The French Revolution: A Four-Stage Transformation
The French Revolution
Origins of the French Revolution
Despite the signs of prosperity, there was much discontent and unrest in France in the 80s of the eighteenth century. French institutions were obsolete, inefficient and inconsistent. The nobility and the eternal inheritance companies put the control. Everyone who was connected with the ideas of the Enlightenment was considered irrational and unfair. The social and legal differences that allowed a high position or political influence particularly offended the middle classes.
A tax system and unfair inficaz produced very little income to keep the state, inhibiting economic development and poverty carried. On the eve of the Revolution, France faced a crisis situation. Three of these crises – agricultural difficulties, financial chaos and reaction of the aristocracy were particularly acute.
During the 80 eighteenth century, the demands of the aristocracy on rural poverty, aggravated the field. The resistance of the aristocracy to the tax reform impeded the government’s attempts to renew the nation’s financial structure. These two facets of the reaction of the aristocracy were the direct causes of the advent of the French Revolution.
The doubts of the king / Louis XVI / / and the intransigence of the aristocracy increased the bitterness of large segments of the population. They wanted an end to the privileges and felt that the unreformed monarchy did not want to help in this fight. The attack on the privileges and demand for equality before the law were the driving forces of the revolution from the beginning to the end. The privilege, it seems, could only be destroyed by attacking the monarchy and the aristocracy.
Louis lost the opportunity to act as mediator between hostile states. On June 23, appeared before the Estates-General to submit a reform program that only partially met the demands of the third state to reform the tax and did nothing to remove the privileges of the nobility. About the same time, the king began to concentrate troops around Versailles and Paris. However, the partial reform or brute force were sufficient to address the political crisis. The revolution had become a battle between those who demanded a more equitable and open society against those who wanted to preserve the privileges of the aristocracy.
In the summer of 1789, a series of spontaneous riots and several popular revolts nature joined, at least for the moment, the bourgeoisie and the people in a disturbing alliance against the aristocracy.
On 14 July, the economic downturn brought the urban poverty to poverty, misery joined the fear that created the king and aristocrats. When the king’s troops appeared, the immediate reaction was citizens arm themselves for their own account.
The Fall of the Bastille was an event of little consequence by itself, but its implications were immense. The attack was seen as a blow against royal despotism. Showed that revolution was not simply a debate on a constitution. Its greater importance was placed on the city and political leaders in Paris to the forefront.
The old regime was dismantled. The structure of the privileges of the aristocracy was abolished completely, with franchises and hereditary posts.
The French Revolution, we can distinguish four stages: 1 .- The Constituent Assembly (1789-1791): formed by decision of the members of the bourgeoisie within the Assembly of States-General summoned by the king, abolished the privileges, subjected the clergy to the civil power and secularized their property, ordered the drafting of”Declaration of the Rights of Man”, and established the rule of the Constitution of 1791. The king was forced to yield to the continued opposition to the royal decrees and willingness to own army mutiny real. On June 27 ordered the nobility and clergy to join the self-proclaimed National Constituent Assembly. Louis XVI gave in to pressure from the Queen Marie-Antoinette and the Comte d’Artois (future king of France under the name of Charles X) and instructed several foreign regiments loyal to concentrate on Paris and Versailles. At the same time, Necker was dismissed again. The National Constituent Assembly began its activity driven by the disturbances and riots that were occurring in the provinces (the period of the “Great Fear”). The clergy and nobility had to give up their privileges at the meeting held on the night of August 4, 1789, the Assembly adopted a law by which the feudal system was abolished and stately and abolishing the tithe, but were granted compensation in certain cases. Other laws prohibited the sale of public office and the tax exemption of the privileged classes. The bourgeoisie in Paris, fearful that the crowd of the city exploited the collapse of the old system of government and resort to direct action, hastily establish a local provisional government, and organized a popular militia, officially called the National Guard. The banner of the Bourbons was replaced by the tricolor (blue, white and red), symbol of revolutionaries who became the national flag. J ike the Declaration on the Rights of Man and Citizen , delegates made the ideals of the Revolution, later summarized in three principles, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity “). The 5 and October 6, the population of Paris, especially its women, marched on Versailles and besieged the royal palace. Louis XVI and his family were rescued by La Fayette, who escorted them to Paris at the request of the people. After this event, some conservative members of the Constituent Assembly, who accompanied the king to Paris, resigned. 