essay on french revolution 150 words

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French Revolution Essay - History

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The French Revolution (1789–1799)

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Suggested Essay Topics

1 . To what extent was the French nobility responsible for the crisis that destroyed the ancien régime?

2 . What role did women play in the Revolution? Were they simply a reactionary force—as when bread shortages prompted a march on Versailles—or an active part of the revolutionary public?

3 . To what extent did the Thermidorian Reaction owe its success to the excesses of Maximilien Robespierre?

4 . Make an argument as to which governmental arrangement—monarchial rule, the National Assembly’s constitutional monarchy, the National Convention’s republic, or the Directory—was best suited to revolutionary France.

5 . What problems in France and beyond contributed to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte?

Popular pages: The French Revolution (1789–1799)

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Department of History

The french revolution, 1774-1799 (hi31j): short essays.

First Essay: A dialogue between a liberal and a Marxist

Imagine that Alexis de Tocqueville and Albert Soboul are sitting at a café or pub and having a heated debate about the French Revolution. Assume that they are familiar with each other’s interpretations and perhaps those of the historians we’ve encountered in the seminar. How might their discussion go? Perhaps a Warwick student enrolled in a French Revolution module overhears their discussion from a nearby table and joins in at the end with some opinions.

You should adopt the form of a dialogue:

Tocqueville: bla bla  

Soboul: yada yada

Student: etc.

De Tocqueville and Soboul are unlikely to have texts with them, so they will paraphrase rather than quote. But you (the author) should footnote any specific points so that I can identify where you derived them. (You don’t have to cite overarching views, which run throughout their texts.) While your dialogue should focus primarily on a debate informed by your readings, feel free to embroider the episode with the occasional reference to their surroundings or current events!

The aim of the dialogue is to show your ability to critically compare core historiographical arguments about the French Revolution. To what degree do your characters offer different answers to the same question? To what degree are they asking different questions and perhaps speaking past each other? Since the dialogue must be short (1500 words), your characters will probably focus on one area of debate. Be sure to avoid ‘academese’, i.e., turgid and wordy prose. Remember: they’re chatting in a café or pub.

Assessment is based on the depth and nuance of your understanding of these two major interpretive currents and your ability to identify points of tension. How would the ‘liberal’ de Tocqueville find fault with the Marxist Soboul, and vice-versa? Where might they agree?

Enjoy! Try to make the dialogue insightful but also entertaining!

Essay 2: Primary Source Analysis

Select a primary source, or set of sources, and analyse them closely. You will want to

• Formulate a good question – one that allows you to tease out the significance of your source(s) on several levels. Look for tensions, contradictions, paradoxes. What is puzzling in the source? What begs explanation?
• Formulate a thesis – an overarching argument under which all of your analytical points logically fit.
• Situate your analysis within the historiography. How does your analysis build on or differ from current interpretations?

What counts as a primary source?

Those in the document collections we’ve been consulting throughout the year.

• Be sure to look at ‘Bibliography’ from the module homepage. There is a section on primary sources and document collections.
• Find your own sources, online or in the library.
• You may use a novel or film from a different time period. But be sure to historicise it in its own context. For example, if you write on Renoir’s La Marseillaise film of 1937, then you’ll want to explore what the French Revolution meant to the director or audiences in the 1930s – how the legacy of the French Revolution was being used in a specific historical context.

Short essays may be chosen from the list below or, with the prior consent of the module tutor, designed by students themselves. All essays should address key historiographical questions and/or explore relevant primary sources.  

• Compare the accounts of pre-Revolutionary Paris provided by Jacques-Louis Ménétra and Louis-Sébastien Mercier.
• ‘Travellers are always wrong.’ Discuss in relation to English visitors to France during the Revolution.
• Which was more significant in the Pre-Revolutionary crisis: impending state bankruptcy, aristocratic solidarity or royal incompetence?
• Why did peasants revolt in 1789?
• To what extent and why was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy a turning-point?
• To what extent did the Revolution shape a new administrative structure?
• What were the most significant forms of political participation during the Revolution by EITHER Parisian working people OR women?
• ‘The Haitian Revolution had a more truly global impact than anything that happened in France between 1789 and 1800.’ Do you agree?
• To what extent, and how, was the French Revolution a ‘cultural revolution’?
• Could you explain the role played by war in the French Revolution?
• To what extent did the French Revolution open a period of freedom of speech and new development of printed culture?
• In which ways was the French Revolution a national Revolution?
• Assess the role of theatres and Festivals during the French Revolution.
• To what extent was the French Revolution an intellectual Revolution?
• Assess the role of violence in the revolutionary process.
• Assess the role of public sphere during the Revolution.
• What is the legacy of the French Revolution in Europe?
• What is the legacy of the French Revolution in the world?
• To what extent did the French Revolution shape a new conception of family?
• Did the French Revolution invent ‘total war’?
• What role did emotions play in the French Revolution?  

French Revolution: Essay & Important Notes

What led to the french revolution.

At the close of the 18 th century, France had been long involved in the American Revolution and the extravagant spending of King Louis XVI led France to bankruptcy. Additionally, the common people of France were caught in a vicious cycle of poor harvest, cattle disease, and the increasing prices of bread. This led to widespread discontent and made the people revolt against the monarchy.

Prominent Events of the French Revolution

The entire period of the French Revolution saw several events. Some of the prominent ones include:

Rise of the Third Estate

The population of France had been changing for a long time and non-aristocratic members formed a major part of the Third Estate. However, the Third Estate was not provided equivalent powers and by 1798 began to mobilize for equal representation and wanted voting by head and not by status. The nobles were, however, not ready to part with their privileges and powers.

Tennis Court Oath

With increasing hostility between the three orders about the voting rights of the Third Estate, the title of the National Assembly was adopted by it at an indoor tennis court and took the Tennis Court Oath vowing not to disperse until constitutional reform had been achieved.

