American and French Revolutions

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ID & SIG:

• American Revolution, ancient regime, civilians in the American Revolution, Cowpens, Enlightenment, French Revolution, Greene, Howe, Quartering Act, Trenton, Washington, Yorktown

The Enlightenment

• Enlightenment thinkers sought to discover natural laws that governed human society in the same way Newton’s laws regulated the universe

• Collectively, these thinkers were called the philosophes (“philosophers”) – Voltaire– Montesquieu– Locke– Roussseau

Francis-Marie Arouet (1694-1778) (Voltaire)

• Was especially critical of the Roman Catholic Church which he held responsible for fanaticism, intolerance, and incalculable human suffering

• Wrote Candide in 1759 in which he analyzes the problem of evil in the world and depicts the woes heaped upon the world in the name of religion

• His battle cry against the Roman Catholic Church was ecrasez l’infame (“crush the damned thing”)

Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

• Sought to establish a science of politics and discover principles that would foster political liberty in a prosperous and stable state

• Instrumental in developing the idea of separation of powers (executive, legislative, judicial)

John Locke (1632-1704)

• Studied the relationship between the individual and the state

• Wrote An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1689

• Largely anti-authoritarian• There must be a

distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate functions of institutions

John Locke

• Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) had described a social contract in which people in a state of nature ceded their individual rights to a strong sovereign in return for his protection

• Locke offered a new social contract theory in which people contracted with one another for a particular kind of government, and that they could modify or even abolish the government– Great influence on Thomas Jefferson and the

Declaration of Independence

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

• Many Enlightenment thinkers condemned the legal and social privileges enjoyed by aristocrats and called for a society in which all individuals were equal before the law

• In 1762, Rousseau wrote The Social Contract arguing that members of a society were collectively the sovereign– All individuals would

participate directly in the formulation of policy and the creation of laws

The American Revolution

American Revolution: New Legislation

• In the mid-18th Century, British colonists in North America seemed content with British rule, but in the mid-1760s things started to change

• Trying to recover financial losses from the French and Indian War (1754-1763) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the British passed a series of new taxes on the colonies– Sugar Act (1764)– Stamp Act (1765)– Townsend Act (1767)– Tea Act (1773)

• Other offensive legislation included the Quartering Act of 1765

American Revolution: Colonial Response

• The colonists responded with demands of “no taxation without representation,” boycotted British products, attacked British officials, and staged the Boston Tea Party (1773)– Consistent with Rousseau

• In 1774, they organized the Continental Congress which coordinated the colonies’ resistance to British policies

American Revolution: Declaration of Independence

• On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted “The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” (The Declaration of Independence)

Revolutionary War

• Declaring yourself to be “Free and Independent States” and making it so were two different things

• On April 18, 1775, British troops and colonial militia skirmished at Lexington and the American Revolutionary War had begun

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,

And fired the shot heard round the world.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Colonial Troops: Aug 1776• 28,000 soldiers• Average soldier was 20 years old with less than a

year of service• Muskets, bayonets, light field guns• Two or three ranks of infantry supported by light

field guns• Used simplified British tactics (experience from

Seven Years’ War)• No Navy• Great disparity in quality between militia and

Continental Army• Many generals were imposed upon General George

Washington by Congress or state governments

“Continental Soldier” by Don Troiani

British Troops: Aug 1776

• 24,000 soldiers

• Average soldier was 30 years old with 10 years service

• Muskets, bayonets, light field guns

• Two or three ranks of infantry supported by light field guns

• Powerful Navy (30 warships, 400 transports)

• More experienced, better led, more thoroughly disciplined and trained

• General William Howe knew generals from their Seven Years’ War record

Objectives

• Colonists– Gain independence

• British– Maintain colonies within the British Empire

• Both sides understood from the beginning that they were fighting for the allegiance of a people and for the destruction or preservation of one state and the creation of another

Colonists’ Situation Regarding Civilians

• Had to defeat the British and control the loyalists without losing popular support or destroying the republican principles for which they fought

In this 2000 movie, Mel Gibson plays a reluctant patriot who joins the colonists’ cause only after his son is killed by the British

British Situation Regarding Civilians

• Argued that they were protecting loyalists from the tyranny of a few ambitious rebels

• Various strategies– Intimidating the rebels with a show of force– Combining force and persuasion to break the

rebellion without alienating a majority of the colonists

– Enlisting the support of loyalists in a gradual and cumulative restoration of royal government

Trenton

• The British defeated the colonists at Long Island in Aug 1776 and followed up their success with a series of landings on Manhattan Island

– Compelled Washington to retreat, escaping finally over the Delaware River into Pennsylvania with about 3,000 men.

– Howe then went into winter quarters.

Trenton

• In December 1776, Washington determined to make a surprise attack on the British garrison in Trenton, a 1,400-man Hessian force

– Took advantage of British being in winter quarters and in poorly defended, dispersed locations

– Bad weather and limited visibility– Christmas had reduced British

security• Hoped that a striking victory would lift

the badly flagging American morale

• Reinforcements had raised Washington's army to about 7,000 Typical winter quarters

Trenton

• On Christmas night (December 25-26) Washington ferried about 2,400 men of across the ice-choked Delaware River at McConkey’s Ferry above Trenton and then proceeded by two columns on different routes, converging at opposite ends of the main street in Trenton

Trenton

Trenton

• At 8:00 a.m. the colonists converged on Trenton in two columns, achieving complete surprise.

