By Brian Maregedze and Vincent Chenzi
The French Revolution took place in France between
1789 and 1799 and as largely characterised by political instability, violent
demonstrations, social anarchy and widespread killings. It officially began on
the 14th of July 1789 when the Bastille or symbol of the French ancient regime,
was ransacked by violent mobs. Throughout the French Revolution, the King,
Louis XVI and the Queen, Marie-Antoinette and about 40,000 people were brutally
murdered. However, there was also a positive side about the revolution. That is
to say, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was formally adopted
in August 1789 and it abolished feudalism.
The French Revolution could largely be traced with
a government financial crisis, which quickly became a movement of reform and
violent change throughout the country. In one of the historic events, a crowd in
Paris captured the Bastille, a royal fortress and hated symbol of oppression. A
series of elected legislatures then took control of the government. King Louis
XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were executed. Thousands of others met the
same fate in a period known as the Reign of Terror. The revolution ended when
Napoleon Bonaparte, a French general, took over the government.
At the beginning of the revolution, unfolding
events seemed minor and proceeded in a logical fashion. One of the reasons the
revolution originated was the discontent of France’s lower and middle classes.
By law, society was broadly divided into three groups called estates. The first
estate was made of up the clergy, whilst the nobles comprised the second and
the rest of the citizens consisted of the third estate. The third estate
greatly resented certain advantages of the first two estates. The
clergy and nobles did not have to pay the bulk of the taxes. On the other hand,
the third estate, especially the peasants, had to provide almost all the
country’s tax revenue. Many members of the middle class were also worried by
their social status.
They were among the most important people in the
French society but were not recognized as such because they belonged to the
third estate. Durant claimed that the, “Financial crisis developed because the
nation had gone deeply into debt to finance the Seven Years War (1756-1763) and
the Revolutionary War (1775-1783).” The Parliament of Paris insisted that the
King Louis XVI could only borrow more money or raise more taxes only by calling
a meeting of the estates-general. However, the estates-general meeting was made
up of representatives of the three estates and had last met in 1614.
Unwillingly, the king called the meeting. The estates-general opened on May 5
1789 at Versailles. The first two estates wanted each estate to take up matters
and vote on them separately by estate. The third estate had has many
representatives as the other two combined. It insisted that all the estates had
to be merged into one national assembly and that each representative had one vote.
Furthermore, the third estate wanted the
estates-General to draft a constitution. Unfortunately, the king and the first
two estates refused the demands of the third estate. In June 1789, the
representatives of the third estate declared themselves the National Assembly
of France. Louis the XVI then allowed the three estates to join together as the
National Assembly. Soon after, he began to gather troops around Paris to break
up the Assembly. Meanwhile, the masses of France also took action. On the 14th of
July 1789, a huge crowd of Parisians rushed to the Bastille. They believed they
would find arms and ammunition there for use in defending themselves against
the king’s army.
The people captured the Bastille and began to tear
it down. At the same time, spontaneous peasant uprisings were also taking place
throughout the countryside. The king’s removal led to a new stage in the
revolution. The first stage had been a liberal middle-class reform movement
based on a constitutional monarchy. The second stage was organized around
principles of democracy. The National Convention opened on the 21st of
September 1792, and it declared France a republic. Louis XVI was placed on
trial for betraying the country. The National Convention found him guilty of
treason and a slim majority voted for the death-penalty. The king was beheaded
on the guillotine on the 21st of January 1793. Afterwards, the revolution gradually
grew more radical-that is, more open to extreme and violent change. Radical
leaders came into prominence. In the Convention, they were known as the mountain
because they sat on the high benches at the rear of the hall during meetings. Leaders
of the Mountain were Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Jacques Danton, and Jean
Paul Marat. The Mountain dominated a powerful political club called the Jacobin
Club. Woloch further stated that, “Growing disputes between the Mountain and
the Gironde led to a struggle for power, and the Mountain won. In June of 1793,
the Convention arrested the leading Girondists. In turn, the Girondists’
supporters rebelled against the Convention. One of these supporters
assassinated Marat in July 1793.”
This was the most horrific period of the
revolution. The Convention’s leaders included Robespierre, Lazare Carnot, and
Bertrand Barere. The Convention declared a policy of terror against rebels,
supporters of the king, and anyone else who vehemently disagreed with official
policy. According to Woloch, “In time, hundreds of thousands of suspects filled
the nation’s jails. Courts handed down about 18,000 death sentences in what was
called the Reign of Terror. Paris became accustomed to the rattle of two-wheeled
carts called tumbrels as they carried people to the guillotine.” In time, the
radicals began to struggle for power among themselves. Robespierre succeeded in
having Danton and other former leaders executed. Many people in France wanted
to end the Reign of Terror, the Jacobin dictatorship, and the democratic
revolution. Robespierre’s enemies in the Convention finally conspired against
him for being a tyrant on 29th of July 1794. They executed him the following day.
With Robespierre’s death, the Reign of Terror ended.
Afterwards, the Convention, which had adopted a
democratic constitution in 1793, replaced that document with a new one in 1795.
The government formed under this new constitution was called the Directory.
France was still a republic, but once again, only citizens who paid a certain
amount of taxes could vote. The Directory began meeting in October 1795. In
October 1799, several political leaders plotted to overthrow the Directory.
They needed military support and turned to Napoleon Bonaparte, a French general
who had become a hero during a military campaign in Italy in 1796 and 1797.
Bonaparte seized control of the government on November 9, 1799, ending the
revolution. Napoleon would restore order to the French people with such significant achievements as his Code Napoleon.