The Bastille and Great Fear

As the National Assembly continued its work, violence and fear had consumed the capital city. The rumors of an impending military coup further put the people of Paris in fear. Many rioters marched into the Bastille fortress to collect gunpowder and weapons and this is what marked the beginning of the French Revolution. The revolutionary fear spread far and wide and peasants looted and burned homes of tax collectors and landlords who had exploited them. This agrarian revolt is termed as Great Fear and led the National Assembly to abolish feudalism in August 1789.

Declaration of Rights

The National Assembly adopted the Declaration of Rights of Man and of the citizen in August 1789. The declaration proclaimed to replace the ancient regime with a system based on equal opportunities, freedom of speech, popular sovereignty, and representative government.

Reign of Terror

During the French Revolution, the period marred with a lot of violence was known as the Reign of Terror. It was during this period that the revolution turned radical and King Louis XVI was sent to death from treason.

Violence during the French Revolution

End of the French Revolution

In 1795, the National Convention created the first bicameral legislature of France. The executive power was given to the five-member Directory. However, the members of the Directory were involved in corruption, inefficiency as well as the financial crisis. By the 1790s, most of the members of the Directory had ceded much of their power to the military generals. In 1799, frustrated with the leadership, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup and abolished the Directory, and appointed himself as France’s “first consul.” This led to the end of the French Revolution.

Important Notes

• French Revolution was started to bring about political changes in France.
• The revolution aimed to create a free and sovereign France.
• There were several important events during the French Revolution that were marred by violence and revolts by peasants.

The revolution came to an end with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte.

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The execution of Robespierre and his accomplices, 17 July 1794 (10 Thermidor Year II). Robespierre is depicted holding a handkerchief and dressed in a brown jacket in the cart immediately to the left of the scaffold. Photo courtesy the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris

Vive la révolution!

Must radical political change generate uncontainable violence the french revolution is both a cautionary and inspiring tale.

by Jeremy Popkin   + BIO

If the French Revolution of 1789 was such an important event, visitors to France’s capital city of Paris often wonder, why can’t they find any trace of the Bastille, the medieval fortress whose storming on 14 July 1789 was the revolution’s most dramatic moment? Determined to destroy what they saw as a symbol of tyranny, the ‘victors of the Bastille’ immediately began demolishing the structure. Even the column in the middle of the busy Place de la Bastille isn’t connected to 1789: it commemorates those who died in another uprising a generation later, the ‘July Revolution’ of 1830.

The legacy of the French Revolution is not found in physical monuments, but in the ideals of liberty, equality and justice that still inspire modern democracies. More ambitious than the American revolutionaries of 1776, the French in 1789 were not just fighting for their own national independence: they wanted to establish principles that would lay the basis for freedom for human beings everywhere. The United States Declaration of Independence briefly mentioned rights to ‘liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness’, without explaining what they meant or how they were to be realised. The French ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’ spelled out the rights that comprised liberty and equality and outlined a system of participatory government that would empower citizens to protect their own rights.

Much more openly than the Americans, the French revolutionaries recognised that the principles of liberty and equality they had articulated posed fundamental questions about such issues as the status of women and the justification of slavery. In France, unlike the US, these questions were debated heatedly and openly. Initially, the revolutionaries decided that ‘nature’ denied women political rights and that ‘imperious necessity’ dictated the maintenance of slavery in France’s overseas colonies, whose 800,000 enslaved labourers outnumbered the 670,000 in the 13 American states in 1789.

As the revolution proceeded, however, its legislators took more radical steps. A law redefining marriage and legalising divorce in 1792 granted women equal rights to sue for separation and child custody; by that time, women had formed their own political clubs, some were openly serving in the French army, and Olympe de Gouges’s eloquent ‘Declaration of the Rights of Woman’ had insisted that they should be allowed to vote and hold office. Women achieved so much influence in the streets of revolutionary Paris that they drove male legislators to try to outlaw their activities. At almost the same time, in 1794, faced with a massive uprising among the enslaved blacks in France’s most valuable Caribbean colony, Saint-Domingue, the French National Convention abolished slavery and made its former victims full citizens. Black men were seated as deputies to the French legislature and, by 1796, the black general Toussaint Louverture was the official commander-in-chief of French forces in Saint-Domingue, which would become the independent nation of Haiti in 1804.

The French Revolution’s initiatives concerning women’s rights and slavery are just two examples of how the French revolutionaries experimented with radical new ideas about the meaning of liberty and equality that are still relevant. But the French Revolution is not just important today because it took such radical steps to broaden the definitions of liberty and equality. The movement that began in 1789 also showed the dangers inherent in trying to remake an entire society overnight. The French revolutionaries were the first to grant the right to vote to all adult men, but they were also the first to grapple with democracy’s shadow side, demagogic populism, and with the effects of an explosion of ‘new media’ that transformed political communication. The revolution saw the first full-scale attempt to impose secular ideas in the face of vocal opposition from citizens who proclaimed themselves defenders of religion. In 1792, revolutionary France became the first democracy to launch a war to spread its values. A major consequence of that war was the creation of the first modern totalitarian dictatorship, the rule of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. Five years after the end of the Terror, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had gained fame as a result of the war, led the first modern coup d’état , justifying it, like so many strongmen since, by claiming that only an authoritarian regime could guarantee social order.

The fact that Napoleon reversed the revolutionaries’ expansion of women’s rights and reintroduced slavery in the French colonies reminds us that he, like so many of his imitators in the past two centuries, defined ‘social order’ as a rejection of any expansive definition of liberty and equality. Napoleon also abolished meaningful elections, ended freedom of the press, and restored the public status of the Catholic Church. Determined to keep and even expand the revolutionaries’ foreign conquests, he continued the war that they had begun, but French armies now fought to create an empire, dropping any pretence of bringing freedom to other peoples.

