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Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser ,May 25,1999
Revolution affected entire French-speaking world
by Jim Bradshaw
The years between 1789 and 1799 were violent ones in France. The French Revolution began when King Louis XVI bankrupted the government. It ended when Napoléon Bonaparte became First Consul of France. During the years of revolt, thousands of aristocrats lost their lives on the guillotine.
At the beginning of the Revolution,the king held supreme power in France, at least in theory. By the time it ended power had passed into the hands of the middle class. The Bourbon kings came back to the throne in 1814, when Napoléon was forced to abdicate after his disastrous attempt to conquer Russia. Napoléon returned to power briefly, unseating King Louis XVIII in 1815, but the Bourbons regained the throne within months after Napoléon was defeated by the British at the Battle of Waterloo. The kings had far less power at the end of the decade than they enjoyed before the Revolution began.
As with most revolutions, this one began over money, although there were some high-sounding ideals involved as well. The middle class rose up because it was being squeezed too tightly by inflation and taxes. A new class of merchants and manufacturers bad begun to acquire new wealth in France in the late 1700s, but found they themselves supporting a king and a group of noblemen who lived in great luxury and paid no taxes to speak of.
In addition, everything was getting more expensive . As Carlton J. H. Hayes points out in his "History of Europe," "From about 1735 prices of goods have been rising, while wages had risen much less rapidly. This development benefited the big landowners (who did not pay their share of taxes) since they got more for their products and paid relatively less in wages. For this reason, land rents had been rising significantly. But it was very hard on the working classes, since they got relatively less money for their labor and had to pay higher prices for their food and clothes. It has been estimated that a worker in France could, in the period 1785-1789, buy about 25 percent less goods with his wages than a similar worker in the period 1726-1741."
The authority of the French crown had already been weakened by The Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years' War. Among other things, the treaty forced France to give up her possessions in India and practically all of her American empire. Louisiana, however, had already been transferred to Spain by the secret Treaty of Fontinebleau on Nov. 3, 1762. The loss of the overseas empire was not only a blow to French prestige, it also took away valuable markets for the goods manufactured by the French middle class.
France was all but bankrupt when the national assembly, called les états généraux, was called into session for the first time in decades to deal with the financial crisis. When the assembly met at Versailles on May 5, 1789, its first action was to divide itself into three "estates." Clergymen made up the Third Estate, though most of its representatives were lawyers and judges. Members of the third Estate could not make any reforms without the vote of the clergymen and nobles, neither of whom particularly wanted to begin paying more taxes.
Members of the Third Estate withdrew from the assembly in protest. When the king locked them out of the assembly hall, they met on a tennis court in Versailles where they took a famous oath to stay together until France was forced to adopt a constitution that gave more rights to the common man. In response, the king made plans to dismiss the Assembly.
Early in July, a rumor spread that the king was concentrating forces at Versailles to overthrow the Assembly. The rumor touched off three days of wild disorder in Paris, during which shops were looted and royal officials were run out of town. On the third day of rioting, July 14, 1789, the mob overran the Bastille, a fortress and prison where political prisoners were being held.
Revolutionary violence spread quickly after that. In October, a mob from Paris, made up largely of women, invaded the royal palace at Versailles. At the same time, peasants in various parts of France began uprisings against their feudal lords. French noblemen began to flee the country.
On Aug. 27, 1789, the National Assembly drew up its famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, then wrote a constitution that made France a constitutional monarchy with a one-house legislature. The National Assembly also voted that none of its members could be elected to the new one-chamber Legislative Assembly. It dissolved itself on Sept. 30,1791, to make way for the new government.
In June 1791, King Louis XVI tried to escape from France with Queen Marie-Antoinette and their children. He was recognized as he neared the border and was brought back to Paris. He then swore to uphold the new constitution, but few people believed him.
The strain on French resources grew even worse in April of 1792, when France was plunged into war against Prussia and Austria. Each success of the French enemies strengthened the mobs' conviction that the king was plotting with foreign rulers to betray France. In August, a band of rioters broke into the royal palace, killed the king's famous Swiss Guards and imprisoned the king and his family. More defeats on the battlefield led to the so-called "September massacres," when mobs broke into prisons and killed more than 1,000 aristocrats. The Comité de salut public (Committee of Public Safety), which had ostensibly been formed to keep watch over French internal security, took over the actual rule of France.
The so called Reign of Terror followed, when hundreds of people were sent to the guillotine because members of le Comité accused them of some wrong. Aristocrats including Marie-Antoinette, were the first to be executed.
As things began to spin wildly out of control, a young French officer, Napoléon Bonaparte, began to make a name for himself on the battlefield. As moderates finally began to regain political control at home, Napoléon displayed his military genius. In 1799, with the help of people who thought that a strong central government was needed to end the Revolution, Napoléon made himself dictator of France.
Those who plotted to put him in power had hoped to use Napoléon as a tool. It became very clear very quickly that Bonaparte would be the master.