2 .- The Legislative Assembly (1791-1792): elected by popular vote was imposed based on census and where the trend of the moderate republican Girondins Jacobin extremists and the defenders of the monarchy, established the national army to defend the revolutionary process against the other European monarchs and the nobles who had emigrated were trying to enlist the help of Prussia and Austria to restore the “Old Regime.” On July 17, 1791 the sans-culottes (members of a radical revolutionary trend that demanded the proclamation of the republic) gathered in the Campus Martius, and demanded that the king was deposed. The National Guard opened fire on the demonstrators and dispersed following the orders of La Fayette, linked politically to the Feuillants, a group of moderate monarchists. The king was stripped of his powers for a brief period, but the moderate majority in the Assembly Constituent Assembly, which feared that the riots were increased, Louis XVI restored the hope of halting the rise of radicalism and to avoid intervention from foreign powers. On 14 September, the king swore to respect the Constitution amended. Two weeks later, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved to make way for the elections sanctioned by the Constitution. During this time, Leopold II and Frederick William II, King of Prussia, issued on 27 August a joint declaration concerning France in which veiled threats of armed intervention.The Legislature, which began its sessions on October 1, 1791, consisted of 750 members who had no experience in politics, because the members themselves in the Constituent Assembly had voted against his eligibility as members of the new camera. It was divided into different factions. The center of the chamber welcomed the large group, known as the Llano, which had no defined political opinions but unanimously opposed to the radical sector sitting on the left wing, composed mainly of the Girondins , who advocated the transformation of the constitutional monarchy into a federal republic, a project similar to the Montagnards (group to occupy the top of the camera, received the name of the Mountain) consisting of the Jacobins and the Cordeliers, who advocated by the implementation of a centralized republic. Rior to these divisions opened a deep rift in relations between the Girondins and the Montagnards, the Republican of the Assembly got the approval of several important bills, including the crackdown included clergy who refuse to swear allegiance to the new regime. But Louis XVI exercised its right of veto on these orders, thus provoking a parliamentary crisis that brought to power the Girondins. Despite the opposition of the leading Montagnards Girondin cabinet, chaired by Jean Marie Roland de la Platière adopted a belligerent attitude towards Frederick William II and Francis II, the new Holy Roman Emperor, who had succeeded his father, Leopold II, the March 1, 1792. The desire to wage war quickly spread among the monarchists , which relied on the defeat of the revolutionary government and the restoration of the ancien regime, and among the Girondins, who wanted a final triumph over reactionary sectors both at home and abroad. On April 20, 1792 the Legislature declared war on the Holy Roman Empire. 3 .- The Convention (1792-1795) who claimed the Republic, killed the king and imposed a reign of terror such that no one felt safe after the assassination of Marat and Danton’s execution, two revolutionary leaders. The Convention sought to remove every vestige of the past, changing the schedule and introducing the cult of the Goddess of Reason, but the extremist position of Robespierre united all the forces against him and execute him, along with collaborators that had led to violence paroxysm through the implementation of this regime of terror. were imposed substantial restrictions on the power of the Catholic Church through a series of articles called Civil Constitution of the Clergy: “Confiscation of church property
He allowed the State to issue a new type of paper money, allocated secured by confiscated lands
“Let the priests and bishops were elected by voters
-State received the payment of
– Take an oath of loyalty to the state
“That the monastic orders were dissolved. 4 .- The Board of Directors (1795-1799) was a moderate government and that the danger of a return of the reaction or a resurgence of terror, he gave power to a young general who had distinguished himself by his victories against the Austrians in Italy: Napoleon Bonaparte