T he relevance of the French Revolution to present-day debates is the reason why I decided to write A New World Begins: The History of the French Revolution (2020), the first comprehensive English-language account of that event for general readers in more than 30 years. Having spent my career researching and teaching the history of the French Revolution, however, I know very well that it was more than an idealistic crusade for human rights. If the fall of the Bastille remains an indelible symbol of aspirations for freedom, the other universally recognised symbol of the French Revolution, the guillotine, reminds us that the movement was also marked by violence. The American Founding Fathers whose refusal to consider granting rights to women or ending slavery we now rightly question did have the good sense not to let their differences turn into murderous feuds; none of them had to reflect, as the French legislator Pierre Vergniaud did on the eve of his execution, that their movement, ‘like Saturn, is devouring its own children’.

It is hard to avoid concluding that there was a relationship between the radicalism of the ideas that surfaced during the French Revolution and the violence that marked the movement. In my book, I introduce readers to a character, the ‘Père Duchêne’, who came to represent the populist impulses of the revolution. Nowadays, we would call the Père Duchêne a meme. He was not a real person: instead, he was a character familiar to audiences in Paris’s popular theatres, where he functioned as a representative of the country’s ordinary people. Once the revolution began, a number of journalists began publishing pamphlets supposedly written by the Père Duchêne, in which they demanded that the National Assembly do more to benefit the poor. The small newspapers that used his name carried a crude woodcut on their front page showing the Père Duchêne in rough workers’ clothing. Holding a hatchet over his head, with two pistols stuck in his belt and a musket at his side, the Père Duchêne was a visual symbol of the association between the revolution and popular violence.

The elites had enriched themselves at the expense of the people, and needed to be forced to share their power

Although his crude language and his constant threat to resort to violence alienated the more moderate revolutionaries, the Père Duchêne was the living embodiment of one of the basic principles incorporated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The sixth article of that document affirmed that ‘the law is the expression of the general will’ and promised that ‘all citizens have the right to participate personally, or through their representatives, in its establishment’. The fictitious Père Duchêne’s message to readers, no matter how poor and uneducated they might be, was that an ordinary person could claim a voice in politics.

Like present-day populists, the Père Duchêne had a simple political programme. The elites who ruled France before 1789 had enriched themselves at the expense of the people. They needed to be forced to share their power and wealth. When the revolution did not immediately improve the lives of the masses, the Père Duchêne blamed the movement’s more moderate leaders, accusing them of exploiting it for their own benefit. The journalists who wrote under the name of the Père Duchêne used colourful language laced with obscenities; they insisted that their vulgarity showed that they were ‘telling it like it is’. Their tone was vindictive and vengeful; they wanted to see their targets humiliated and, in many cases, sent to the guillotine. The most successful Père Duchêne journalist, Jacques-René Hébert, built a political career through his success in using the media. At the height of the Reign of Terror, he pushed through the creation of a ‘revolutionary army’ controlled by his friends to intimidate enemies of the revolution, and seemed on the verge of taking over the government.

Maximilien Robespierre and his more middle-class colleagues on the Committee of Public Safety feared that Hébert’s populist movement might drive them from power. They decided that they had no choice but to confront Hébert and his followers, even if it meant alienating the ‘base’ of ordinary Paris residents, the famous sans-culottes . Using the same smear tactics that the Père Duchêne had perfected, they accused Hébert of dubious intrigues with foreigners and other questionable activities. Like many bullies, Hébert quickly collapsed when he found himself up against serious opponents determined to fight back; the crowd that cheered his dispatch to the guillotine in March 1794 was larger than for many of the executions that he had incited. But he and the other Père Duchênes, as well as their female counterparts, the Mère Duchênes who flourished at some points in the revolution, had done much to turn the movement from a high-minded crusade for human rights into a free-for-all in which only the loudest voices could make themselves heard.

T he ambivalent legacy of the French Revolution’s democratic impulse, so vividly brought to life in the figure of the Père Duchêne, underlines the way in which the movement begun in 1789 remains both an inspiration and a warning for us today. In the more than 200 years since the storming of the Bastille, no one has formulated the human yearning for freedom and justice more eloquently than the French revolutionaries, and no one has shown more clearly the dangers that a one-sided pursuit of those goals can create. The career of the most famous of the radical French revolutionaries, Robespierre, is the most striking demonstration of that fact.

Robespierre is remembered because he was the most eloquent defender of the dictatorship created during the revolution’s most radical period, the months known as the Reign of Terror. Robespierre’s speech on the principles of revolutionary government, delivered on 25 December 1793, made an uncompromising case for the legitimacy of extreme measures to defeat those he called ‘the enemies of liberty’. Paradoxically, he insisted, the only way to create a society in which citizens could exercise the individual freedoms promised in the Declaration of Rights was to suspend those rights until the revolution’s opponents were conclusively defeated.

Robespierre’s colleagues on the all-powerful Committee of Public Safety chose him to defend their policies because he was more than just a spokesman for harsh measures against their opponents. From the time he first appeared on the scene as one of the 1,200 deputies to the Estates General summoned by Louis XVI in May 1789, his fellow legislators recognised the young provincial lawyer’s intelligence and his unswerving commitment to the ideals of democracy. The renegade aristocrat the comte de Mirabeau, the most prominent spokesman of the revolutionary ‘patriots’ in 1789 but an often cynical pragmatist, quickly sized up his colleague: ‘That man will go far, because he believes everything he says.’ Unlike the Père Duchêne, Robespierre always dressed carefully and spoke in pure, educated French. Other revolutionary leaders, like the rabblerousing orator Georges Danton, were happy to join insurrectionary crowds in the streets; Robespierre never personally took part in any of the French Revolution’s explosions of violence. Yet no one remains more associated with the violence of the Reign of Terror than Robespierre.

