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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1789–1799)
1
...
The causes of the French Revolution, though, are difficult to pin down: based on
the historical evidence that exists, a fairly compelling argument could be made regarding any
number of factors
...

The Seven Years’ War in Europe and the American Revolution across the ocean had a profound
effect on the French psyche and made the Western world a volatile one
...
The costs of
waging war, supporting allies, and maintaining the French army quickly depleted a French bank that
was already weakened from royal extravagance
...

Ultimately, these various problems within late-1700s France weren’t so much the immediate causes
of the Revolution as they were the final catalyst
...
Moreover, these exclusive titles—most of
which had been purchased and passed down through families—essentially placed their bearers
above the law and exempted them from taxes
...
The French Revolution was thus a battle to achieve equality and remove
oppression—concerns far more deep-seated and universal than the immediate economic turbulence
France was experiencing at the time
...
Nonetheless, the Revolution won the public a number of
other victories, both tangible and intangible
...
The new tax system remained devoid of the influence of
privilege, so that every man paid his share according to personal wealth
...
That’s not to say
that all was well: French industry struggled for years after the Revolution to regain a foothold in
such a drastically different environment
...

Other European governments and rulers, however, were not too happy with the French after the
Revolution
...

Though there had been other internal revolutions in European countries, few were as massive and
convoluted as the French Revolution, which empowered citizens everywhere and resulted in a
considerable leap toward the end of oppression throughout Europe
...
Summary of Events:
Feudalism and Unfair Taxation

No one factor was directly responsible for the French Revolution
...
Noting a downward
economic spiral in the late 1700s, King Louis XVI brought in a number of financial advisors to
review the weakened French treasury
...

Finally, the king realized that this taxation problem really did need to be addressed, so he appointed
a new controller general of finance, Charles de Calonne, in 1783
...
The nobility refused, even after
Calonne pleaded with them during the Assembly of Notables in 1787
...

The Estates-General

In a final act of desperation, Louis XVI decided in 1789 to convene the Estates-General, an ancient
assembly consisting of three different estates that each represented a portion of the French
population
...
However,
since two of the three estates—the clergy and the nobility—were tax-exempt, the attainment of any
such solution was unlikely
...
Feuds quickly broke out over this disparity and would prove to be
irreconcilable
...
Within days of the announcement, many members of the
other two estates had switched allegiances over to this revolutionary new assembly
...
The National
Assembly’s revolutionary spirit galvanized France, manifesting in a number of different ways
...
In the countryside,
peasants and farmers revolted against their feudal contracts by attacking the manors and estates of
their landlords
...
Shortly
thereafter, the assembly released theDeclaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which
established a proper judicial code and the autonomy of the French people
...
A rift slowly grew between the radical and moderate assembly members,
while the common laborers and workers began to feel overlooked
...
The moderate Girondins took a stance
in favor of retaining the constitutional monarchy, while the radical Jacobins wanted the king
completely out of the picture
...
In response, they issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which insisted that
the French return Louis XVI to the throne
...


The Reign of Terror

The first acts of the newly named National Convention were the abolition of the monarchy and the
declaration of France as a republic
...
Despite the creation of the Committee of Public Safety, the war with
Austria and Prussia went poorly for France, and foreign forces pressed on into French territory
...

Backed by the newly approved Constitution of 1793, Robespierre and the Committee of Public
Safety began conscripting French soldiers and implementing laws to stabilize the economy
...
But Robespierre, growing increasingly
paranoid about counterrevolutionary influences, embarked upon a Reign of Terror in late 1793–
1794, during which he had more than 15,000 people executed at the guillotine
...

The Thermidorian Reaction and the Directory

The era following the ousting of Robespierre was known as the Thermidorian Reaction, and a
period of governmental restructuring began, leading to the newConstitution of 1795 and a
significantly more conservative National Convention
...
Though it had no legislative abilities, the
Directory’s abuse of power soon came to rival that of any of the tyrannous revolutionaries France
had faced
...

