Causes of the French Revolution

1. Causes of the French Revolution

2. Political Causes

3. The Rise of Absolute Monarchies(1400’s-1700’s)

4. Absolutism • The idea is based on that monarchs have divine rights and do not have to answer to any form of government and /or the people. • So they didn’t take advice from Parliament, the Estates General, or from the Nobles. • They regulated the taxation and national spending, government, and the religion. • Would limit personal freedoms of certain groups ex. Jews or Protestants. • They would also limit the power of the existing government bodies like the English Parliament, and the French Estates General.

5. One theme = CONTROL!!! • Control the government -Centralize & create bureaucracies -Reduce power of representative bodies • Control the nobility -Increase size of court; regulate social gatherings -Reduce nobles’ power in the government • Control economics -Great works -Economic policies centralized • Control power -Divine right & regulate religion

6. Absolutist Theory • There must be one - and only one - sovereign in every state (although it can be a body consisting of more than one person). • The sovereign holds all legitimate power and should never be actively resisted. • If the sovereign commands a contravention of God's law, disobey, but accept the punishment (= "passive obedience").

7. Early-modern governments had to rely mainly on persuasion rather than coercion. • In the face of widespread opposition to government policy, regimes could do little. • Execution by burning, by decapitation, or by hanging, drawing and quartering were used to provide a public spectacle of the consequences of disobedience

8. The main way of instilling obedience, however, was propaganda. • Through teaching, preaching and writing, the message was sent that sedition was morally wrong, un-Christian, and would result in divine retribution. • Even those who escaped punishment in this life would burn in hell fire. • Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto 34) • When Dante's Pilgrim reaches the lowest pit of hell, he finds the world's three greatest sinners protruding from the mouth of Satan. Judas Iscariot - who betrayed Jesus - hangs with his head in Satan's mouth, his legs dangling.

9. Dante’s Divine Comedy: • An almost equally bad fate befalls Brutus & Cassius - the assassins of Julius Caesar. • Their bodies are in the devil's mouth - their heads swinging. • For Dante, treason was clearly the worst of crimes.

10. Absolutism and Divine Right • Divine right theory was a branch of absolutism • Most divine right theorists thought that monarchy was the best form of government and that monarchs should never be resisted by the people. • Divine right theorists insisted that the ruler's authority was from God alone (not from the community). • They quoted Scripture in their support: • Proverbs 8.15-16: By me kings reign, and princes decree justice. By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth.

11. Divine Right of Kings • Medieval belief that God gives power to the king; therefore, his actions are sanctioned by God • The theory of the Divine Right of Kings aimed at instilling obedience by explaining why all social ranks were religiously and morally obliged to obey their government.

12. Divine Right • The belief that certain Kings were chosen by God • The Kings were only accountable to God and no one else • This idea was reinforced by Bishop Jacques Bossuet.

13. One vital element in the theory of the Divine Right of Kings was the Bodinian concept of sovereignty. • The political theory of Jean Bodin (1529/30-96) was aimed at ending the long period of conflict and confusion caused by Religious Wars in France between Catholics and Huguenots. • A lawyer and economist, Bodin wrote Six Books of the Commonweal  (Six livres de la république), which was published in French in 1576 (English translation 1606). • Bodin, like other politiques, argued that only undivided authority could prevent endless dissension

14. Although the theory of the Divine Right of Kings was perfectly coherent and treated as such by its exponents and opponents, it is often now dismissed as absurd. • It is often falsely portrayed as more or less implying that God descended on a cloud to endow monarchs with celestial authority. • In fact, in a period when most people accepted that God had created the world and human nature, its analysis of the nature of political obligation was perfectly sensible (and arguably less mystical than dialectical materialism or the existential moment).

15. In every kingdom, the king's power comes directly from God, to whom the ruler is accountable; power does not come to the king from the people and he is not accountable to them. • In every kingdom, the king makes the final decisions on all aspects of government (including the church). • Other people and institutions that exercise political power do so as delegates of the king, and are subordinate to him. • However tyrannically kings act, they are never to be actively resisted. (The doctrine of non-resistance). • If the king orders an act directly against God's commands, the subject should disobey but must submissively accept any penalty of disobedience. (The doctrine of "passive obedience" ). • The doctrine was neatly encapsulated in the satirical song, The Vicar of Bray, which insisted that "Kings are by God appointed, /And damned are they that dare resist, / Or touch the Lord's anointed". • Monarchy is the best form of government, but other forms are valid.

16. “Charles explained that there was a doctrine called the Divine Right of Kings, which said that:(a) He was King, and that was right.(b) Kings were divine and that was right.(c) Kings were right, and that was right.(d) Everything was all right." • (Sellar & Yeatman, 1066 and all that).