To reduce Robespierre’s legacy to his association with the Terror is to overlook the importance of his role as a one of history’s most articulate proponents of political democracy. When the majority of the deputies in France’s revolutionary National Assembly tried to restrict full political rights to the wealthier male members of the population, Robespierre reminded them of the Declaration of Rights’ assertion that freedom meant the right to have a voice in making the laws that citizens had to obey. ‘Is the law the expression of the general will, when the greater number of those for whom it is made cannot contribute to its formation?’ he asked. Long before our present-day debates about income inequality, he denounced a system that put real political power in the hands of the wealthy: ‘And what an aristocracy! The most unbearable of all, that of the rich.’ In the early years of the revolution, Robespierre firmly defended freedom of the press and called for the abolition of the death penalty. When white colonists insisted that France could not survive economically without slavery, Robespierre cried out: ‘Perish the colonies rather than abandon a principle!’

The majority of the population was not ready to embrace a radical secularist movement

Explaining how Robespierre, the principled defender of liberty and equality, became in just a few short years the leading advocate of a system of revolutionary government that foreshadowed the 20th century’s totalitarian dictatorships is perhaps the greatest challenge in defending the legacy of the French Revolution. Robespierre was no innocent, and in the last months of his short political career – he was only 36 when he died – his clumsy confrontations with his colleagues made him a dangerous number of enemies. Unlike the Père Duchêne, however, Robespierre never embraced violence as an end in itself, and a close examination of his career shows that he was often trying to find ways to limit the damage caused by policies he had not originally endorsed. In 1792, when most of his fellow Jacobin radicals embraced the call for a revolutionary war to ensure France’s security by toppling the hostile monarchies surrounding it, Robespierre warned against the illusion that other peoples would turn against their own governments to support the French. ‘No one loves armed missionaries,’ he insisted, a warning that recent US leaders might have done well to heed.

When radicals such as Hébert started a campaign to ‘de-Christianise’ France, in order to silence opposition to the movement’s effort to reform the Catholic Church and sell off its property for the benefit of the revolution, Robespierre reined them in. He recognised that the majority of the population was not ready to embrace a radical secularist movement bent on turning churches into ‘temples of reason’ and putting up signs in cemeteries calling death ‘an eternal sleep’. Robespierre proposed instead the introduction of a purified and simplified ‘cult of the Supreme Being’, which he thought believers could embrace without abandoning their faith in a higher power and their belief in the immortality of the soul.

Robespierre knew that many of the revolution’s bitterest opponents were motivated by loyalty to the Catholic Church. The revolution had not begun as an anti-religious movement. Under the rules used in the elections to what became the French National Assembly in 1789, a fourth of all the deputies were clergy from the Catholic Church, an institution so woven into the fabric of the population’s life that hardly anyone could imagine its disappearance. Criticism that the Church had grown too wealthy and that many of its beliefs failed to measure up to the standards of reason promoted by the Enlightenment was widespread, even among priests, but most hoped to see religion, like every other aspect of French life, ‘regenerated’ by the impulses of the revolution, not destroyed.

The revolutionaries’ confrontation with the Church began, not with an argument about beliefs, but because of the urgent need to meet the crisis in government revenues that had forced king Louis XVI to summon a national assembly in the first place. Determined to avoid a chaotic public bankruptcy, and reluctant to raise taxes on the population, the legislators decided, four months after the storming of the Bastille, to put the vast property of the Catholic Church ‘at the disposition of the nation’. Many Catholic clergy, especially underpaid parish priests who resented the luxury in which their aristocratic bishops lived, supported the expropriation of Church property and the idea that the government, which now took over the responsibility for funding the institution, had the right to reform it. Others, however, saw the reform of the Church as a cover for an Enlightenment-inspired campaign against their faith, and much of the lay population supported them. In one region of France, peasants formed a ‘Catholic and Royal Army’ and revolted against the revolution that had supposedly been carried out for their benefit. Women, who found in the cult of Mary and female saints a source of psychological support, were often in the forefront of this religiously inspired resistance to the revolution.

To supporters of the revolution, this religious opposition to their movement looked like a nationwide conspiracy preventing progress. The increasingly harsh measures taken to quell resistance to Church reform prefigured the policies of the Reign of Terror. The plunge into war in the spring of 1792, justified in part to show domestic opponents of the revolution that they could not hope for any support from abroad, allowed the revolutionaries to define the disruptions caused by diehard Catholics as forms of treason. Suspicions that Louis XVI, who had accepted the demand for a declaration of war, and his wife Marie-Antoinette were secretly hoping for a quick French defeat that would allow foreign armies to restore their powers led to their imprisonment and execution.

A ccusations of foreign meddling in revolutionary politics, a so-called foreign plot that supposedly involved the payment of large sums of money to leading deputies to promote special interests and undermine French democracy, were another source of the fears that fuelled the Reign of Terror. Awash in a sea of ‘fake news’, political leaders and ordinary citizens lost any sense of perspective, and became increasingly ready to believe even the most far-fetched accusations. Robespierre, whose personal honesty had earned him the nickname ‘The Incorruptible’, was particularly quick to suspect any of his colleagues who seemed ready to tolerate those who enriched themselves from the revolution or had contacts with foreigners. Rather than any lust for power, it was Robespierre’s weakness for seeing any disagreement with him as a sign of corruption that led him to support the elimination of numerous other revolutionary leaders, including figures, such as Danton, who had once been his close allies. Other, more cynical politicians joined Robespierre in expanding the Reign of Terror, calculating that their own best chance of survival was to strike down their rivals before they themselves could be targeted.

Although the toxic politics of its most radical phase did much to discredit the revolution, the ‘Reign of Terror’, which lasted little more than one year out of 10 between the storming of the Bastille and Napoleon’s coup d’état , was also a time of important experiments in democracy. While thousands of ordinary French men and women found themselves unjustly imprisoned during the Terror, thousands of others – admittedly, only men – held public office for the first time. The same revolutionary legislature that backed Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety took the first steps toward creating a modern national welfare system and passed plans for a comprehensive system of public education. Revolutionary France became the first country to create a system of universal military conscription and to promise ordinary soldiers that, if they proved themselves on the battlefield, there was no rank to which they could not aspire. The idea that society needed a privileged leadership class in order to function was challenged as never before.