French armies, especially those led by young generalNapoleon Bonaparte, were making progress in
nearly every direction
...
In the face of this rout, and having received word of political upheavals in
France, Napoleon returned to Paris
...
With
Napoleon at the helm, the Revolution ended, and France entered a fifteen-year period of military
rule
...
Key People & Terms:
People
Napoleon Bonaparte

A general in the French army and leader of the 1799 coup that overthrew theDirectory
...

Jacques-Pierre Brissot

A member of the Legislative Assembly and National Convention who held a moderate stance and
believed in the idea of a constitutional monarchy
...
After unsuccessfully
declaring war on Austria and Prussia, Brissot was removed from the National Convention and, like

many Girondin leaders, lost his life at the guillotine during the Reign of Terror in 1793–1794
...
Calonne proposed a daring plan to shift the French tax burden from the poor to
wealthy nobles and businessmen, suggesting a tax on land proportional to land values and a
lessened tax burden for peasants
...

Lazare Carnot

A French soldier appointed by the Committee of Public Safety to help reorganize the failing war
effort against Austria and Prussia
...
Although he was removed from
this position during the overthrow of September 4, 1797, he went on to hold various posts in future
governments
...
The common
people of France revered Lafayette as an idealistic man who was dedicated to liberty and the
principles of the Revolution
...

Louis XVI

The French king from 1774 to 1792 who was deposed during the French Revolution and executed
in 1793
...
Because this massive debt overwhelmed all of his
financial consultants, Louis XVI was forced to give in to the demands of the Parlement of Paris and
convene theEstates-General—an action that led directly to the outbreak of the Revolution
...

Marie-Antoinette

The wife of King Louis XVI and, in the French commoners’ eyes, the primary symbol of the French
royalty’s extravagance and excess
...

Jacques Necker

A Swiss-born banker who served as France’s director general of finance in the late 1770s, with high
hopes of instituting reform
...
He did produce a government budget, however, for the first time in
French history
...
As
chairman of the Committee of Public Safety, Robespierre pursued a planned economy and vigorous
mobilization for war
...
After the moderates regained power and
theThermidorian Reaction was under way, they had Robespierre executed on July 28, 1794
...

Terms
August Decrees

A series of decrees issued by the National Assembly in August 1789 that successfully suppressed
the Great Fear by releasing all peasants from feudal contracts
...
The storming of the Bastille had little practical
consequence, but it was an enormous symbolic act against the ancien régime, inspired the
revolutionaries, and is still celebrated today as the French holiday Bastille Day
...
The bourgeoisie
represented the moderate voices during the French Revolution and were represented by delegates in
both the Estates-General and the National Assembly
...
The document angered the pope and church officials and turned many French
Catholics against the revolutionaries
...
Although the committee led off its tenure with an impressive war effort and economysalvaging initiatives, things took a turn for the worse when Robespierre began his violent Reign of
Terror in late 1793
...
Under the new
constitution, King Louis XVI could only temporarily veto legislation passed by the assembly
...

Declaration of Pillnitz

An August 27, 1791, warning from Prussia and Austria announcing that they would intervene
militarily in France if any harm came to King Louis XVI, who had just been captured trying to
escape with his family from Paris
...


Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

A document, issued by the National Assembly on August 26, 1789, that granted sovereignty to all
French people
...
”
Directory

The new executive branch established by the constitution written during the moderate Thermidorian
Reaction of 1794–1795
...
However, after
1797 election results proved unfavorable to elements in the Directory, it orchestrated an overthrow
of the assembly and maintained dubious control over France until it was overthrown by Napoleon
Bonaparte in 1799
...
Consisting of
three estates—the clergy, nobility, andcommoners, respectively—the Estates-General was the only
group that would be able to force the assorted French parlements into accepting the controller
general of finance Charles de Calonne’s tax decrees
...
The Girondins controlled the
legislative assembly until 1793, when, with the war going poorly and food shortages hurting French
peasants, the Jacobins ousted them from power
...

