The French Revolution, an important revolution in world history, shook the monarchy’s place in history and politics and buried it in the dusty pages of history. The ideas spread by the French Revolution attracted the attention of the lower and middle classes and led to the collapse of empires in different parts of the world, especially in European countries, and the spread of republican rule. In this video, we give you information about the short history of the French Revolution.
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The French Revolution, a revolution that ushered in a new era in world history. The French Revolution first swept through France, causing years of conflict between supporters of the monarchy and supporters of the republic. As the French Revolution swept France, it began to spread to other European countries.
The French monarchy had ruled the country for more than 1,000 years and had enjoyed unchallenged power for 140 years. Louis XIV symbolized the continuity of an enduring ‘absolutism’ that made France the greatest power in Europe.
By 1789, however, the government began to crumble. The king had informed the three strata of French society that he would increase taxes. These three strata were the clergy, the nobility and the rest of society. Those representing the rest of society did not accept this and declared themselves the National Assembly.
The delegates of the third stratum were all from the respectable middle class. They wanted a constitutional monarchy. The debates at Versailles created enthusiasm among many people in Paris who had never thought about politics before. At first, clubs were formed among well-to-do members of the middle class where people discussed what was going on.
A lot of one-page newsletters and pamphlets appeared. About 400 representatives of the Parisian middle class gathered in the town hall and declared themselves a city council or ‘commune’. These discussion clubs and pamphlets would later play an important role in changing French society.
On July 12, 1789, a large group of poor people were demonstrating and confiscating every musket they could find. Then, on July 14th, they started marching towards the Bastille Prison. There were muskets in the Bastille Castle and also dissidents were imprisoned there.
The excited crowd was determined to take the Bastille. When they reached the Bastille, the soldiers opened fire on the crowd. In the aftermath, 83 people lost their lives. The rebel crowds threatened to blow up the Bastille with whatever musket and cannon fire they could find. The castle commander surrendered in the face of these threats and the rebels captured the Bastille.
The fall of the Bastille was the first turning point in the first revolutionary process. The action of the Parisian masses forced the National Assembly to publish and adopt a declaration of human rights.
Meanwhile, the king was planning a military coup. But rebel groups prevented this military coup and marched all the way to Versailles. They entered the palace and forced the king to return with them to Paris, where he would be placed under public surveillance.
The rebel middle class immediately created a new armed force, the National Guard. The National Guard was headed by Lafayette, a former general and aristocrat who had advised the American War of Independence.
Lafayette attempted to create a constitution that granted the right to vote to so-called active citizens by making it a strict property condition, and gave the king the power to delay new laws for two years.
In the first year of the revolution, everything was like a festival. But this did not last long. The aristocrats, although they had retained their former wealth, were furious at the loss of their former privileges.
Many of them went abroad, where they conspired with those who remained behind to overthrow the revolution. The king and queen secretly wrote to foreign monarchs asking for foreign invasions. At the same time, anger was growing among both the rural and urban masses because material conditions had not improved.
In such an environment, the Jacobin Club of Paris, an important debating club, and other debating clubs were putting forward radical ideas and stirring up sections of the population.
Lafayette’s moderate constitutional monarchism dominated the political arena. In June 1791, the king’s attempt to flee Paris to meet the counter-revolutionary armies gathering across the border was prevented at the last moment by the local militia.
Food shortages, price hikes and unemployment pushed laborers as well as artisans and craftsmen to the peak of desperation.
Nor was repression enough to mask the divisions at the top of society. The king and queen were still conspiring with counter-revolutionary armies abroad. The moderates running the government, caught between these conspiracies and the fear of the lower classes, turned against each other.
A group within the Jacobin club, known as the Brissotins or Jirondens, who considered themselves less radical than Robespierre and Danton, began to maneuver to oust Lafayette from the government.
It was against this backdrop that war broke out. By declaring war on France, Austria and Prussia, a counter-revolution of sorts was actually meant to gain strength.
The French army suffered serious defeats, partly due to the tendency of its generals to defect to the enemy, and the king wanted to use the chaos as an excuse to get rid of the Jirondenes.
But the threat of counter-revolution has failed. A new movement began to rise among the popular sectors. There was a belief among the masses that the foreign invasion threatened the rights won through the revolution. Regular popular assemblies, called sections, were set up, where sections of the people met and held discussions.
The National Assembly called for taking up arms against the counter-revolutionary invasion and thousands of people across the popular sectors heeded the call.
The fédérés, active supporters of the revolution, began marching to Paris from the provincial towns, especially Marseille, and the march tune of the Marseillais became the anthem of the revolution. At the meeting of the 48 sections in Paris, all but one section demanded a republic. The local National Guard units in the poorer regions were increasingly affected by the revolutionary mood.
Radicals, led by Robespierre, Marat and Danton, also feared the possibility of counter-revolution. They saw that unless they made a further revolution, defeat awaited them. And on August 10, 1792, they did just that, the second major turning point in the revolution. Tens of thousands of sans-culottes from the sections joined with the federates to march on the Tuileries Palace.
The National Guard, which was supposed to protect the King, joined the uprising and won the battle against the royalist troops. The people of Paris have once again taken control of the city.
The Jirondenes were back in office to run the government, but they had to give three seats to the Jacobins. Such was the brief history of the French Revolution, an important event in world history that changed the course of world politics. Of course, the French Revolution did not end on these terms. After these events, the French Revolution progressed through different processes and led to Napoleon becoming emperor.