Thesis statement
The French Revolution was a result of the worse condition of the French monarchy. It was one of the highly influential and well known incidents of the French History. The country ended up in huge debts and economic depression which made the French to fight for social, economic, radical and political changes in France.
Introduction
French Revolution is one of the remarkable events of European History which took place from 1789 ended in 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte took the power in France. Before the revolution, France was under the reign of Kings and was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. It was under the rule of King, his ministers’ council and the parliament. Under the governance of King Louis VI, the country had gone into debt. There was a rise in price of commodities which even left the poor with hunger and starvation. In addition to that, the Roman Catholic Church which was the owner of the land in most of the parts of France incorporated high taxes on the crops which hurt the people further more. Then came up a situation in which the middle and the poor classes started disliking the king. They started comparing the then France to other countries, like America which at the same time gained Independence, people like them had more influence on the government. They also wanted freedom of religion.
Body of the paper
Before the Revolution, France was in a declining state. The gap between the rich and the poor was increasing rapidly, and the country was in state of financial crisis and extreme debt due to the participation in the Seven years war and the American Revolution. The French nobles used their power impose very high and unfair taxes on the poor to recover the debt.
Before the revolution, France was divided into three Estates with their own status and role to play in the country. The First Estate involved the religious people; the Second involved all the nobles. These two Estates had many privileges, and were the wealthiest, but were only a small piece of the entire population. The Third Estate was the largest group that involved the common public. In order to recover the debts left to the country by the Seven Years War, the then King Louis XVI increased taxes on all landowners and the general public in the Third Estate. Due to high taxes, the price on bread and other commodities increased which left the people impatient. When the country was already facing huge debt, King Louis VI announced a war against the British.To tackle this situation, The Estates-General called for an assembly where representatives of the three Estates could discuss what to do. This assembly left the Third Estate with disappointment as the First and Second Estates modified the rules of the voting system to their advantage. Thus the Third Estate broke away and declared itself the National Assembly, which was a direct offence to King Louis XVI. The National Assembly created a law that would give it the power to decide on taxes and decided to meet. However, this meeting was banned by the King. This led to the Tennis Court Oath and a number of nobles from the Second Estate started joining the National Assembly. Louis VI feared that this mass riot may bring dangerous consequences to his power and wanted to teach the National Assembly a lesson. He fired the minister Jacques Necker and brought foreigner soldiers but nothing worked out.
King Louis VI, out of fear of a revolt, advised some representatives from the First and Second Estates to join the National Assembly and changed the name to National Constituent Assembly. When the king brought foreign soldiers in to France and fired Jacques Necker, the people of the Third Estate went aggressive against the King. On July 12, 1789, Crowds of people gathered at the Hôtel Invalides, and demanded arms to fight with them. Upon hearing this, the gun powder and bullets were moved to Bastille, which was a fortress and later became a prison. The crowd attacked the Bastille on July 14 and wanted the commander Bernard de Launey to surrender. Launey was reluctant due to the fear that the crowd may harm him but the crowd promised Launey that would not. However, once Launey surrendered himself, the crowd broke its promise and cut off his head to mount on a pike. The king was astonished by this act of the public and thought of ending the revolt but luck didn’t favor him.
In August the same year, The National Assembly wrote the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen which called for political power to be shared by every individual, right of religious freedom and the rule of law. On October 5, 1789, thousands of women gathered at the city hall in Paris demanding bread. They disarmed the guards, took their weapons and set out to see the king with heavy weapons. The king was house-arrested and decided to leave Paris in the fear of the crowd. However, the advisors of the king convinced him saying this might lead to invasions by foreign armies, By August 30, 1792, France saw terrible massacres. About fourteen hundred people were killed and the priests were imprisoned and then executed. Almost all the prisons in Paris were attacked and the prisoners were murdered.
In 1792, the Assembly declared a war on Austria and Prussia but was defeated. The march of twenty thousand French revolutionaries to the Tuileries palace, forced the royal families to flee. When the national Assembly took over Prussia in September, it voted and renamed itself as National Convention and started the slogan Liberty, Fraternity and Equality. They wanted to end the king’s rule forever. The Convention then took the step to abolish the King’s monarchy, and on January 20, 1793, it executed the King Louis VI in the guilty of “conspiring against liberty”.
After the death of the King Louis VI, France engaged itself into war with every other European Country including England, the Netherlands, Spain and Austria. To help the country face the war, the National Convention created the Committee of Public Safety, led by Maximilien Robespierre. The committee led the country into a situation known as reign of terror. During this time, over sixteen thousand people from all classes were sent to the guillotine, where in July 1794, Robespierre was sentenced.
The committee gave power to a five member Directory and two legislative bodies, which brought Napoleon Bonaparte into picture. He was a little officer in the Directory. He always had the zeal to do something to the people to calm down the situation. However, several politicians overthrew the Directory on November 9, 1799 because of its irresponsibility. This brought into existence a new Constitution called The Consulate. Napoleon Bonaparte was elected to the First Consulate and was given all political power. It was he who has established the Bank of France. He made dramatic changes in France and established a code of justice known as the Napoleonic code. It was under his control that France was able to conquer many European countries, and by 1806, France took control in many areas of Western Europe. Napoleon soon became more and more powerful. He changed the constitution and declared himself as the Emperor of France. The French did not oppose this because they felt they were safe and better than before under the rule of Napoleon.
The French Revolution and the American Revolution has many similarities and differences. The Americans wanted to get rid of British rule while France wanted to get rid of the monarchy of the kings. During the French Revolution, over seventeen thousand people were beheaded. During the war, America had France and Spain on its side to fight against the British. On the other hand France and had to fight against five countries. After the war, America had two forms of government. One was the Articles of Confederation, and another one was the Constitution of the United States. Contrastingly, French had four forms of government after the French Revolution. The first one was the National Assembly, the second was the Committee of Public Safety, the third form was the Directory, and finally emerged the Consulate.
Conclusion
For the French, lives were better after the Revolution and once Napoleon was the First Consulate. He reformed France in many ways. He reduced the taxes. He strengthened the school system due to which people had good educational opportunities. He brought jobs for the qualified. He improved the economy of France. It was Napoleon who established the Bank of France. He brought business to the country and improved trade with other countries. French Revolution was truly a revolution which changed the entire political picture of France. This revolution fulfilled the needs of the public and brought in everything they wanted and brought them a true emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Works Cited
Primary sources
Mignet, M. History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814. Gutenberg: Project Gutenberg, 2003.
Barnes, Gregory. Napoleon Bonaparte. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2010.
Brown, Howard G. Ending the French Revolution: Violence, Justice, and Repression. Virginia: The Library of Congress, 2006.
Secondary sources
Anderson, James Maxwell. Daily Life During the French Revolution. Westport: Greenwood Press, 207.
Furet, François. Revolution, Interpreting the French. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the univesity of Cambridge, 1978.