Jacobins

The radical wing of representatives in the National Convention, named for their secret meeting
place in the Jacobin Club, in an abandoned Paris monastery
...
The Jacobins took control of the convention, and France itself, from 1793 to
1794
...

Limited Monarchy

Also known as constitutional monarchy, a system of government in which a king or queen reigns as
head of state but with power that is limited by real power lying in a legislature and an
independent court system
...
In France, the Bourbon family held the monarchy, with Louis XVI as
king at the time of the Revolution
...
As a body,
the National Assembly claimed to legitimately represent the French population
...

National Convention

The body that replaced the Legislative Assembly following a successful election in 1792
...
Though originally dominated by moderates, the
convention became controlled by radical Jacobins in 1793
...
The parlements held the
power of recording royal decrees, meaning that if a parlement refused to record an edict, the edict
would never be implemented in that district
...
The Reign of Terror ended with the fall of Robespierre, who was arrested
and executed in July 1794
...

Sans-culottes

Urban workers and peasants, whose name—literally, “without culottes,” the knee-breeches that the
privileged wore—signified their wish to distinguish themselves from the high classes
...

Tennis Court Oath

A June 20, 1789, oath sworn by members of the Third Estate who had just formed the National
Assembly and were locked out of the meeting of the Estates-General
...

Thermidorian Reaction

The post–Reign of Terror period ushered in by the execution of Maximilien Robespierre in July
1794 and the reassertion of moderate power over the French Revolution
...

Third Estate

One of the three estates in the Estates-General, consisting of the commoners of France, whether rich
merchants or poor peasants
...
Frustrated with its political
impotence, the Third Estate broke from the Estates-General on June 17, 1789, and declared itself
the National Assembly
...
The point of removing the royal family to
Paris was to allow the people to keep a close watch on their actions
...
Known for its extraordinary
splendor, extravagance, and immense size, Versailles was the home of the king, queen, and all
members of the royal family, along with high government officials and select nobles
...


4
...
France had long subscribed to the idea of divine right, which maintained that kings were
selected by God and thus perpetually entitled to the throne
...

In addition, there was no universal law in France at the time
...
Moreover,
each of those sovereign courts had to approve any royal decrees by the king if these decrees were to
come into effect
...
Ironically, this “checks and balances” system operated
in a government rife with corruption and operating without the support of the majority
...
They bound the French peasantry into
compromising feudal obligations and refused to contribute any tax revenue to the French
government
...

France’s Debt Problems
A number of ill-advised financial maneuvers in the late 1700s worsened the financial situation of
the already cash-strapped French government
...
Aggravating the situation was the fact that the government had a sizable
army and navy to maintain, which was an expenditure of particular importance during those volatile
times
...
These decades of
fiscal irresponsibility were one of the primary factors that led to the French Revolution
...

Charles de Calonne
Finally, in the early 1780s, France realized that it had to address the problem, and fast
...
Then, in 1786, the French
government, worried about unrest should it to try to raise taxes on the peasants, yet reluctant to ask
the nobles for money, approached various European banks in search of a loan
...

Louis XVI asked Calonne to evaluate the situation and propose a solution
...
Independent
accountants had been put in charge of various tasks regarding the acquisition and distribution of
government funds, which made the tracking of such transactions very difficult
...
As for raising new money, the only system in place
was taxation
...
The nobility were tax-exempt,
and the parlements would never agree to across-the-board tax increases
...
This gathering,
dubbed the Assembly of Notables, turned out to be a virtual who’s who of people who didn’t want
to pay any taxes
...
Unsurprisingly, the notables refused both
plans and turned against Calonne, questioning the validity of his work
...

Revolution on the Horizon
By the late 1780s, it was becoming increasingly clear that the system in place under the Old Regime
in France simply could not last
...

Furthermore, as the result of the Enlightenment, secularism was spreading in France, religious
thought was becoming divided, and the religious justifications for rule—divine right and absolutism
—were losing credibility
...
Rather, the royals and nobles adhered even more firmly to tradition and
archaic law
...


