Causes of the Revolution

2. Causes of the Revolution • Louis XVI was King of France in 1789. Louis was a kind man, but he was raised to bea king and had little knowledge of common people. • There was a story in France that when Louis' wife, Marie Antoinette, heard that the people had no bread, she said,"Let them eat cake.“ • Marie Antoinette never said that, but it shows how little the royal family knew about life for the common people of France.

3. Causes of the Revolution • In the 1780s, the nation had endured a long, hard winter and most of the crops were lost. The treasury was bankrupt after supporting America in their revolution. • Louis had to raise money. He could not tax the peasants, because they had no money, so he had to tax the aristocrats and the middle class. • Louis knew the people would revolt if he raised taxes on his own, so he asked the Estates General to advise him. • Louis XVI Needed Help

4. Estates-General • For several hundred years, the Estates- General was an assembly that represented the "estates," or classes in France. • The Estates-General advised the king on difficult decisions but no French king had called the Estates General in 179 years. • The Estates-General voted as a class. • The first class was the clergy and the second was the nobility. • A third class was made up of the "middle class," a group shopkeepers and craftsmen who were neither rich nor poor.

5. French Society First Estate Clergy Second Estate Nobility Third Estate Middle Class and Peasants 90 % of the Population

6. National Assembly • The Third Estate was hoping for reform to the government and to make needed changes. • Louis tried to make the Third Estate go away by locking the doors of their meeting hall. They went to a nearby tennis court and took an oath not to disband until they had a constitution. (Tennis Court Oath) • The Third Estate now called themselves the National Assembly and invited the 2nd and 1st Estates to join them.

7. The People Revolt! On July 14, 1789, the middle class attacked the Bastille. The Bastille was a prison where weapons were stored. The middle class now had the power to rule France and the French Revolution had begun.

8. Results of the Revolution • Louis remained King but had little authority. The National Assembly now controlled France. Louis was moved from his palace in Versailles to Paris- where he would be safer from attack.

9. Reform • The storming of the Bastille saved the National Assembly and doomed the Old Regime. • Late in the summer of 1789, the National Assembly voted to end feudalism, mandatory tithes and special privileges of the nobles and the clergy. • It also passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

10. Reform • In the next two years, the National Assembly passed more than 2,000 new laws. • In 1791, has first constitution based on a separation of powers. • An elected assembly became the legislative branch. A system of courts acted as a judicial branch, and the King was the executive branch. • The people finally had a say in their government.

11. The Second French Revolution (1792) • Prussian and Austrian armies attack France and the revolution is in peril of the absolute monarchy being restored by foreign powers. • Radical reformers wanted to remove the King and establish a new republic based on Virtue. • Meanwhile, angry mobs attacked the new government and the royal family becomes prisoners of the new government.

12. Reform and Terror The National Convention is created and abolished the Constitution of 1791 France becomes a republic (Constitution of 1793). The National Convention places the radicals (Liberals/ Left) in control of the Government.

13. Many New Changes Torture and arbitrary Property owned by the church was seized imprisonment were abolished The highest ranks of the military were now open to people of every class The people elected judges for short periods of time

14. What happened to King Louis XVI? • Louis tried to escape France, but he was captured and returned to Paris. • In January, 1793, Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette were beheaded for a "multitude of crimes."

15. Robespierre In 1789 Robespierre was a delegate to the Estates-General. The Jacobin Club was an extremist group that advocated exile or death for the nobility and royalty. Slowly they are put into positions of power and the Revolution enters its bloody phase.

16. Robespierre Robespierre was a young lawyer and member of the Bourgeoisie. He was a great admirer of the teaching of Rousseau, that the people are the voice of the government. He led the Committee of Public Safety whose task it was to keep the revolution safe and determine who the enemies were – and execute them.

17. The Terror Robespierre unleashed a reign of terror to destroy his enemies in France. As many as 40,000 people were executed in the Reign of Terror. It was said the blood ran ankle deep in the heart of Paris.

18. The Terror Ends As the threat of foreign invasion declined, many of the moderates argued that the Terror had gone too far. Robespierre enemies executed him and 12 of his followers and ended the terror. The Bourgeois then formed the Directory, which creates a moderate government and tries to restore order in France.