. Against Robespierre's concepts of Deism and Virtue, Hébert's (and Chaumette's) atheist movement initiated a religious campaign to dechristianize society. The climax was reached with the celebration of the flame of Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November.[97]



Three approaches attempt to explain the Reign of Terror imposed by the Jacobins in 1793-94. The older Marxist interpretation arguing the Terror was a necessary response to outside threats (in terms of other countries going to war with France) and internal threats (of traitors inside France threatening to frustrate the Revolution.) In this interpretation, as expressed by the Marxist historian Albert Soboul, Robespierre and the sans-culottes were heroes for defending the revolution from its enemies. François Furet has argued that foreign threats had little to do with the terror.[100] Instead, the extreme violence was an inherent part of the intense ideological commitment of the revolutionaries – their utopian goals required exterminating opposition. Soboul's Marxist interpretation has been largely abandoned by most historians since the 1990s. Hanson (2009) takes a middle position, recognizing the importance of the foreign enemies, and sees the terror as a contingency that was caused by the interaction of a series of complex events and the foreign threat. Hanson says the terror was not inherent in the ideology of the Revolution, but that circumstances made it necessary.[101]

Thermidorian Reaction

Main article: Thermidorian Reaction


In the wake of excesses of the Terror, the Convention approved the new "Constitution of the Year III" on 22 August 1795. A French plebiscite ratified the document, with about 1,057,000 votes for the constitution and 49,000 against.[104] The results of the voting were announced on 23 September 1795, and the new constitution took effect on 27 September 1795.[104] The new regime was called "The Directory."

The Directory (1795–1799)

Main article: French Directory



In foreign affairs, the Army at first was quite successful. It conquered Belgium and turned it into another province of France. It conquered the Netherlands, and made it a puppet state. It conquered Switzerland and most of Italy, setting up a series of puppet states. The result was glory for France, and an infusion of much needed money from the conquered lands, which also provided direct support to the French Army.

However the enemies of France, led by Britain and funded by the inexhaustible British Treasury, formed a Second Coalition in 1798 (with Britain joined by Russia the Ottoman Empire, and Austria). It scored a series of victories that rolled back French successes in Europe, retaking Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands and ending the flow of payments from the conquered areas to France. The treasury was empty. Despite his publicity that claimed many glorious victories, Napoleon's army was trapped in Egypt after the British sank the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon escaped by himself, returned to Paris and overthrew the Directory in November, 1799.

Historians have seldom praised the Directory; it was a government of self-interest rather than virtue, thus losing any claim on idealism. It never had a strong base of popular support; when elections were held, most of its candidates were defeated. Its achievements were minor.[106][107] Brown stresses the turn toward dictatorship and the failure of liberal democracy under the Directory, blaming it on, "chronic violence, ambivalent forms of justice, and repeated recourse to heavy-handed repression."[108]




Napoléon Bonaparte in the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire, which marked the end of the revolution.


The new régime met opposition from Jacobins on the left and royalists on the right (the latter were secretly subsidies by the British government). The army suppressed riots and counter-revolutionary activities. In this way the army and in particular Napoleon gained total power. In the elections of 1797 for one-third of the seats the Royalists won the great majority of seats and were poised to take control of the Directory in the next election. The Directory reacted by purging all the winners in the Coup of 18 Fructidor, banishing 57 leaders to certain death in Guiana amd closing 42 newspapers. That is, it rejected democratic elections and kept its old leaders in power.


