Ze French Revolution

Estates 1st Estate: Clergy/the Church 2nd Estate: Nobility 3rd: Commoners (97%) 1st and 2nd 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; 3rd 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