French Revolution: From Monarchy to Napoleon’s Rise

Posted on Nov 23, 2024 in History

The French Revolution (1789-1799) is considered the model revolution of its time and led to the bourgeoisie’s conquest of power and the displacement of the aristocracy and clergy.

In the late eighteenth century, the kingdom of France, like most of Europe, was subjected to the ‘Old Regime.’ It was a society of estates based on privilege and land ownership. The absolute monarchy of Louis XVI was unable to improve the financial crisis, hunger, and the weakness of the old class structure. In this context, a series of revolts led to the revocation of the Old Regime.

The first revolutionary stage of the Constitutional Monarchy (1789-1792) occurred when members of the Third Estate held a legal revolt and constituted the National Assembly. The Assembly proclaimed national sovereignty, the division of powers, and censitary suffrage, while removing all traces of the Ancien Régime and promulgating the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Alongside, a popular revolt broke out in the countryside and Paris, symbolized by the storming of the Bastille. The Constituent Assembly approved the first constitution in 1791.

The second stage was the Republican Convention (1792-1794). Economic, social, and political problems joined the opposition of the monarchy and the aristocracy, causing a new revolutionary wave that resulted in the establishment of a republic. King Louis XVI was tried, convicted, and executed. The Convention had a liberal character, with the exception of the violent Jacobin period.

The last stage, the Directory (1795-1799), consolidated the power of the bourgeoisie. To suppress pressure from the extreme left (monarchists and Jacobins), they promoted a coup (1799) led by Napoleon Bonaparte, which ended the Revolutionary period.


The Storming of the Bastille

While there was a legal revolution, the popular revolution began in Paris and other cities, consolidating the bourgeois revolution against the monarch and the reaction of the privileged Old Regime. The people were convinced that the king, who had changed the government on July 11[14], attacked the protesters gathered before the city council. The popular sectors attacked l’Hôtel des Invalides to take firearms to defend the revolution and then stole the gunpowder stored at the Bastille, a fortress where political prisoners were held, which had become the embodiment of the sovereign’s absolute power. After dominating the reaction, Louis XVI returned to Paris, and the nobility began to flee, opposing the new regime.

The sans-culottes, the unemployed, and the most miserable sectors of the cities, organized in clubs and fraternal societies, were a decisive factor in revolutionary events. This popular movement, with hunger as a backdrop, was present at the assault on the Bastille.

The Great Fear

The revolt spread to rural France and the provinces, with the peasant masses revolting against the Lords, a period known as the Great Fear in the summer of 1789. The peasants believed that nobles had hired brigands and took up arms. They revolted, not against the alleged robbers, but attacked and burned the lords’ castles where the lists of rents and feudal obligations were kept.

Political Groups

The revolutionaries conceived the nation’s transformation in many ways. At the Constituent Assembly, the Constitutionalists, led by Mirabeau and La Fayette, exercised notable influence, supporting a monarchy with moderate control under a constitution. A part of the aristocracy joined this group.

  • The Girondins represented the moderate sector. Their most prominent personality was Jacques Pierre Brissot, and its most important members were part of the upper crust of the Gironde, Bordeaux, and Nantes, who had intervened in overseas trading. This group aimed to make the revolution using laws, disapproved of terror, and defended property. They believed that revolutionary ideas had universal value and emphasized increasing centralism from the provinces to Paris.
  • The Jacobins represented the bourgeoisie and middle classes. The most representative figure of this ideology was Maximilien Robespierre. This group thought the revolution should achieve its objectives by any means; they demanded action, not theories. They were centralizing and believed the revolution had been made from Paris, where they controlled the council. They were willing to limit private property and individual liberty.
  • The Democrats, the most radical group, led by Lazare Carnot, defended universal suffrage and the direct assumption of sovereignty by the people. Jean-Paul Marat’s group was related to the Democrats but preferred street action instead of parliamentary action.