The social conditions of France were as distressing as its political organisation. French society was divided into three classes or estates. The privileged class comprising the clergy and the aristocracy formed the first estate and the second estate respectively. These two estates enjoyed many privileges under the government and did not have to bear the burden of taxation. The nobility monopolised all important positions in the French administration and lived a life of luxury.
The third estate comprised the common people. It consisted of middle class people, peasants, artisans, workers and agricultural labourers. Even the rich middle class, consisting of merchants, factory owners etc.
The entire burden of taxation fell on the third estate. But these taxpayers had no political rights. The condition of the artisans, peasants and workmen was miserable. The peasants had to work for long hours and pay separate taxes to the Crown, to the clergy and to the nobility. After paying all these taxes, they hardly had enough money to feed themselves.
The wealthy middle class had to pay heavy taxes and resented the privileges enjoyed by the aristocrats and the higher clergy i. The workers, the peasants and the middle class who suffered under the social and economic system wanted to change it.
French philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu inspired the people with revolutionary ideas of liberty and equality. Montesquieu rejected the theory of the Divine Right of Kings and urged for separation of powers. The success of the Americans in their war for independence also encouraged the French people to protest against their exploitation by the aristocracy, the clergy and the state. The immediate factor which caused the outbreak of the Revolution was the bankruptcy faced by the Government.
France had also helped the American colonies to gain independence from Britain. This added to the already massive Government debt. In order to pay for the cost of maintaining various Government offices, law courts, universities, the army, etc. Several able ministers proposed to tax the aristocracy. But the aristocrats were not prepared to pay taxes.
In the past, voting in the Estates-General had been conducted on the principle that each estate would have one vote. The third estate now demanded that voting be conducted by the Estates-General as a whole with every member having one vote. There were memers of the third estate and each of the first and second estates.
A few weeks later, the third estate declared themselves to be the National Assembly. Unfortunately for France, they were usually on the losing end. Their worst loses were Canada and India to Britain in after the 7-years' war, though they did exact some revenge by helping the American colonies gain independence 19 years later.
But all of this was very expensive, and debts had been mounting for some time. The British had a similar problem, and their attempts to make the American colonists pay some taxes to defray the costs of defending America against the French and Indians led to the American Revolution. Although France was the richest kingdom in Europe, the king was simply unable to raise enough money to cover his debts because of the inadequacies of his financial system.
As a privilege of their rank, the nobility and clergy, who owned most of the land, were exempt from most taxes. This was a privilege the monarchs had granted to keep the nobility happy and loyal to the king. The king was obliged to borrow money from these groups at increasingly higher interest as he asked for more and more.
Another source of revenue for the monarchy was the sale of offices and privileges, but there were only so many of these to offer. The king would often resort to forcing individuals, companies or towns to give him loans. The system was not only financially unsound, it was irrational and often socially disruptive. More and more people, including wealthy and privileged people, had reasons to dislike the French monarchy, and the elaborate system of social privileges it manipulated to its advantage.
These feelings were strengthened by economic crisis as a result of poor harvests in and , and by a trade depression and rising unemployment in these years. Calling of the Estates General. It was apparent to many of the king's financial ministers that the only solution was to rationalize the tax system, stop relying on the sale of privileges, and impose a tax on wealth for all classes of people.
The nobles, however, did not want to lose their no-tax privileges, and accused the king of attempting to use his power illegitimately. So it was really the nobility who were the first to attack the absolute monarchy. To limit the king's authority, the nobles insisted that the King call an Estates General, the parliament of France, which according to medieval tradition was the only body with the authority to make such a drastic change in policy.
The king reluctantly agreed to do so, though no one was quite sure how the Estates General was supposed to work, because it had not been assembled since the reign of Henry IV, years earlier!
The Estates General was the simultaneous meeting of the three estates of France in their separate gatherings: the clergy, the nobility, and the "Third Estate," that is, everybody else. Each estate was to vote separately, and two must agree to pass legislation. That meant that a tiny elite of the nobility and clergy could always out-vote the vast majority of the French people. Representatives of the Third Estate decided this was not fair, and insisted they should be given at least equal representation and should vote by head, rather than by house, to even things out.