The Bourgeoisie
Although many accounts of the French Revolution focus on the French peasantry’s grievances—
rising food prices, disadvantageous feudal contracts, and general mistreatment at the hands of the
aristocracy—these factors actually played a limited role in inciting the Revolution
...
Rather, it was
the wealthy commoners—the bourgeoisie—who objected most vocally to the subpar treatment they
were receiving
...
Although many of the wealthier members of the bourgeoisie
had more money than some of the French nobles, they lacked elite titles and thus were subjected to
the same treatment and taxation as even the poorest peasants
...


5
...
After assessing the situation,
Necker insisted that Louis XVI call together theEstates-General, a French congress that originated
in the medieval period and consisted of three estates
...

On May 5, 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General
...
Although Louis XVI granted the Third Estate greater numerical representation,
the Parlement of Paris stepped in and invoked an old rule mandating that each estate receive one
vote, regardless of size
...
Inevitably, the Third Estate’s vote was
overridden by the combined votes of the clergy and nobility
...
The First and Second Estates—clergy and nobility, respectively—
were too closely related in many matters
...
As a result, their votes often went the same way, automatically neutralizing
any effort by the Third Estate
...
There were numerous philosophers in France
speaking out against religion and the mindless following that it supposedly demanded, and many
resented being forced to follow the decisions of the church on a national scale
...
These disparities between members of the Third
Estate made it difficult for the wealthy members to relate to the peasants with whom they were
grouped
...
It was only through the efforts of men such as EmmanuelJoseph Sieyès (see below) that the members of the Third Estate finally realized that fighting among
themselves was fruitless and that if they took advantage of the estate’s massive size, they would be
a force that could not be ignored
...
Necker tried to placate the Third Estate
into tolerating these slights until some progress could be made, but his diplomatic efforts
accomplished little
...

The most famous effort was a pamphlet written by liberal clergy memberEmmanuel-Joseph
Sieyès titled “What Is the Third Estate?” In response to his own question, Sieyès answered, “The
Nation
...
Sieyès’s pamphlet compelled the
Third Estate to action, inciting the masses to take matters into their own hands if the aristocracy
failed to give them due respect
...
Seeing that neither the king nor the other estates would acquiesce to its
requests, the Third Estate began to organize within itself and recruit actively from the other estates
...
In so doing, it also granted
itself control over taxation
...

Blaming the Aristocracy
Although the reconvening of the Estates-General presented France’s aristocracy and clergy with a
perfect opportunity to appease the Third Estate and maintain control, they focused only on
maintaining the dominance of their respective estates rather than address the important issues that
plagued the country
...
The entire Revolution might have
been avoided had the first two estates simply acquiesced to some of the Third Estate’s moderate
proposals
...


5
...
There, all but one of the members took the Tennis Court Oath, which
stated simply that the group would remain indissoluble until it had succeeded in creating a new
national constitution
...
The assembly,
however, had grown too strong, and the king was forced to recognize the group
...
Inspired by the
National Assembly, commoners rioted in protest of rising prices
...

The Bastille
Blaming him for the failure of the Estates-General, Louis XVI once again dismissed Director
General of Finance Jacques Necker
...
In light of the rising tension, a scramble
for arms broke out, and on July 13, 1789, revolutionaries raided the Paris town hall in pursuit of
arms
...
The next day, upon realizing that it
contained a large armory, citizens on the side of the National Assembly stormed the Bastille, a
medieval fortress and prison in Paris
...
The revolutionaries faced little immediate threat and had such

intimidating numbers that they were capable of nonviolent coercion
...

Lafayette and the National Guard
As the assembly secured control over the capital, it seemed as if peace might still prevail: the
previous governmental council was exiled, and Necker was reinstated
...
To bolster the defense of the assembly, the Marquis de Lafayette, a noble,
assembled a collection of citizens into the French National Guard
...

