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Home , French Revolution, History of France, Storming of the Bastille

The French

The socio-political changes in between 1789 and 1799 opened the modern era in the of France, , and the world (already someone as early as Goethe saw it this way, when he said, "here and now begins a new epoch in world history"). The represented an attempt to construct a democratic -state. Instead of the strictly-defined class structure of the feudal and post-feudal society, middle-class citizen society should arise; instead of the absolute , the sovereignty of the people. The French Revolution led thus to a radical break with the then-current socio-political system.

The cause of the Revolution arose out of the crisis of the ancien régime since the latter part of Louis XIV's reign. The main elements of this crisis were the decline of the monarchy's foreign relations; the collapse of finances; the increasing incompetence of the royal beaurocracy; the confrontation between upper social classes and , as well as between the different classes; ecclesio-religious conflicts; temporary bad harvests, which led to a partial collapse of agriculture and business. The crown was, despite all attempts at reform, not in any shape to overcome this crisis. It was especially not capable of reducing the many social privileges of the two upper-most classes, the and the , and it was exactly these which most stood in the way of a thorough improvement of the relations. Thus it was that "the third class" (the ), above all, as the class mainly bearing the burden, was nudged into opposition. As Louis XVI, who was seeking some final way out of the financial difficulties, called together a "general meeting of the classes" (the nobility, the clergy, and the middle- class) in May 1789, this became the path toward revolution. The representatives of the "third class" declared themselves, on the 17th of June in the same year, to be a for the purpose of giving a constitution, required the representatives of the nobility and the clergy to join them, and forced the to acknowledge this as done. The parliamentary action was driven by the direct action of the people, which climaxed in the "storming of the " on the 14th of July. This parallelism, or concurrence, between parliamentary action and populist movements remained characteristic also for the further of the revolution. The decisions of the national convention were gathered together into the constitution of September 1791. It announced, after a declaration of and civil rights, the removal of all feudal priveleges and the establishment of a , which was based on the principle of shared and divided power.

The next phase of the French Revolution was the creation of a parliamentary in August and September of 1792. The basis for this development was in the irresolvable French Revolution, page 1 contradiction between monarchical sovereignty and national sovereignty, which is peculiar to a constitutional monarchy. The struggle for the republic occurred together with the "Revolution's ", which was at first directed at and , but after 1793 was mainly against , and lasted, with a few interruptions, until 1815 (this war - actually a series of - was also called "the coalition wars", "", and the "wars of liberation"). The initiative for the war came from the republican party in France: it wanted, on the one hand, to pre-empt threatened intervention by foreign powers, and thereby bring about the final end of the crown domestically; but on the other hand, it wanted, from the start, to have an ideological war of conquest, which would, at the same , realize the traditional goals of French foreign policy.

The third epoch of the French Revolution resulted from the conflict inside the victorious republican party. The upper-middle-class "Girondists" opposed the lower- middle-class "Jacobites", whereby the conflict was about whether France should become a middle-class republic or a socialist republic. The conflict broke out for the first during the King's trial, who was executed on the 21st of January 1793. It continued in disagreements about grain prices, and was exacerbated by the increasing foreign dangers. In May 1793, the Jacobites grabbed the power, and founded the " of the welfare committee", which was oriented equally against the domestic enemy and the foreign enemy. The domestic corresponded to the general arming of the population in preparation for foreign wars. Under the Jacobite , starting in 1793, not only were the king and queer and numerous nobles killed, but even former supporters of the revolution, like the Girondists, were killed. In June 1793, a new constitution was proclaimed, which was founded on the axiom of the undivided sovereignty of the people, and on social basic rights, like the right to work. When external foreign pressure was reduced, due to the good job which the Jacobites did in leading the war, a main for justifying the dictatorship disappeared. A decisive French victory over the opposing coalition, in June 1794, began the overthrow of the Jacobite dictatorship. The turning-point was reached when Robespierre, the leading member of the welfare committee, was executed on 27 July 1794. (The welfare committee was toppled at this time.) Thus for the first time, a retarding movement was introduced in the course of the revolution. Since September 1795, the "directors" arose, who, by means of an extended system of legislative and executive institutions, sought to secure the class rule of the upper middle class, and thereby to re-created the class relations as they have been prior to the events of 1792 and 1793. The new regime, however, was continually more and more discredited by its persistent inner weakness as well as by the military defeats, and was removed in November 1799 by the 's sweep into the state, who took over power as the leader of the army. Napoleon ended the revolution, inasmuch as he simultaneously stabilized its socio-political results. The rise of the French Revolution, page 2 middle class society in France received its legislative confirmation in the of 1804; the principle of the sovereignty of the people seemed to be effectively realized in the dictatorship of the plebiscites created under Napoleon. Even the establishment of the in 1804 was not a departure from this course, but rather, just the opposite, was supposed to entrench it. In the course of the Napoleonic conquests, the ideas of the French Revolution also began to spread to the rest of Europe.

French Revolution, page 3