Among the men from modest backgrounds who rose to positions they could never have attained before 1789 was a young artillery officer whose strong Corsican accent marked him as a provincial: Napoleon. A mere lieutenant when the Bastille was stormed, he was promoted to general just four years later, after impressing Robespierre’s brother Augustin with his skill in defeating a British invasion force on France’s southern coast. Five years after the overthrow of Robespierre on 27 July 1794 – or 9 Thermidor Year II, according to the new calendar that the revolutionaries had adopted to underline their total break with the past – Napoleon joined with a number of revolutionary politicians to overthrow the republican regime that had come out of the revolution and replace it with what soon became a system of one-man rule. Napoleon’s seizure of power has been cited ever since as evidence that the French Revolution, unlike the American, was essentially a failure. The French revolutionaries, it is often said, had tried to make too many changes too quickly, and the movement’s violence had alienated too much of the population to allow it to succeed.

To accept this verdict on the French Revolution is to ignore a crucial but little-known aspect of its legacy: the way in which the movement’s own leaders, determined to escape from the destructive politics of the Reign of Terror after Robespierre’s death, worked to ‘exit from the Terror’, as one historian has put it, and create a stable form of constitutional government. The years that history books call the period of the ‘Thermidorian reaction’ and the period of the Directory, from July 1794 to November 1799, comprise half of the decade of the French Revolution. They provide an instructive lesson in how a society can try to put itself back on an even keel after an experience during which all the ordinary rules of politics have been broken.

The post-Robespierre republic was brought down by the disloyalty of its own political elite

One simple lesson from the post-Terror years of the revolution that many subsequent politicians have learned is to blame all mistakes on one person. In death, Robespierre was built up into a ‘tiger thirsty for blood’ who had supposedly wanted to make himself a dictator or even king. All too aware that, in reality, thousands of others had helped to make the revolutionary government function, however, Robespierre’s successors found themselves under pressure to bring at least some of the Terror’s other leaders to justice. At times, the process escaped from control, as when angry crowds massacred political prisoners in cities in the south during a ‘white terror’ in 1795. On the whole, however, the republican leaders after 1794 succeeded in convincing the population that the excesses of the Terror would not be repeated, even if some of the men in power had been as deeply implicated in those excesses as Robespierre.

For five years after Robespierre’s execution, France lived under a quasi-constitutional system, in which laws were debated by a bicameral legislature and discussed in a relatively free press. On several occasions, it is true, the Directory, the five-man governing council, ‘corrected’ the election results to ensure its own hold on power, undermining the authority of the constitution, but the mass arrests and arbitrary trials that had marked the Reign of Terror were not repeated. The Directory’s policies enabled the country’s economy to recover after the disorder of the revolutionary years. Harsh toward the poor who had identified themselves with the Père Duchêne, it consolidated the educational reforms started during the Terror. Napoleon would build on the Directory’s success in establishing a modern, centralised system of administration. He himself was one of the many military leaders who enabled France to defeat its continental enemies and force them to recognise its territorial gains.

Although legislative debates in this period reflected a swing against the expanded rights granted to women earlier in the revolution, the laws passed earlier were not repealed. Despite a heated campaign waged by displaced plantation-owners, the thermidorians and the Directory maintained the rights granted to the freed blacks in the French colonies. Black men from Saint-Domingue and Guadeloupe were elected as deputies and took part in parliamentary debates. In Saint-Domingue, the black general Louverture commanded French forces that defeated a British invasion; by 1798, he had been named the governor of the colony. His power was so great that the American government, by this time locked in a ‘quasi-war’ with France, negotiated directly with him, hoping to bring pressure on Paris to end the harassment of American merchant ships in the Caribbean.

The post-Robespierre French republic was brought down, more than anything else, by the disloyalty of its own political elite. Even before Napoleon unexpectedly returned from the expedition to Egypt on which he had been dispatched in mid-1798, many of the regime’s key figures had decided that the constitution they themselves had helped to draft after Robespierre’s fall provided too many opportunities for rivals to challenge them. What Napoleon found in the fall of 1799 was not a country on the verge of chaos but a crowd of politicians competing with each other to plan coups to make their positions permanent. He was able to choose the allies who struck him as most likely to serve his purposes, knowing that none of them had the popularity or the charisma to hold their own against him once the Directory had been overthrown.

One cannot simply conclude, then, that the history of the French Revolution proves that radical attempts to change society are doomed to failure, or that Napoleon’s dictatorship was the inevitable destination at which the revolution was doomed to arrive. But neither can one simply hail the French movement as a forerunner of modern ideas about liberty and equality. In their pursuit of those goals, the French revolutionaries discovered how vehemently some people – not just privileged elites but also many ordinary men and women – could resist those ideas, and how dangerous the impatience of their own supporters could become. Robespierre’s justification of dictatorial methods to overcome the resistance to the revolution had a certain logic behind it, but it opened the door to many abuses.

Despite all its violence and contradictions, however, the French Revolution remains meaningful for us today. To ignore or reject the legacy of its calls for liberty and equality amounts to legitimising authoritarian ideologies or arguments for the inherent inequality of certain groups of people. If we want to live in a world characterised by respect for fundamental individual rights, we need to learn the lessons, both positive and negative, of the great effort to promote those ideals that tore down the Bastille in 1789.

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Essay on French Revolution

Students are often asked to write an essay on French Revolution in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on French Revolution

What was the french revolution.

The French Revolution was a big change in France’s history, starting in 1789 and ending in 1799. It was a time when people in France fought against their king and rich nobles. They wanted fairness, less poverty, and more say in government. This fight led to the end of the French king’s rule, a new way of making laws, and it even affected other countries.