The Great Fear
For all the developments that were taking place in Paris, the majority of the conflicts erupted in the
struggling countryside
...
After hearing word of the Third
Estate’s mistreatment by the Estates-General, and feeding off of the infectious revolutionary spirit
that permeated France, the peasants amplified their attacks in the countryside over the span of a few
weeks, sparking a hysteria dubbed the Great Fear
...
Peasants attacked country manors and estates, in some cases burning them down in an
attempt to escape their feudal obligations
...
In an effort to quell the destruction, the assembly issued the August
Decrees, which nullified many of the feudal obligations that the peasants had to their landlords
...

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
Just three weeks later, on August 26, 1789, the assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen, a document that guaranteed due process in judicial matters and established
sovereignty among the French people
...
Not surprisingly, the French people embraced the declaration, while the king and
many nobles did not
...

Although subsequent French constitutions that the Revolution produced would be overturned and
generally ignored, the themes of the Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen would remain
with the French citizenry in perpetuity
...

Shouldering the burden of feeding their families, it was the French women who took up arms on
October 5, 1789
...
Numbering several thousand, the mob marched to Versailles, followed by the National Guard,
which accompanied the women to protect them
...
The next day, having little

choice, the royal family accompanied the crowd back to Paris
...
Everyday people in France had limited interaction with royalty and instead
placed blame for the country’s problems on the shoulders of local nobility
...
It was partly owing to this perspective that the assembly attempted to establish a
constitutional monarchy alongside the king, rather than simply oust him and rule the nation itself
...
A number of them targeted the Catholic Church, which
was at the time one of the largest landholders in France
...
In the beginning, at least, the assignat financed the Revolution and acted as an
indicator of the economy’s strength
...
The country was divided into eighty-three departments, each of which was governed
by an elected official and represented by an elected bishop
...

The Assembly’s Tenuous Control
Despite the National Assembly’s progress, weaknesses were already being exposed within France,
and the Great Fear and the women’s march on Versailles demonstrated that perhaps the assembly
didn’t have as much control as it liked to think
...
Although the August Decrees helped assuage the peasants’
anger, their dissatisfaction would become a recurring problem
...

Most notable among the assembly’s controversial priorities was its treatment of the churches
...
By dissolving the authority of churches, especially the Catholic
Church—a move that greatly angered the pope—the assembly seemed to signal to the religious
French that they had to make a choice: God or the Revolution
...


6
...
In late June 1791, Louis XVI and his family attempted to escape to the Austrian border,
where they were supposed to meet the Austrian army and arrange an attack on the revolutionaries
...

This escape attempt considerably weakened the king’s position and lowered his regard in the eyes
of the French people
...
The king’s attempt to run away, however, made it clear to skeptics that he
was a reluctant associate at best and would turn his back on the constitution and its system of
limited monarchy at any moment
...
The more moderate
revolutionaries, who once were staunch proponents of the constitutional monarchy, found
themselves hard-pressed to defend a situation in which a monarch was abandoning his
responsibilities
...

The Declaration of Pillnitz
In response to Louis XVI’s capture and forced return to Paris, Prussia and Austria issued
the Declaration of Pillnitz on August 27, 1791, warning the French against harming the king and
demanding that the monarchy be restored
...

Prussia and Austria’s initial concern was simply for Louis XVI’s well-being, but soon the countries
began to worry that the French people’s revolutionary sentiment would infect their own citizens
...


The Constitution of 1791
In September 1791, the National Assembly released its much-anticipatedConstitution of 1791,
which created a constitutional monarchy, or limited monarchy, for France
...
The
constitution also succeeded in eliminating the nobility as a legal order and struck down monopolies
and guilds
...

The Jacobins and Girondins
Divisions quickly formed within the new Legislative Assembly, which coalesced into two main
camps
...
The Jacobins found Louis’s actions contemptible and wanted to forgo the
constitutional monarchy and declare France a republic
...
The most notable of these
moderates was Jacques-Pierre Brissot
...

