Ze French Revolution

Estates  1 st Estate: Clergy/the Church  2 nd Estate: Nobility  3 rd : Commoners (97%)  1 st and 2 nd Estates did not pay taxes

Shortages of the 1780s  Government had no $$$  No food!  Bad harvests in 1787 and 1788 “All the country girls and women are without shoes or stockings; and the plowmen at their work have neither sabots nor stockings to their feet. This is a poverty that strikes at the root of national prosperity.”

Estates-General  Representatives of the three estates  Third Estate had double the representatives  First meeting in 175 years  Too many disagreements; 3 rd Estate runs the show and gets locked out  Third Estate vows to make a French Constitution

Ze Revolution Begins  Urban and rural uprisings in July and August 1789  Commoner waging war on the rich  Queen Marie Antoinette was far too richly dressed  Rumor that the Queen was hoarding grain

Fall of Bastille  Bastille – French armory (housed weapons) and prison  Not a huge task to capture but was a symbol of victory for the French people

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) “The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties…”

Fall of Monarchy  King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette kept themselves locked away in the palace of Versailles  Forced out by peasant women armed with pitch forks  Both are beheaded in 1793

A New France  Reign of Terror – protect against internal enemies by executing everyone (~50,000 executions)  Guillotine: blade attached to rope that beheads its victimes  Cannon fire/grape shot: more time efficient executions  Republic of Virtue: de-Christianiziation of France

Maximilien Robespierre  Member of Estates- General  Big backer of the executions of “radicals” during Reign of Terror  Became too feared, executed in 1794