Causes of the Revolution

France’s government was out of money, and the people were very poor while the king and nobles lived well. High taxes and costly bread made life hard. Angry and hungry, people wanted change.

Major Events

Key events included the Storming of the Bastille, a prison, on July 14, 1789. This showed the king that the people wanted change. Later, the king was removed, and France became a place without a king, called a republic.

Impact of the Revolution

The revolution changed laws in France and gave rights to people who had none. It spread ideas about freedom and equality. These ideas inspired other countries to fight for change, shaping the modern world.

250 Words Essay on French Revolution

Introduction to the french revolution.

The French Revolution was a big change in France’s history. It started in 1789 and lasted for 10 years. People in France were unhappy because the rich had a good life while the poor did not. This led to a big fight for equality and fairness.

Before the revolution, France’s king, Louis XVI, spent a lot of money, and the country was in debt. Poor harvests made food prices go up, making life hard for the common people. The rich, called the nobles, did not pay taxes, so the burden was on the poor. This unfairness made the people angry and ready to change things.

The Revolution Begins

On July 14, 1789, angry people stormed a prison called the Bastille. This event showed that the people wanted to fight against the king’s power. It marked the start of the revolution. After this, the revolutionaries made a new government that said everyone should be treated the same.

Changes and Outcomes

The revolution brought many changes. The king and queen were removed from power and later executed. A new system without a king was tried, but it led to more violence. Eventually, a man named Napoleon took over and became the ruler of France.

The French Revolution was important because it changed how France was governed. It tried to make life fairer for everyone, although it was a very hard and messy time. Today, we remember it as a time when people stood up for their rights and changed their country.

500 Words Essay on French Revolution

The French Revolution was a big change in France’s history. It started in 1789 and lasted for 10 years. During this time, the people of France fought against their rulers because they wanted more fairness and better lives. They were tired of the rich having everything while the poor had very little.

Before the revolution, France was divided into three parts called estates. The first estate was the church, the second was the nobles, and the third was everyone else, including farmers, merchants, and workers. The third estate was not happy because they had to pay most of the taxes while the first and second estates paid very little. The country was also in debt, and there was not enough food for everyone.

The Start of the Revolution

The revolution began when the third estate decided they wanted to make their own group called the National Assembly. They wanted to make laws that were fair for everyone. On July 14, 1789, people stormed a prison called the Bastille, looking for weapons. This event is now celebrated in France every year as Bastille Day.

Changes During the Revolution

Many things changed because of the revolution. The National Assembly made new laws that gave more people rights. They took land from the church and the nobles and gave it to the poor. The king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, were caught trying to leave France and later were killed.

The Reign of Terror

A time called the Reign of Terror happened during the revolution. A man named Maximilien Robespierre was in charge, and many people were killed if they were thought to be against the revolution. This scared a lot of people and showed that even a revolution for good things can sometimes go wrong.

The End of the Revolution and Its Impact

The revolution ended when a man named Napoleon Bonaparte took control of France. He became a very powerful leader and changed many things in France and Europe. Even though the revolution had many sad and scary moments, it is important because it showed that people could fight for their rights and change their country.

The French Revolution is a big part of history because it helped to start the idea that all people should have freedom and be treated equally. It inspired other countries to think about their own governments and how they could make them better for everyone. The French Revolution teaches us that when people work together, they can make big changes in the world.

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Essay on The French Revolution

Creating a new Society 14 July 1789 to 9 Thermidor II,(27 July 1794) (snapshot Napoleonic France 1804) According to Joseph Weber, foster brother of Queen Antoinette, there were three primary causes of the French revolution 'the disorder of the finances, the state of mind, and the war in America.' The 'disorder in the finances' acknowledged that the bankruptcy of the monarchy opened the doors to defiance of the King's authority. The greatest single cause of the revolution was the economic crisis , which forced the King to recall the redundant Estates General which had not been called since 1614, which opened the debate for people to make complaints with the current system through the cahiers of the three Estates. The 'state of mind' …show more content…

In the Ancien Regime authority had been deriven from g-d and the king. ** The Declaration primarily appealed to bourgeois (and nobility) spread to proletariat via propaganda (see Townson pg.43) POWER STRUCTURE - NATIONAL CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY (June 1789 - 30 September 1792) - deputies based the writing of the constitution on the Declaration of Rights of man - deputies saw the reluctance of the King to accept the changes that were taking place - and decided that he should have a suspensive veto - *at this point no one considered abolishing the monarch completely and setting up a republic - it was decided that Legislative power reside in the National Assembly - over the next year went about reorganising French govt., laws, finances, and economy LOCAL GOVERNMENT - deputies wanted to make sure power was decentralised, passing from the central govt. in Paris to local authorities - making it more difficult for King to recover the power he had before - wanted the elected representatives to be responsible to those who elected them - already the principles of the Declaration of Rights were being undermined, as citizens were divided into 'active' and 'passive' citizens. - Only active citizens who paid the equivalent of three days' labour in taxes, voted for the municipal officials, those who did not earn that amount from wages were not allowed to vote and known as 'passive' -

French Revolution Dbq Essay

One of the 1st proofs for their problems with the politics in France was, “In order to assure the 3rd estate the influence it deserves because of its numbers… its votes in the assembly should be taken by head…(Doc. 3 “Cahiers”) This excerpt from document 3 explains that the 3rd estates wants more power in government and politics due to the amount of number of people. The purpose for this, is so that they have a say in government and will not get outvoted by the 1st and 2nd estate who have majority of the power during the ancient regime. Another example of the politics in France is in the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen (1789), “ Liberty consists in being to do anything that does not arm another person.” (Doc 8, Rule 4 of Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen).