Many historians have attributed the rivalry of the Jacobins and Girondins to class differences,
labeling the Jacobins the poorer, less prestigious of the two groups
...
The Jacobins were modern urban idealists: they wanted change and independence
from any semblance of the ancien régime
...
But the Jacobins, though wanting independence and equality, were
more conservative and loyal and harbored less contempt for the monarchy
...

The Sansculottes
Meanwhile, in cities throughout France, a group called the sans-culottes began to wield significant
and unpredictable influence
...
The sans-culottes consisted
mainly of urban laborers, peasants, and other French poor who disdained the nobility and wanted to
see an end to privilege
...

War Against Austria and Prussia
Although the Girondin leader, Brissot, wanted Louis XVI to remain in power, he felt threatened by
the Declaration of Pillnitz and rallied the Legislative Assembly todeclare war against Austria on
April 20, 1792
...
The French army, unprepared as it was for the battle, was trounced
and fled, leaving the country vulnerable to counterattack
...
In response, a mob of
Girondins marched on Tuileries on June 20 and demanded that Brissot be reinstated
...


The Storming of Tuileries
Just weeks later, on August 10, anti-monarchy Jacobins rallied together a loyal crew of sans-culottes
that stormed Tuileries outright, trashing the palace and capturing Louis XVI and his family as they
tried to escape
...
A month after that, beginning on
September 2, 1792, the hysterical sans-culottes, having heard rumors of counterrevolutionary talk,
raided Paris’s prisons and murdered more than 1,000 prisoners
...
Members of this group were easily swayed and often fell into
bouts of mob hysteria, which made them extraordinarily difficult to manage
...

The Girondins, who had originally rallied the sans-culottes to their cause, quickly found that the
rabble was more radical than they had expected
...
The group,
after all, consisted of poor workers and peasants who wanted privilege outright eliminated
...
Having gained their freedom
from monarchial oppression, the sans-culottes switched their cry from “Liberty!” to “Equality!”
Failures of the Legislative Assembly
Arguably, the Legislative Assembly’s complacency in 1792 opened the door to the violence that
followed
...
But the confidence bred by this success was misleading: the assembly had not organized an
army that was capable of taking on the combined forces of Austria and Prussia, nor had it
sufficiently calmed its own internal feuds
...
Even more peculiar was the fact that
Brissot and his Girondin associates were radical enough to want to go to war, yet conservative
enough to do so only under the rule of a constitutional monarch—the same monarch over whom the
war was being fought
...


7
...
In late
September, therefore, the first election took place under the rules of the Constitution of 1791
...
The first action of
the convention, on September 21, 1792, was to abolish the monarchy
...

The Execution of Louis XVI
As a sign of the republic’s newfound resolve and contempt for the monarchy, the next proposal
before the National Convention was the execution of Louis XVI
...
Louis XVI was ultimately found
guilty of treason and, on January 21, 1793, executed at the guillotine
...

Symbolically speaking, the declaration of sovereignty and the beheading of the monarch were
powerful motivators within France
...

The Committee of Public Safety
In the weeks after the execution of the king, the internal and external wars in France continued to
grow
...
Unable to assemble an army out of the disgruntled and
protesting peasants, the Girondin-led National Convention started to panic
...

The Jacobins’ Coup
The Committee of Public Safety followed a moderate course after its creation but proved weak and
ineffective
...
They stormed the National Convention and accused the Girondins of representing the
aristocracy
...


Once again, the sans-culottes proved to be a formidable force in effecting change during the
Revolution
...
Sieyès had originally rallied the Third Estate by reminding them that
they numbered many and that their numbers gave them strength
...

The Constitution of 1793
Yet another new constitution, the Constitution of 1793, premiered in June
...
Among the changes was the suspension of many
clauses of the new constitution
...

Although Robespierre soon resorted to extreme measures, his tenure as chairman of the Committee
of Public Safety actually began on a productive note
...
Though he was a lawyer, Robespierre
had a middle-class upbringing and could relate to the sans-culottes
...