Foreign affairs

In foreign affairs, the Army at first was quite successful. It conquered Belgium and turned it into another province of France. It conquered the Netherlands, and made it a puppet state. It conquered Switzerland and most of Italy, setting up a series of puppet states. The result was glory for France, and an infusion of much needed money from the conquered lands, which also provided direct support to the French Army. However the enemies of France, led by Britain and funded by the inexhaustible British Treasury, formed a Second Coalition in 1799 (with Britain joined by Russia the Ottoman Empire, and Austria). It scored a series of victories that rolled back French successes, and The French Army trapped in Egypt. Napoleon himself slipped through the British blockade in October 1799, returning to Paris.[114][115]

Napoleon conquered most of Italy in the name of the French Revolution in 1797-99. He consolidated old units and split up Austria's holdings. He set up a series of new republics, complete with new codes of law and abolition of old feudal privileges. Napoleon's Cisalpine Republic was centered on Milan. Genoa the city became a republic while its hinterland became the Ligurian Republic. The Roman Republic was formed out of the papal holdings while the pope himself was sent to France. The Neapolitan Republic was formed around Naples, but it lasted only five months before the enemy forces of the Coalition recaptured it. In 1805 he formed the Kingdom of Italy, with himself as king and his stepson as viceroy. In addition, France turned the Netherlands into the Batavian Republic, and Switzerland into the Helvetic Republic. All these new countries were satellites of France, and had to pay large subsidies to Paris, as well as provide military support for Napoleon's wars. Their political and administrative systems were modernized, the metric system introduced, and trade barriers reduced. Jewish ghettos were abolished. Belgium and Piedmont became integral parts of France.[116]

Most of the new nations were abolished and returned to prewar owners in 1814. However, Artz emphasizes the benefits the Italians gained from the French Revolution:




La Marseillaise

Main article: La Marseillaise
The French national anthem La Marseillaise; text in Spanish.

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English cartoon attacking the excesses of the Revolution as symbolized by the guillotine; between 18,000 and 40,000 people were executed during the Reign of Terror


Main article: Guillotine




Tricolore cockade

Main article: tricolore cockade

Cockades were widely worn by revolutionaries beginning in 1789. They now pinned the blue-and-red cockade of Paris onto the white cockade of the Ancien Régime - thus producing the original Tricolore cockade. Later, distinctive colours and styles of cockade would indicate the wearer's faction—although the meanings of the various styles were not entirely consistent, and varied somewhat by region and period.






Liberty cap



Role of women

Club of patriotic women in a church



The March to Versailles is but one example of feminist militant activism during the French Revolution. While largely left out of the thrust for increasing rights of citizens, as the question was left indeterminate in the Declaration of the Rights of Man,[132] activists such as Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt agitated for full citizenship for women.[133] Women were, nonetheless, "denied political rights of ‘active citizenship’ (1791) and democratic citizenship (1793)."[132]

On 20 June 1792 a number of armed women took part in a procession that "passed through the halls of the Legislative Assembly, into the Tuilleries Gardens, and then through the King’s residence."[134] Militant women also assumed a special role in the funeral of Marat, following his murder on 13 July 1793. As part of the funeral procession, they carried the bathtub in which Marat had been murdered (by a counter-revolutionary woman) as well as a shirt stained with Marat’s blood.[135] On 20 May 1793, women were at the fore of a crowd that demanded "bread and the Constitution of 1793." When their cries went unnoticed, the women went on a rampage, "sacking shops, seizing grain and kidnapping officials."[136]


Meanwhile, the men who controlled the Jacobins rejected the Revolutionary Republican Women as dangerous rabble-rousers. At this point the Jacobins controlled the government; they dissolved the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, and decreed that all women's clubs and associations were illegal. They sternly reminded women to stay home and tend to their families by leaving public affairs to the men. Organized women were permanently shut out of the French Revolution after October 30, 1793.[137]

Prominent women

Olympe de Gouges wrote a number of plays, short stories, and novels. Her publications emphasized that women and men are different, but this shouldn’t stop them from equality under the law. In her "Declaration on the Rights of Woman" she insisted that women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and recognition of illegitimate children.[138]



Counter-revolutionary women


When these revolutionary changes to the Church were implemented, it sparked a counter-revolutionary movement among women. Although some of these women embraced the political and social amendments of the Revolution, they opposed the dissolution of the Catholic Church and the formation of revolutionary cults like the Cult of the Supreme Being.[142] As Olwen Hufton argues, these women began to see themselves as the “defenders of faith”.[143] They took it upon themselves to protect the Church from what they saw as a heretical change to their faith, enforced by revolutionaries.