17. “What is done for the state is done for God, who is the basis and foundation of it......Where the interests of the state are concerned, God absolves actions which, if privately committed, would be a crime.” — Cardinal Richelieu • What does this primary source quote mean? • What impact would this have on a country?

18. Decline of Belief in Divine Right in England • The religious fervor awakened by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation provoked rebellion all over Europe. • In England, both Roman Catholic and Puritan theorists justified disobedience, and even forcible resistance, to heretical governments that attacked the true religion. • In the 1560s, Mary Queen of Scots was deposed by Calvinist rebels, whose actions were explained and justified by the poet and historian, George Buchanan. • Mary fled to England and plotted with English Catholics to overthrow the government of Elizabeth I until she was executed in 1587 for her involvement in the Babington Plot.

19. Decline of Divine Right in England • The Scottish Protestants, George Buchanan and John Knox also wrote in support of resistance to heretical and tyrannical rulers. • Buchanan also put these principles into practice by supporting the nobles who overthrew and deposed Mary, Queen of Scots. • They placed Mary's infant son, James on the throne. • Buchanan's most important works were De Jure Regni Apud Scotos - The rights of the kingdom among the Scots - (published 1579; written in the 1560s), and Rerum Scoticarum Historia,  - A History of Scotland - (1582). • Both laid great stress on the limitations of monarchical power. • The History of Scotland was one of the main sources for Shakespeare's Macbeth.

20. Decline of Belief in Divine Right in England • By the second half of the sixteenth century, England's upper classes were better educated and more politically conscious than at any time in the past. • Local gentlemen sought election to the House of Commons, which grew increasingly more sophisticated in its proceedings and began to create an "institutional memory" by improving its records and establishing precedents. • Gentlemen in the localities began to hire agents in London to send them letters containing news of the latest events in the Commons, at Court and abroad. • These news letters were the precursors of the first newspapers, which began in the 1620s. • [At first, the newspaper was called  a "coranto" because it gave the current news].

21. Decline of Divine Right in England • The theory of the Divine Right of Kings was directed at convincing this literate and wealthy group that they should serve as royal officials, not try and seize power for themselves. • Of course, not everyone was persuaded. • But many were - including such intelligent and educated theorists as Sir Robert Filmer and (in his own individual way) Thomas Hobbes. • Both Civil War Royalists and Restoration Tories derived many of their basic arguments from the theory of Divine Right.

22. Decline of Divine Right in England • James II was supported by English Tories, who prided themselves on their loyalty to the Crown and the Church of England. • But James II adopted pro-Catholic policies so threatening to the Anglican establishment that many believers in the Divine Right of Kings lost their enthusiasm. • Most Tories stood by passively in 1688 when William and Mary invaded and deposed their father/uncle. • James II's descendants by his second wife, Mary of Modena, never succeeded in regaining the throne despite the support of the Jacobites. • Indefeasible hereditary right fell before Parliamentary legislation instituting a Protestant succession.

23. Decline of Divine Right in England •  After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the theory of the Divine Right of Kings lost almost all support in England. • It was still forcefully expounded in France by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) and survived until rendered irrelevant there by Enlightenment and Revolution.

24. Decline of Divine Right • "…the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate." • Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1792)

25. King Louis XVI

26. Political Causes: Old Regime and Louis XVI’s Leadership • Problems with King Louis XVI • Lacked the personality & intelligence to rule as an absolute monarch • Honest, easy-going, religious, and deeply devoted to his family; not focused on ruling country • Private person & painfully shy • Generally avoided people • Liked to work in his workshop on locks or hunt

27. Political Causes: Old Regime and Louis XVI’s Leadership • Appearance and Personality: • Overweight---breakfast consisted of “four cutlets, a chicken, a plateful of ham, half a dozen of eggs in a thick meat sauce and a bottle and a half of champagne” • He shuffled around like an old bear. • He was always tripping over his sword.

28. Political Causes: Old Regime and Louis XVI’s Leadership • Problems with King Louis XVI continued: • Indecisive; could not say no or disagree with anyone • Narrow-minded & incapable of compromise • Easily confused by the conflicting advice of his advisors; so he rarely made quick decisions • Believed in divine right • Completely unaware of the situation in France

29. Political Causes: Old Regime and Louis XVI’s Leadership • Problems with King Louis XVI continued: -He was extremely fat, awkward, & clumsy. -Fond of practical jokes & was the laughing-stock of the royal court. No one respected him. -Bored by government & politics; everyone knew it

30. Political Causes: Old Regime---Louis XVI’s Leadership • Examples of his practical jokes: • He would hide in the halls of Versailles and sneak up and trip the servants. • At night, when the servants were helping him undress and get into his pajamas, he would make a silly face and run away naked. • Louis would walk around Versailles and pants his friends.