Carnot and the Military
In August, military strategist Lazare Carnot was appointed head of the French war effort and
immediately set about instituting conscription throughout France
...
Carnot’s effort succeeded, and the
newly refreshed army managed to push back the invading Austrian and Prussian forces and
reestablish France’s traditional boundaries
...
What began as a proactive approach to reclaiming the nation quickly turned
bloody as the government instituted its infamous campaign against internal opposition known as
the Reign of Terror
...
The committee targeted even those who shared many Jacobin views but were
perceived as just slightly too radical or conservative
...

During the nine-month period that followed, anywhere from 15,000 to 50,000 French citizens were
beheaded at the guillotine
...
When Danton wavered
in his conviction, questioned Robespierre’s increasingly rash actions, and tried to arrange a truce
between France and the warring countries, he himself lost his life to the guillotine, in April 1794
...
Rather than galvanize his supporters and the revolutionary nation, the Reign of Terror instead
prompted a weakening on every front
...
As the mortuaries started
to fill up, the commoners shifted their focus from equality to peace
...
” The final straw was
his proposal of a “Republic of Virtue,” which would entail a move away from the morals of
Christianity and into a new set of values
...
Receiving the same treatment that he had mandated for his enemies, he lost his head at
the guillotine the following day
...

The Thermidorian Reaction
With Robespierre out of the picture, a number of the bourgeoisie who had been repressed under the
Reign of Terror—many of them Girondins—burst back onto the scene at the National
Convention in the late summer of 1794
...

However, the moderate and conservative initiatives that the convention subsequently implemented
were aimed at the bourgeoisie and undid real accomplishments that Robespierre and his regime had
achieved for the poor
...

Thisinflation hit the poor hard, and the peasants attempted yet another revolt
...


8
...
The change was so drastic that once-powerful groups like the sans-culottes and Jacobins were
forced underground, and sans-culottes even became a derisive term in France
...

Although the members of the convention worked diligently to try to establish a new constitution,
they faced opposition at every turn
...
Likewise,
the Comte de Provence, the younger brother of Louis XVI, declared himself next in line for the
throne and, taking the name Louis XVIII, declared to France that royalty would return
...
)
The Constitution of 1795 and the Directory
On August 22, 1795, the convention was finally able to ratify a new constitution, the Constitution of
1795, which ushered in a period of governmental restructuring
...
Fearing influence
from the left, the convention decreed that two-thirds of the members of the first new legislature had
to have already served on the National Convention between 1792 and 1795
...
Although the Directory would have no legislative power,
it would have the authority to appoint people to fill the other positions within the government,
which was a source of considerable power in itself
...

The dilemma facing the new Directory was a daunting one: essentially, it had to rid the scene of
Jacobin influence while at the same time prevent royalists from taking advantage of the disarray and
reclaiming the throne
...
In theory, the
new government closely resembled that of the United States, with its checks-and-balances system
...
Ultimately, paranoia and attempts at overprotection weakened the group
...
While the foundation of the Directory was being laid, the
army, having successfully defended France against invasion from Prussia and Austria, kept right on
going, blazing its way into foreign countries and annexing land
...
Napoleon Bonaparte, a young Corsican
in charge of French forces in Italy and then Egypt, won considerable fame for himself with a series
of brilliant victories and also amassed massive reservoirs of wealth and support as he tore through
Europe
...
A large, victorious
French army lowered unemployment within France and guaranteed soldiers a steady paycheck to
buy the goods they needed to survive
...


Abuses by the Directory
Unfortunately, it was not long before the Directory began to abuse its power
...

Although these royalists didn’t exactly qualify as counterrevolutionaries, their loyalty to the
Directory was nevertheless suspect
...
Already
troubled by the 1795 election results, the Directory squashed the coup plot, had the conspirators
arrested, and had Babeuf guillotined
...
On the other hand, the Directory had to obey the Constitution of 1795 and its
mandate for annual elections
...