Economic policies

Early Assignat of 29 Sept, 1790: 500 livres
The value of Assignats (1789-1796)



Napoleon after 1799 paid for his expensive wars by multiple means, starting with the modernization of the rickety financial system.[150] He conscripted soldiers at low wages, raised taxes, placed large-scale loans, sold lands formerly owned by the Catholic Church, sold Louisiana to the United States, plundered conquered areas and seized food supplies, and levied requisitions on countries he controlled, such as Italy.[151]

Long-term impact

The French Revolution had a major impact on Europe and the New World.[152][153]

Otto Dann and John Dinwiddy report, "It has long been almost a truism of European history that the French Revolution gave a great stimulus to the growth of modern nationalism."[154] Nationalism was emphasized by historian Carlton J. H. Hayes as a major result of the French Revolution across Europe. The impact on French nationalism was profound. For example, Napoleon became such a heroic symbol of the nation that the glory was easily picked up by his nephew, who was overwhelmingly elected president (and later became Emperor Napoleon III).[155] The influence was great in the hundreds of small German states and elsewhere, where it was either inspired by the French example or in reaction against it.[156][157]


The changes in France were enormous; some were widely accepted and others were bitterly contested into the late 20th century.[158] Before the Revolution, the people had little power or voice. The kings had so thoroughly centralized the system that most nobles spent their time at Versailles, and thus played only a small direct role in their home districts. Thompson says that the kings had:


After the first year of revolution, this power had been stripped away. The king was a figurehead, the nobility had lost all their titles and most of their land, the Church lost its monasteries and farmlands, bishops, judges and magistrates were elected by the people, the army was almost helpless, with military power in the hands of the new revolutionary National Guard. The central elements of 1789 were the slogan "Liberty Equality ,and Fraternity' and the "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen", which Lefebvre calls, "the incarnation of the Revolution as a whole."[160]

The long term impact on France was profound, shaping politics, society, religion and ideas, and polarizing politics for more than a century. Historian François Aulard writes:


Religion and charity

The most heated controversy was over the status of the Catholic Church.[162] From a dominant position in 1788, it was almost destroyed in less than a decade, its priests and nuns turned out, its leaders dead or in exile, its property controlled by its enemies, and a strong effort underway to remove all influence of Christian religiosity, such as Sundays, holy days, saints, prayers, rituals and ceremonies. The movement to dechristianise France not only failed but aroused a furious reaction among the pious.[163][164] Napoleon's Concordat was a compromise that restored some of the Catholic Church's traditional roles but not its power, its lands or its monasteries. Priests and bishops were given salaries as part of a department of government controlled by Paris, not Rome. Protestants and Jews gained equal rights.[165] Battles over the role of religion in the public sphere, and closely related issues such as church-controlled schools, that were opened by the Revolution have never seen closure. They raged into the 20th century. By the 21st century angry debates exploded over the presence of any Muslim religious symbols in schools, such as the headscarves for which Muslim girls could be expelled. J. Christopher Soper and Joel S. Fetzer explicitly link the conflict over religious symbols in public to the French Revolution, when the target was Catholic rituals and symbols.[166]


In the ancien regime new opportunity for nuns as charitable practitioners were created by devout nobles on their own estates. The nuns provided comprehensive care for the sick poor on their patrons' estates, acting not only as nurses, but took on expanded roles as physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. During the Revolution, most of the orders of nuns were shut down and there was no organized nursing care to replace them.[167] However the demand for their nursing services remained strong, and after 1800 the sisters reappeared and resumed their work in hospitals and on rural estates. They were tolerated by officials because they had widespread support and were the link between elite male physicians and distrustful peasants who needed help.[168]



In the cities entrepreneurship on a small scale flourished, as restrictive monopolies, privileges, barriers, rules, taxes and guilds gave way. However the British blockade virtually ended overseas and colonial trade, hurting the port cities and their supply chains. Overall the Revolution did not greatly change the French business system, and probably helped freeze in place the horizons of the small business owner. The typical businessman owned a small store, mill or shop, with family help and a few paid employees; large scale industry was less common than in other industrializing nations.[172]