31. In the 18th century dietary habits had the ability to mark membership in a social group. • The bourgeoisie used the influence of culinary habits as another way of presenting an aristocratic image. • The private banquets of the bourgeoisie and their forays to restaurants served to boost their social status by exemplifying their wealth and "savoir faire." • The Royal Family: • Many republican pamphlets and publications focused on depicting the corruption and weakness within the Royal family through images of their eating habits. • In numerous anti-monarchial pamphlets the King was portrayed as suffering from a "moronic and short-sighted bulemia that made him no match for the honest, abstemious, and responsible Constitutional Assembly." (Spang, 123)

32. Problems with Louis XVI • Lettre de cachet---the king had the power to send anyone to jail without a trial just by writing a lettre de cachet---which means a sealed letter • It was a single sheet of paper signed by the king and sealed with wax • The person whose names appeared on the paper would go to prison or be sent into exile for as long as the king wanted. • Louis signed over 14,000.

33. Louis, Marriage & Rumors • France was waiting for Marie Antoinette to produce an heir to the throne. For seven years, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette's marriage was unconsummated -- and it was all anyone could talk about. Well, that and the brewing revolution. • The couple wed in May 1770, and the ceremony and ensuing celebration had all the trappings of a lavish royal fête. • At Versailles, custom permitted the king's courtiers to accompany the newlyweds to their bedroom, where they reposed on display. It did little to stoke the fires of passion. • Marie Antoinette was frustrated. She was willing and able to sexually receive her husband; as a matter of fact, she lived in a state of anxiety that he would never warm to her and that she'd be sent home to Austria as an utter failure. • Her mother, Maria Theresa, reminded her of this danger at every possible juncture in their correspondence. • She wrote to Marie Antoinette to "lavish more caresses" on Louis [source: Covington]. • What's more, it was painfully clear to everyone that something was wrong with the couple. It wasn't just the young couple's physical gratification at stake: France was waiting for Marie Antoinette to produce an heir to the throne.

34. Louis, Marriage, & Rumors • News of Louis' impotence spread from the court of Versailles to the streets of Paris, where pamphlets mocking his powerlessness were distributed. • The propaganda planted the seed that if Louis couldn't perform in the bedroom, he certainly couldn't perform on the throne. • Louis XV watched forlornly as his grandson failed to execute his mission; the reigning king had a rapacious sexual appetite and an insatiable mistress, Madame du Barry. • Louis was doughy, impressionable and more fascinated by locks, languages and hunting than he was by his lovely young wife. • Marie Antoinette explained to a friend, "My tastes are not the same as the King's, who is only interested in hunting and his metal-working" [source: Fraser].

35. Louis, Marriage, & Rumors • But different tastes or not, Maria Theresa wasn't going to take the news lying down. • She sent her son Joseph to assess the couple's damage. He called them "two complete blunderers" and surmised that nothing else stood in their way of consummation. • Joseph may not have been entirely correct in his analysis. • Louis had been diagnosed with a condition called phimosis in which the foreskin of the penis is tighter than normal and doesn't loosen upon arousal. This condition made sex very painful. • There was an operation available to correct the condition, but Louis was reluctant to go under the knife. • Some historians think he finally acquiesced and had the procedure while some say he never did; regardless, the couple finally consummated.

36. Political Causes: Old Regime and Louis XVI’s Leadership • Weak Ruler • Poor Decision Maker • Had no true idea of how “normal” people lived. • At age of 15 was married to 14 year old girl from Austria to improve relations between the 2 countries. • Had no idea how poor his government/country was becoming(past wars & USA indpce help = $4Billion debt!) • Most people liked him, but not his government.

37. Marie Antoinette was born to the great Austrian empress Maria Theresa • As a young teenager, she was obliged to wed Louis XVI of France to symbolize an alliance made between Austria and France. • Ironically, in the beginning of her marriage she was much loved by the French people for her kindness to peasants and her willingness to interact with her subjects. • When Louis went hunting, peasants were sometimes trampled or accidentally shot. Antoinette, who was usually following in her separate coach, would always stop to help the injured person and even take him back to the palace to be treated. Political Causes: Marie Antoinette

38. Problems with Marie Antoinette • Marie did not like the restrictive and often ridiculous rules of court at Versailles that had been established by King Louis XIV to manipulate and financially control the nobles. • Marie hated the artificial clothes and hairstyles. • She tried to change fashion by wearing simple, straight dresses of white muslin and wearing her hair down in what she called a “natural” style.

39. Problems with Marie Antoinette • Marie had her portrait painted several times in the simpler fashions. • But the nobles at court hated it and attacked Marie with nasty gossip. • The most jealous courtiers wrote anonymous pamphlets making spiteful and sly attacks against Marie. • To them, her actions showed no respect for the French rules and customs.