However, on September 4, 1797, after the elections did indeed produce decidedly pro-royal and proJacobin results, three members of the Directory orchestrated an overthrow of the
legislature, annulling the election results and removing a majority of the new deputies from their
seats
...

Popular Discontent
This new Directory was powerfully conservative, initiating strong new financial policies and
cracking down on radicalism through executions and other means
...
In the elections of 1798, the left made gains, feeding on public
anger about the coup and the reinstatement of the military draft
...
Public dissatisfaction
was an obvious result, and the next elections would have the lowest turnout of any during the
Revolution
...
Trust and faith in the government neared an
all-time low
...
In
1799, Napoleon’s seemingly unstoppable forward progress ran into a roadblock in Egypt, and
France’s army in general faced simultaneous threats from Britain, Austria, Russia, and the Ottoman
Empire
...

Sieyès and the Coup of 1799
The failing war efforts amplified the French people’s distrust of the Directory, and large majorities
of the French public began calling for peace at home and abroad
...
This election was the result of extensive maneuvering on
Sieyès’s part
...
Therefore, he enlisted the
aid of Napoleon, with whom he began to plan a military coup to topple the very same Directory on
which Sieyès himself served
...
The next day, Napoleon dissolved the legislature
and instituted himself as first consul, the leader of a military dictatorship
...

Reasons for the Coup
Although it was the Directory that had encouraged the French army’s actions, ultimately, the army’s
unprecedented success in its outward expansion actually ended up working against the Directory
rather than for it
...
By splitting the spoils of each successful campaign with his own troops, Napoleon
earned the steadfast devotion of what amounted to a private army
...

Sieyès’s political maneuvering may seem inexplicable at first, as he essentially finagled his way
into power in the Directory just so he could use that power to remove himself from it
...
To Sieyès, it was clear that, at
the time, a military rule under the watch of someone such as Napoleon would be far more beneficial
to France than the argumentative, corrupt, and generally ineffective system that was in place
...


Study Questions
1
...
Support or refute this statement
...

Although the National Assembly was the governing body during the early stages of the Revolution,
it had little control over the symbolic events that incited revolutionary fervor, such as the storming
of the Bastille, the Great Fear, and the women’s march on Versailles
...

Although many accounts of the French Revolution focus on the actions of the

Later in the Revolution, the sans-culottes continued to prove influential, as they were involved in
the storming of Tuileries, which led to King Louis XVI’s deposition, and stormed the National
Convention, which gave Robespierre and the Jacobins the opportunity to take control
...
Nevertheless, in the crucial early and middle stages of the
Revolution, the sans-culottes proved to be remarkably effective at forcing change—change that
otherwise might not have occurred
...


Although the financial crisis of the ancien régime was the immediate spark that set off the French
Revolution, which broader factors within France contributed to the Revolution?
In adhering to an outdated and essentially baseless feudal system, the aristocracy and monarchy of
France provided the true impetus for the French Revolution
...

Perhaps most destabilizing factor was the growing class disparity between the emerging wealthy
bourgeoisie and the old nobility
...
As the nobility continued to try to claim special privileges over their
hardworking bourgeoisie counterparts, it was inevitable that the bourgeoisie would grow angry and
resentful
...
Simply put, with Enlightenment ideas spreading through France in the late 1700s, it became
increasingly obvious that the French nobility wielded a disproportionate amount of power and
privilege for no apparent reason
...

3
...

resulting in the installation of a limited or constitutional monarchy
...

The credibility of the monarch, however, was suspect
...
Jacques-Pierre Brissot and his followers, the Girondins, had sought a
constitutional monarchy since the very beginning of the Revolution—much to the chagrin of the
radical democratic Jacobins—and had constructed the 1791 constitution around the principle of
limited monarchy
...
This development made it
difficult, if not impossible, for Brissot and the Girondins to defend their pro–constitutional
monarchy stance
...
With
Louis XVI having destroyed the credibility of the proposed constitutional monarchy, there was little
to prevent the radicals from declaring France a republic, as the Girondins could no longer justify
any other feasible form of government

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