The Jacobin cause was picked up by Marxists in the mid-19th century, and became an element of Communist thought around the world, especially in the Soviet Union. "Gracchus" Babeuf, became a special hero.[176]

Outside France


Britain saw minority support but the majority, and especially the elite, strongly opposed the French Revolution. Britain led and funded the series of coalitions that fought France from 1793 to 1815, and then restored the Bourbons. Edmund Burke was the chief spokesman for the opposition.[177][178]



German reaction to the Revolution swung from favorable to antagonistic. At first it brought liberal and democratic ideas, the end of gilds, serfdom and the Jewish ghetto. It brought economic freedoms and agrarian and legal reform. Above all the antagonism helped stimulate and shape German nationalism.[180]


Main article: Helvetic Republic

The French invaded Switzerland and turned it into an ally known as the "Helvetic Republic," (1798–1803). The interference with localism and traditional liberties was deeply resented, although some modernizing reforms took place.[181][182]


The French invaded and controlled Belgium, 1794-1814, imposing all their new reforms and incorporating what had been the "Austrian Netherlands" and the Diocese of Liege into France. New rulers were sent in by Paris. Belgian men were drafted into the French wars and heavily taxed. Nearly everyone was Catholic, but the Church was repressed. Resistance was strong in every sector, as Belgian nationalism emerged to oppose French rule. The French legal system, however, was adopted, with its equal legal rights, and abolition of class distinctions. Belgium now had a government bureaucracy selected by merit.[183]

Antwerp regained access to the sea and grew quickly as a major port and business center. France promoted commerce and capitalism, paving the way for the ascent of the bourgeoisie and the rapid growth of manufacturing and mining. In economics, therefore, the nobility declined while the middle class Belgian entrepreneurs flourished because of their inclusion in a large market, paving the way for Belgium's leadership role after 1815 in the Industrial Revolution on the Continent.[184][185]


The Kingdom of Denmark adopted liberalizing reforms in line with those of the French Revolution, with no direct contact. Reform was gradual and the regime itself carried out agrarian reforms that had the effect of weakening absolutism by creating a class of independent peasant freeholders. Much of the initiative came from well-organized liberals who directed political change in the first half of the 19th century.[186]

United States

While it had little practical influence, the Revolution deeply polarized American politics. Despite official neutrality, Americans were deeply involved and their polarization shaped the First Party System. In 1793, as war broke out in Europe, the Jeffersonian Republican Party favored France and pointed to the 1778 treaty that was still in effect. Washington and his unanimous cabinet (including Jefferson) decided the treaty did not bind the U.S. to enter the war; instead Washington proclaimed neutrality.[187] Under President Adams, a Federalist, an undeclared naval war took place with France in 1798-99, called the "Quasi War". Jefferson became president in 1801, but was hostile to Napoleon as a dictator and emperor.

Jefferson had a direct influence on the opening stage of the French Revolution. The broad similarities but different experiences between the French and American revolutions lead to a certain kinship between France and the United States, with both countries seeing themselves as pioneers of liberty and promoting republican ideals.


By the year 2000, many historians were saying that the field of the French Revolution was an intellectual disarray. The old model or paradigm focusing on class conflict has been discredited, and no new explanatory model had gained widespread support.[188][189] Nevertheless, as Spang has shown, there persists a very widespread agreement to the effect that the French Revolution was the watershed between the premodern and modern eras of Western history.[190]

The French Revolution has received enormous amounts of historical attention, both from the general public and from scholars and academics. The views of historians, in particular, have been characterized as falling along ideological lines, with disagreement over the significance and the major developments of the Revolution.[191] Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the Revolution was a manifestation of a more prosperous middle class becoming conscious of its social importance.[192]