40. Problems with Marie Antoinette • They said she was dressed like a dowdy milk-maid. • That her simple clothes hurt the French economy because she was not supporting the garment industry and encouraging others to dress like her in cheap, foreign-made clothes. • But when Marie gave in and started to dress like the other French nobles, the Third Estate resented her for wasteful spending and outrageous behavior.

41. Problems with Marie Antoinette • Marie built up her debt in her closet . • She had nearly 300 dresses made annually for her various social engagements at the court of Versailles, her private parties at Petit Trianon and for the stage of her jewel-box theater . • ­But it wasn't just dresses that Marie and her couturier fussed over. • She had an original hairstyle commissioned -- the gravity-defying pouf -- and even had an exclusive fragrance made for her by Jean-Louis Fargeon (also her glovemaker). • Marie Antoinette's elixir evoked the gardens and orchards at Petit Trianon, and it was supposedly so strong a scent that it gave her away during her family's plotted escape from the Tuileries. • Her pricy parties and extensive wardrobe earned Marie Antoinette the moniker Madame Déficit. She couldn't shake the title -- not that she tried. Marie Antoinette was far removed from the revolutionary murmurs in Paris. And her ignorance ultimately culminated in her death sentence.

44. Problems with Marie Antoinette • Marie refused to behave as the French nobles thought a queen should: • To smile a lot and not have any opinions on anything • To do as she was told by her husband, advisors, and courtiers • To have lots of babies---especially boys • To be on public display at all times

45. Let Them Eat Cake Reference • As famous as she is for having proclaimed, "Let them eat cake," when she heard that the peasants were starving from the dearth of bread, Marie Antoinette actually never said it. • The young queen was known to be quite tender-hearted, in contrast to her less flattering attributes as a spendthrift and wild reveler. • There are accounts of her administering aid to a peasant who'd been gored by a wild animal as well as taking in an orphaned boy. • Besides accounts like these that attest to her kind and generous nature, there are straightforward facts that disprove her utterance of this scandalous remark.

46. Let Them Eat Cake Reference • Louis XVI's coronation took place at Rheims during the height of a bread shortage in Paris. • This is the context in which she is incorrectly quoted as joking, "If they have no bread, then let them eat cake!" ("Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.") • Cake at this time being the common tongue for a type of French bread, using less flour. • However, there is no evidence that this phrase was ever uttered by Marie Antoinette. • When Marie Antoinette actually heard about the bread shortage she wrote, "It is quite certain that in seeing the people who treat us so well despite their own misfortune, we are more obliged than ever to work hard for their happiness. The king seems to understand this truth; as for myself, I know that in my whole life (even if I live for a hundred years) I shall never forget the day of the coronation."

47. Brioche

48. Let Them Eat Cake Reference • The expression comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions," a treatise penned in the late 18th century. When the book was first published in 1782, Marie Antoinette was 10 years old under her mother's care in Austria [source: Goldberg]. • There's a possibility that Rousseau turned the phrase himself; other historians think it may have been uttered by Maria Theresa. Maria Theresa was a noblewoman of Spanish descent who wed Louis XIV [source: Covington]. • What Rousseau or Maria Theresa actually said -- whatever the case may be -- is "qu'ils mangent de la brioche • " This doesn’t mean "let them eat cake;" it means "let them eat an egg-based bread" [source: Goldberg]. • The type of bread to which the speaker referred is a more luxe loaf than the typical flour-and-water bread of the Parisian pauper.

49. Let Them Eat Cake Reference • A French law mandated that bakers sell their brioche at the same price as their inexpensive bread if this supply ran out. • Later on, the law would be the downfall of the hungry lower classes when bakers responded by baking very short supplies of bread to save themselves from economic ruin. • Marie Antoinette had plenty of enemies in Paris, and it was easy to fabricate stories about the queen's spendthrift habits. • Very likely, someone attributed this line to the wrong royal and the tale seemed true enough to stick.

50. Problems with Marie Antoinette-Lack of Interest in Ruling • When Marie Antoinette's sister-in-law, Marie Thérèse, the wife of the Comte d'Artois, gave birth to her first child in August 1775, Marie Antoinette was subjected to cat-calls from market women asking why she had not produced a son, too. • She spent the next day weeping in her rooms, much to the distress of her ladies-in-waiting, who felt she was "extremely affecting when in misfortune." • Fulfilling Marie Antoinette's determination to avoid boredom, conversation in her circle shied away from the mundane or intellectual. • According to Madame Campan, one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting:"The newest songs from the Comédie, the most timely joke or pun or quip, the bon mot of the day, the latest and choicest titbit of scandal or gossip – these comprised the sole topics of conversation in the intimate group about the queen; discussion on a serious plane was banished from her court.“