• After only an hour and a half of fighting, the Hessians surrendered. – Some 400 of the garrison escaped southward

to Bordentown, NJ when two other American columns failed to get across the Delaware in time to intercept them.

– About 30 British were killed and 918 captured.– American losses were only 4 dead and about

the same number wounded.

Cowpens

• Nathanael Greene was commander in the Carolinas and Georgia– Only a little over 1,000

Continentals and bands of ill-disciplined militia against Cornwallis’ 10,000 men

• Had to create circumstances to achieve success

Cowpens• Greene divided his army into two

divisions which he posted to the northwest and northeast of Cornwallis’ camp at Winnsboro– Allowed him to better feed his own

men, sustain the militia, and harass the British

– Tempted Cornwallis to divide his main body, making it more vulnerable

• Cornwallis did this in Jan 1781, sending 1,100 men (commanded by Tarleton) to attack Greene’s western division (commanded by Daniel Morgan)

Cowpens

• Americans suffered 6.2% losses (12 killed and 60 wounded)

• British suffered 90% losses

• Cornwallis became obsessed with Morgan and turned to pursue him– Morgan retreated into

Virginia – In a month Cornwallis had

marched 225 miles without achieving decisive battle

Daniel Morgan

Yorktown

• From Aug 21 to Sept 26, 1781 Washington and Rochambeau (French) marched their armies from New York to Virginia

• Simultaneously, De Grasse (French) sealed off the Chesapeake with the Navy

• Objective was to trap and defeat Cornwallis’ army on the York Peninsula

Yorktown• Battle would begin with

two parallel siege lines followed by an assault

• Allies had an overwhelming advantage in numbers (16,000 to fewer than 8,000)

• On Oct 19, the British surrendered and in Sept 1783 they formally recognized American independence

The French Revolution

French Revolution: Ancien Regime

• The early understanding of freedom, equality, and popular sovereignty in America would have broad implications throughout the world– Remember Emerson’s “shot heard round the world”

• The Americans sought independence from British imperial rule, but they kept British law and much of the British social and cultural heritage

• On the other hand, French revolutionaries sought to replace the ancien regime (“the old order”) with new political, social, and cultural structures

French Revolution: Estates General

• In May 1789, in an effort to raise taxes, King Louis XVI convened the Estates General, an assembly representing the entire French population through three groups known as estates

King Louis XVI

French Revolution: Estates General

• The first estate was about 100,000 Roman Catholic clergy

• The second estate was about 400,000 nobles

• The third estate was about 24 million others (serfs, free peasants, laborers)– In spite of these

numerical discrepancies, each estate had one vote

ancien regime

French Revolution: Estates General

• The third estate demanded sweeping political and social reform, but the other two estates resisted

• On June 20, 1789, the third estate seceded from the Estates General and declared itself the National Assembly Marie Antoinette

French Revolution: National Assembly

• The National Assembly vowed not to disband until France had a written constitution

• This assertion of popular sovereignty spread to Paris and on July 14 a crowd stormed the Bastille to seize weapons and ammunition

• The garrison surrendered in the wake of great bloodshed– The attackers severed the

commander’s head and paraded it through the streets on a pike

• Insurrections spread throughout France Storming of the Bastille

French Revolution: Declaration

• In Aug 1789, the National Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen– Obviously influenced by the American Revolution

and the Declaration of Independence

• Proclaimed the equality of all men, declared that sovereignty resided in the people, and asserted individual rights to liberty, prosperity, and security

Reforms of the National Assembly

• Reconfigured French society– Ended the fees and labor services the

peasants owed their landlords– Seized church lands– Abolished the first estate and defined

clergy as civilians– Required clergy to take an oath of

loyalty to the state– Made the king the chief executive but

deprived him of legislative authority (a constitutional monarchy)

– Men of property could vote for legislators The motto of the National

Assembly was “Liberty, equality, fraternity”

The Convention

• Alarmed by the disintegration of monarchial authority, the rulers of Austria and Prussia invaded France to support the king and restore the ancien regime

• The revolutionaries responded by establishing the Convention, a new legislative body elected by universal male suffrage

• The Convention abolished the monarchy and proclaimed France a republic

The Convention• Drafted people and

resources for use in the war through the levee en masse (universal conscription)– A move toward

total war• Used the guillotine

to execute enemies to include King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette in 1793 for treason

Maximilian Robespierre (1758-1794)

• Robespierre led the radical Jacobin party which believed France needed complete restructuring and used a campaign of terror to promote their agenda

• Dominated the Convention from 1793-1794

Robespierre and the Jacobins

• Sought to eliminate the influence of Christianity– Closed churches– Forced priests to take wives– Promoted a new “cult of

reason” as a secular alternative– Devised a new calendar which

recognized no day of religious observance

• Between the summers of 1793 and 1794, the Jacobins executed 40,000 people and imprisoned 300,000 “It is dreadful but necessary” (“C’est

affreux mais nécessaire”), from the Journal d'Autre Monde, 1794.

The Directory

• Many of the victims of the reign of terror were fellow radicals who had fallen out of favor with Robespierre and the Jacobins

• In July 1794, the Convention arrested Robespierre and his allies, convicted them of treason, and executed them

• A group of conservative men of property seized power and ruled from 1795 to 1799 under a new institution called the Directory

• The Directory sought a middle way between the ancien regime and radical revolution but had little success

• In Nov 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’etat and seized power

Next

• Napoleonic Wars