What Was Revolutionary About the French Revolution

The night of 4th of August was considered essential for the upcoming path of reform in a way that it removed the particularist obstacles and corporate mentality that had so often impeded the monarchy. Nevertheless, it was the Declaration of the rights of man, adopted by the National Assembly on 26 of August, which most clearly indicated the new philosophy of government. Written by Lafayette, the Declaration was a manifesto for liberal revolution. Men were assured equal in rights and such fundamental values as freedom of speech and of the press, religious toleration, equality before the law, freedom from arbitrary arrest and open competition for public office, decreed in a series of imposing articles. No less imperative was the claim that sovereignty belongs to the nation, ideology that justified everything accomplished afterwards.[7]

District of Mansigne are the Wants and Demands for Taxation by the Third Estate

Moving on to the time period of this document this document was written March 1, 1789 a couple months before the storming of the Bastille. Thus, at this time in history there was a significant amount of commotion arising from the people of the Third Estate. The people of the Third Estate were trying to voice their opinions on the oppressive political and economic situations occurring at this time in France in order to try and bring about a reform. These oppressive political and economic situations that the Third Estate were trying to reform included things such as the king heavily taxing only the Third Estate, who already did not even have the finances to survive let alone pay these high taxes. Another example is the fact that the Third Estate did not have equal representatives in the political society to represent their wants and demands in comparison to the First and Second Estates, which can be seen through out Cahier de Doleance’s, Villagers of Lion-en-Sullias, Women of Paris, Flower Sellers, and Village of Pithiviers-le-Vieil. Cahier de Doleance’s, District of Mansigne. Not only does this text help historians and the reader get a better understanding of the specific wants of the Third Estate but the rest of his documents such as Villagers of Lion-en-Sullias, Women of Paris, Flower Sellers, and

Essay on Causes and Effects of The French Revolution

• 7 Works Cited

The French Revolution was a time of great social, political and economic tumult in the closing years of the Eighteenth Century. The motivators pushing French citizenry toward revolution are varied in scope and origin. They range from immediate economic woes to an antiquarian class structure. Modern historians still debate the value of the changes that the revolution brought to modern society. The middle class made gains that would never be rescinded, but do revolutions always end in tyranny? In the years before the revolution citizens were rigidly constrained by the estates of the realm. These social strata had been in place since the medieval ages. The people were divided into three groups; clergy, nobility and everyone else. The clergy

Causes of the French Revolution Essay

There were many causes and events leading up to the French Revolution in 1789. Before the Revolution, France had been involved in many expensive wars, especially the American War of Independence, causing financial difficulties and debts which were increased through the expensive upkeep of the Royal Family and their courts. At this time the Age of Enlightenment was occurring and new ideas, challenging the Ancien Regime and the Absolute right to rule, were emerging. The monarch of the time, King Louis XVI, was a weak monarch who was incapable of making decisions and sticking to them. King Louis XIV was also incapable of using his powers in a way to spark fear and gain control of those under his power. As a

DBQ Essay: Causes Of The French Revolution

The French Revolution of 1789 had many long-range causes. Political, social, and economic conditions in France mad many French people discontented. Most disaffected were merchants, artisans, workers, and peasants. The ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers brought new views of government and society. The American Revolution also influenced the coming of The French Revolution. Therefore, The French Revolution of 1789 had several causes not only due to political, but also due to social and economic issues and problems as well that made France ripe for revolution. The most important long-range causes of this revolution, however, were the ideas of the Enlightenment, the unfair taxes, the gap between the rich and poor, and the American Revolution

Women Suffrage Essay

was a human rights struggle for more than just the right to vote. They were also striving

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizens, 1789 Essay

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizens, 1789 Works Cited Missing The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens was formed by the National Assembly on 27th August 1789. It was intended by the National Assembly to be the preliminary statement of principles which the constitution should be modelled. Thus allowing the nation of France to be liberated and achieve a secure structure to their society. Marquis de Lafayette, the commander of the National Guard and Thomas Paine, an English political thinker, were major contributors in the drawing up of the declaration.

Tudor Rebellion Causes

Rebel leaders believed that if current royal advisors were removed successfully it would improve the government as they would be replaced with improved and wiser individuals and stop the negative influence on the Monarch.

French Revolution Dbq

French Revolution: Final Essay The French Revolution accomplished many things. The clergy and nobility began to struggle to keep their power in the resolutions losing some authority over the people. The peasants and san culottes got more rights in the first revolution but they did not get any political power.

Violence is an unavoidable terror that has played one of the, if not the most, important roles in all of history. Without violence, lands wouldn’t be conquered, empires wouldn’t fall, and people wouldn’t have any limits or restrictions. The French Revolution is one example of a violent uprising because the people of France revolted against the rule of King Louis XVI by raiding, storming, and slaughtering for their natural equal rights. The revolution marked the end of a government ruled by monarchy and the start of the Republic of France. One important reason of why the revolution was successful in bringing political change was because it was violent.

Timothy Tackett's When The King Took Flight

“For all practical purposes, the government had become a “republican monarchy”, a kingdom with a powerless king, ruled by deputies who had assumed not only a legislative and executive functions but also a critical judicial role(134).” “We would rather be burdened with a king who is worthless and deceitful, than be forced to face the horrors of civil and foreign

The Causes Of The Great Fear Of 1789

8. The documents of the National Assembly were the August Decree, The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and the Constitution of 1791.The Enlightenment ideas are reflected in each one like in the August Decree, the National Assembly revokes the nobility’s privileges and serfdom over the peasants in which they violated their natural rights of especially liberty by John Locke as well as the economic ideas of Adam Smith of abolishing guilds. The freeing of the serfs reflected Diderot’s ideas. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen reflects the Enlightenment ideas of the government protecting the people’s natural rights of life,

French Revolution Research Paper

were against the king. The young nobles, and some of the old ones, who had not

National Constituent Assembly

Effectively, power hungry bourgeois members' ultimate goal was to keep the sovereignty in their own hands. At the same time as the Declaration of Man, the Constituent Assembly also abolished government workshops that had been set up to find employment for the poor. They also demolished union guilds - similar to workers unions - to make sure no organised labour force would rise up against them - such acts were known as Le Chapelier law. A similar system was brought in to restrict franchise of radicals who wouldn't conform, designed to stop those 'passive' citizens that were not paying a large tax, from voting. It was

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Home — Essay Samples — History — American Revolution — Compare And Contrast The American And French Revolution

Compare and Contrast The American and French Revolution

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Liberty and Nation: The French Revolution Essay

The French Revolution had profound implications for people living in France, other European countries, and the United States. In particular, this political and social upheaval made the concept of nation state more realistic. Moreover, it emphasized the importance of citizen rights and the role of government as a protector of these rights. This paper will discuss the role of the French Revolution in shaping the concept of nation, freedom, and citizenship.

