The National Convention of 1792 abolished the monarchy and created the French First Republic marking the start of a New France. Nonetheless, the summer was brutal and Paris was plagued by food riots and mass hunger. The National Convention then created the Committee of Public Safety to protect the newly established republic against foreign attacks and internal rebellion. The Committee of Public Safety exercised virtual dictatorial power over the French government. Maximilien Robespierre was a Jacobin in the Estates General, who took over executive power of the Committee.…
The French Revolution had many causes for its occurrence including, but not limited to, their leader, unfair treatment of the estates, and poor living conditions of the lower class. This led the people to revolt and made life even more chaotic for the residents of France. Their government, an absolute monarchy, gave King Louis XVI the right to do whatever he wanted for the “well-being” of France. As explained in Document 1, “He ruled by the divine right theory which held that he had received his power to govern from God and was therefore responsible to God alone.” This means that the king had complete control over the power and finance of France and often used it to only benefit himself.…
The French Revolution started in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille. The French society was divided into three classes or estates. It was the Third Estate that revolted to bring about change. There were three main causes that led up to the French Revolution. First were unequal rights in a divided society, second was the financial crisis that occurred at the same time as an extreme famine, and thirdly was the enlightened thinking of the Third Estate.…
The Third Estate, and the only Estate to be taxed, was tired of the inequality they suffered. France’s extreme debt and the famines in the 1780s caused bread, the main food source for the Third Estate, to rise in price, and, with the First and Second Estate paying no taxes, the Third Estate no longer wanted their money to go to supporting the First and Second Estate’s grander and extravagant lifestyles. The French people fought into the late 1790s when Napoleon Bonaparte came to power. Much of the French Revolution was full of thousands of deaths at the guillotine, but with Napoleon, although some rights were taken away, people still kept many rights they fought for in the French Revolution. Even when the Louis XVIII was restored as monarch in 1814, things never went fully back to the time of…
As a result, King Louis XVI attempted taxing the aristocrats, which backfired and resulted in a representative meeting,…
Judgment and Execution of Louis XVI, King of France; with a List of the Members of the National Convention, Who Voted for and against His Death; and the Names of Many of the Most Considerable Sufferers in the Course of the French Revolution, Distinguished According to Their Principles. Bath, 1796. This publication is a compilation of factual events involving the people who led the revolutionary movement.…
Admiration for the policies instituted by the English Revolution was noted by the French as early as 1782 when the French foreign minister noted that England “in its constitution and in the establishments which it has permitted her to form, resources which are lacking to us.” (B. Stone, p. 14). The French minister further laments about English “advantages which our monarchical forms do not accord us (B. Stone, p. 14). Louis XVI’s reign of France from 1774 to 1792 was characterized by financial instability; however, the lack of wealth was not depicted in the lifestyle of Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Similar to English Revolution of the 1640s, France was facing the issue of taxation.…
de la Bourdonnaye’s comments about taxation, Louis-Sebastien Mercier’s description of the lifestyle of impoverished French families, and Thomas Paine’s questioning of the despotic nature of the French government’s taxation. Before Napoleon Bonaparte performed his coup d’etat upon the French government with the aid of Abbe Sieyes, Sieyes played an important role in proposing the abolishment of the French nobility, as he demonstrated with his comments in What is the Third Estate? When discussing the injustices performed against the Third Estate, Sieyes explained that the Third Estate had been “shackled and oppressed” limiting their ability to be “free and flourishing.” With the political climate of the time, Sieyes demonstrated why members of the sans-culottes believed in protesting to protest violently for the liberties they were not provided. After the Estates-General was summoned by Louis XVI, the Third Estate wrote out their own grievances and presented them to the king in the form of the Cahiers. As stated in the Cahiers, the grievances…
By the late 1700s, the people of France had experienced many years of inequality and oppression with the members of the Third Estate having to pay the most. In the midst of a financial crisis, the country of France was barely surviving on its own, and the unclear distinctions between the social classes was not helping. In order to fix the country, France drew inspiration from both its own citizens and from citizens in the colonies abroad. Abbé Sieyès’s What is the Third Estate?…
When Louis XIV was a kid his father passed away and was too young to rule so they gave the crown to Cardinal Mazarin. Cardinal Mazarin use to raise taxes to help with the involvement of the Thirty Years’ War. After the war he didn’t lower down the taxes and this made the parliament or General Estate mad. The parliament started to revolt which ma d Mazarin attempt to arrest them. This triggered a widespread revolt.…
Revolutions are seen by many as an inevitable part of many societies. They allow both the people and societies to progress and advance. One of these revolutions was the French Revolution, which led to the downfall of monarchies in other parts of Europe. The French Revolution began in 1789 and ended in the late 1790s. The revolution began with people wanting small reforms, such as changes to the system of taxation; leading to a complete change, transforming every aspect of French citizen’s lives, including for a short time, calendars and clocks.…
During the late 1700’s, the citizens of the Third Estate in France suffered from a severe economic crisis caused by deficit spending, failed harvests which led to famine, and tax inequality across the three estates. In June of 1789, the poor, hungry citizens of France rose up in revolution against the monarchy and overthrew the king’s rule in pursuit of a constitutional government. While the eventual arrival of the Age of Napoleon brought relative peace in France, his rule strayed from the constitutional monarchy the revolution demanded for. For this reason, many have argued on whether or not the French Revolution truly succeeded in achieving its goals; however, evidence suggests it was much more unsuccessful than it was successful. The French…
In June of 1789, Louis XVI, King of France, summoned the Estates General for the…
Although the meeting of the estates generals had good intentions it could not spare the commoners of France from the tax burden. During the meeting of the estates general the King tried to disperse the taxes among the nobility and land owners of the country but they refused claiming their divine rights of man. The members of…
University of Phoenix Material Week 5 Worksheet As you read this week’s required materials, complete this worksheet. This is a multipage assignment; double-check that you completed each page before submitting. Part I: Fill in the Blanks Fill in the blanks to complete the following sentences.…