Ironically, the most famous pamphlet advocating this position was penned by a clergyman, the Abbe Sieyes, who was obviously more persuaded by Rousseau's enthusiasm for democratic equality than his own class interest.
The king granted the doubling of the Third Estate from to representatives, but did not approve voting by head. Conflict of King and Assembly. After the Estates General opened its sessions in May at Versailles, delegates from the Third Estate responded to the rejection of their demands by declaring itself the National Assembly, the only legitimate government of France.
When the King responded to this revolt by augmenting his troops in and around Versailles and Paris, the people of Paris rose up to defend the Assembly now called the Constituent Assembly after the representatives of the nobility and clergy joined it. They formed their own militia, called the National Guard, led by the liberal aristocrate Marquis de Lafeyette , and adopted red and blue the official colors of Paris with white the official color of the Bourbon dynasty to create the tricolor flag as the symbol of the revolution.
The newly-formed National Guard set about to arm itself. One major stash of arms was in the fortress prison, the Bastille, where Voltaire, among many others had once been imprisoned. Although most of the King's troops had withdrawn when fights broke out that July, the commander of the Bastille refused to surrender. When the garrison at the Bastille fired upon, and killed many in the crowd attempting to enter, the Parisians responded by rolling up some captured cannons, blowing a hole in the fortress, and storming it.
The commander and guards were summarily executed. July Bastille Day--is now the revolutionary holiday. On that day the people defeated the king. That initial defeat was to be repeated with more far-reaching consequences with the October march on Versailles. Declaration of Rights and Reorganization of the Church. In the meantime, the Constituent Assembly passed significant legislation.
In August it abolished the feudal privileges of the noble landlords, partly to quell a great uprising of peasants that summer. That same month, it adopted the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen," which proclaimed a society based upon liberty and equality under the law. After the King had been forced by the October mob to approve these radical measures, the Assembly proceeded the following summer to take its most fateful step.
It abolished the privileges of the Catholic Church, and reorganized it as a part of the French government. The number of bishops was reduced, and all the clergy were selected by the Assembly, and paid by the state a generally lower salary.
Much of the vast estates of the Church were sold off, and the proceeds used to pay the enormous national debt. Many new landowners were thus created by the revolution, but so to was the undying hatred of most devout Catholics, particularly in the outlying provinces of France. The revolution and religion were to be enemies ever after.
War and the radicalization of the Revolution. A new constitution was approved in that made France a constitutional monarchy. It seemed the revolution might be complete, but important factions were not satisfied. One was the radicals , especially the political party called Jacobins, who didn't want a king at all, even though the king now had little real power.
Another dissatisfied party was the king and his supporters. Louis XVI had no interest in being a figurehead even though that is what he was intellectually most suited for , and in June , he and his family made a dramatic late-night attempt to escape from France in order to rally his counter -revolutionary forces in exile.
As he reached the border, however, he was recognized and arrested by National Guardsmen and brought back to Paris. The king could not be trusted. What was to be done with him?
The moderates attempted to ignore the King's treachery and installed him once again as the formal head of state. Meanwhile the majority moderate party hoped to secure its power and the revolution by starting a war against the kings of Austria and Prussia, who had called for the overthrow of the revolution. These countries had become the home in exile for many French aristocrats and clergymen who clearly hoped to destroy the revolution.
King Louis actually supported the policy of war. He secretly hoped the French would lose, and the revolution be destroyed. War was declared against Austria in April , and at first the French lost battles. The crisis inspired the Paris mob to raid the Assembly in Paris, joined by a revolutionary militia from the city of Marseilles--whose favorite song, the Marseillaise, became the anthem of the revolution-- to demand the arrest of King Louis and the abolition of the monarchy.
Mobs of common people, the so-called "sans-culottes" meaning "without silk stockings" arrested and killed hundreds of suspected traitors. At the end of the , the radical Jacobins, and others sympathetic to the cause of absolute equality, condemned the King to death. He was guillotined in January Now the revolutionaries were regicides king killers as well as despoilers of the Church.
The common people, tasting new-found power, would no longer simply obey this the official government assembly. The Paris sans-culottes, in overthrowing the Assembly and arresting the king, had demonstrated the principle of the sovereignty of the people.
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