Other thinkers, like the conservative Edmund Burke, maintained that the Revolution was the product of a few conspiratorial individuals who brainwashed the masses into subverting the old order—a claim rooted in the belief that the revolutionaries had no legitimate complaints.[193] Other historians, influenced by Marxist thinking, have emphasized the importance of the peasants and the urban workers in presenting the Revolution as a gigantic class struggle.[194] In general, scholarship on the French Revolution initially studied the political ideas and developments of the era, but it has gradually shifted towards social history that analyzes the impact of the Revolution on individual lives.[195]


Some historians argue that the French people underwent a fundamental transformation in self-identity, evidenced by the elimination of privileges and their replacement by rights as well as the growing decline in social deference that highlighted the principle of equality throughout the Revolution.[198] The Revolution represented the most significant and dramatic challenge to political absolutism up to that point in history and spread democratic ideals throughout Europe and ultimately the world.[199] Throughout the 19th Century, the revolution was heavily analyzed by economists and political scientists, who saw the class nature of the revolution as a fundamental aspect in understanding human social evolution itself. This, combined with the egalitarian values introduced by the revolution, gave rise to a classless and co-operative model for society called "socialism" which profoundly influenced future revolutions in France and around the world.

See also

Political clubs during the French Revolution


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  190. ^ Rebecca L. Spang, "Paradigms and Paranoia."
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Further reading

see also Historiography of the French Revolution

Surveys and reference

  • Aulard, François-Alphonse. The French Revolution, a Political History, 1789-1804 (4 vol. 1910); famous classic; volume 1 1789-1792 online; Volume 2 1792-95 online
  • Gershoy, Leo. The Era of the French Revolution, 1789-1799 (1957), brief summary with some primary sources
  • Soboul, Albert. The French Revolution, 1787-1799: From the storming of the Bastille to Napoleon (1975)

European and Atlantic History

  • Brinton, Crane. A Decade of Revolution 1789-1799 (1934) the Revolution in European context
  • Goodwin, A., ed. The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 8: The American and French Revolutions, 1763-93 (1965), 764pp
  • Palmer, R. R. "The World Revolution of the West: 1763-1801," Political Science Quarterly (1954) 69#1 pp. 1–14 in JSTOR

Politics and wars

  • Desan, Suzanne. "Internationalizing the French Revolution," French Politics, Culture & Society (2011) 29#2 pp 137–160.
  • Rothenberg, Gunther E. (Spring 1988). "The Origins, Causes, and Extension of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon". Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (4): 771–793. JSTOR 204824. 

Economy and society

  • Andress, David. French Society in Revolution, 1789-1799 (1999)
  • Tackett, Timothy, "The French Revolution and religion to 1794," and Suzanne Desan, "The French Revolution and religion, 1795-1815," in Stewart J. Brown and Timothy Tackett, eds. The Cambridge History of Christianity vol. 7 (Cambridge UP, 2006).


  • Hufton, Olwen. "Women in Revolution 1789-1796" Past & Present (1971) No. 53 pp. 90–108 in JSTOR
  • Hufton, Olwen. "In Search of Counter-Revolutionary Women.” The French Revolution: Recent debates and New Controversies Ed. Gary Kates. (1998) pp 302–36
  • Kelly, Linda. Women of the French Revolution (1987) 192 pp biographical portraits or prominent writers and activists
  • Roessler, Shirley Elson. Out of the Shadows: Women and Politics in the French Revolution, 1789-95 (Peter Lang, 1998) online

Historiography and memory

  • Andress, David. "Interpreting the French Revolution," Teaching History (2013), Issue 150, pp 28–29, very short summary
  • Desan, Suzanne. "What's after Political Culture? Recent French Revolutionary Historiography," French Historical Studies (2000) 23#1 pp 163–196.
  • Furet, François and Mona Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989), 1120pp; long essays by scholars; strong on history of ideas and historiography (esp pp 881–1034 excerpt and text search
  • McPhee, Peter, ed. (2012). A Companion to the French Revolution. Wiley. ; 540pp; 30 essays by experts; emphasis on historiography and memory

Primary sources

External links

Preceded by
The Old Regime
French Revolution
Succeeded by
French First Republic