First, it should be noted that before 1789 French society was extremely rigid and hierarchical. It was divided in the so-called three estates: 1) clergy; 2) aristocracy; and 3) those people who were not included in the first two groups, for instance, peasants, craftsmen, or other wage-laborers.

This division was criticized by Abbé Sieyes in his pamphlet called What is the Third Estate ? This author argued that people of the Third Estate constituted the bulk of the French nation and that they had to have more political power (Sieyes, unpaged). The Revolution that erupted in 1789 made these people more aware of their ability to influence the life of their country.

French people began to regard nation as it was defined by Abbé Sieyes who said that it was “a body of associates, living under a common law, and represented by the same legislature, etc” (Sieyes, unpaged). Therefore, it is possible to say that the concept of nation became more inclusionary because it was extended toward people of various social classes and ethnic origins.

Additionally, this notion began to be viewed as a group of people who adhered to certain principles such as equality and liberty. Most importantly, these people had the right to affect politics of their country (Neely, 247).

Certainly, one cannot argue that the distinctions between classes were totally erased by the French Revolution; they existed and were even reflected in the Declaration of the Rights of Man . Nevertheless, this experience of showed to people of various social classes that they could act together in the pursuit of their economic or political objectives. This cooperation became the basis of the French nation. This is one of the key changes that were brought by the French Revolution.

Another issue that one has to discuss is the impact of the French Revolution on the concept of civic rights and liberties. During the Age of Absolutism, the very idea of civic rights was familiar only to the representatives of the first and second estates, in other words, aristocracy and clergy. Yet, the power of the monarch remained virtually unchallenged. This person had the authority to control and influence virtually every sphere of public life.

Certainly, the French Revolution did not create a perfect civic society, but it identified the privileges that had to be possessed by every member of the society. In this case, one can speak about such an important document as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen signed by the National Constituent Assembly. This degree legitimized people’s struggle against oppression, presumption of innocence, freedom of communication, the rights to property, and equality of rights (National Constituent Assembly, unpaged).

This declaration still remains important because it highlights the essential components of people’s citizenship. Certainly, it is by no means ideal, because it primarily focused on the rights of male population. Nothing was said about women, their role in the society and their rights.

Moreover, a person had to meet several requirements in order to qualify as a citizen, in particular, he had to be of a certain age and earn a certain amount of money (Sax, 91). Hence, one cannot argue that this declaration was entirely neutral in its treatment of people who lived in France. These are the limitation that one cannot overlook. Yet, prior to the Revolution, French people could regard themselves only as subjects of the king, but not as citizens who could influence political life of the country.

Admittedly, the French Revolution also brought bloodshed, terror, wars, and intense struggle within the French society. It also produced a counter-revolution that was aimed at reversing the radical changes that took place in the country. Nonetheless, the ideas introduced during this revolution remained prominent in the life of French people.

The counter-revolution did not eliminate people’s aspiration for the equality of civic rights. The changes brought by the French Revolution demonstrated that absolute monarchy could not survive as a form of government. Hence, the importance of this political event can hardly be underestimated.

Overall, the revolution that took place in France demonstrated that French people could act as a collective power that could shape that the internal policies of the state or its international relations.

This experience laid the foundations of French nation as a united group of people who could join their efforts to pursue common goals. Secondly, the French revolution stressed the importance of citizenship and possession of certain political, legal, and economic rights that could not be infringed by the state. These are probably the main legacies of the French Revolution.

Works Cited

National Constituent Assembly. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen . Human Constitutional Documents, 2008. Web. < http://www.hrcr.org/docs/frenchdec.html >

Neely, Sylvia. A Concise History Of The French Revolution . New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Print.

Sax, Benjamin. Western Civilization: From the scientific revolution to the present . Greenhaven Press, 2001. Print.

Sieyès, Emmanuel. What is the Third Estate? Fordham University,1997. Web. < https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/sieyes.asp >.

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American Revolution Dbq Essay

May 5, 1789, marked the beginning of the French Revolution. This was because the French common people, The Third Estate, felt underrepresented in the assembly where King Louis XVI attempted to increase taxes. Three months later, in August, as the revolution continued, the French representatives came together as the National Assembly and created the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” to inform the social body of their rights and duties so that they could hold their government to maintain those rights. It outlined their principles of equality, liberty, and democracy. This was to be used as a new constitution and the basis for the revolution. The American Revolution inspired the French and gave them an example of success to aspire to. This text …show more content…

The French later looked to America to be an ally in their revolution, but America stood neutral. This was created to specifically address all the grievances they had with their structure of government. This was directed at the common people to affirm their rights and at the people in power as an expectation. They described a democratic process with elected representatives that the people would inquire to make laws for the nation's interest and a separation of powers. This was a contrast to the monarchial system they had prior to this. This is a representation of what leaders at the time subjected their people to, as these seem like the bare minimum, but they had to fight for this to be the standard. Many of the similar phrases used in this constitution helped support the structure of slavery in America. By identifying the enslaved as property and considering ownership of them as an inalienable right. Whilst this document is seen as, among other things, a declaration of abolishing slavery. They paired the inalienable right of property with “resistance to oppression” or stand-alone phrases like “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights” and “... no one may be forced to do anything not provided to do by law.” This influenced their global

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