The French Revolution

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On 14 July 1790, celebrations were held throughout France commemorating the fall of the Bastille, with participants swearing an oath of fidelity to 'the nation, the law and the king.' The Fête de la Fédération in Paris was attended by the Royal family, with Talleyrand performing a mass. Despite this show of unity, the Assembly was increasingly divided, while external players like the Paris Commune and National Guard competed for power. One of the most significant was the Jacobin club; originally a forum for general debate, by August 1790 it had over 150 members, split into different factions. [81]

On 10 May 1774, King Louis XV of France died after a reign of nearly 60 years, leaving his grandson to inherit a troubled and broken kingdom. Only 19 years old, Louis XVI was an impressionable ruler who adhered to the advice of his ministers and involved France in the American War of Independence. Although French involvement in the American Revolution succeeded in weakening Great Britain, it also added substantially to France's debt while the success of the Americans encouraged anti-despotic sentiments at home. The French Revolution (1789-1799) was a period of major societal and political upheaval in France. It witnessed the collapse of the monarchy, the establishment of the First French Republic, and culminated in the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the start of the Napoleonic era. The French Revolution is considered one of the defining events of Western history.IIn late August, the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ( Déclaration des droits de l ’homme et du citoyen), a statement of democratic principles grounded in the philosophical and political ideas of Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Beginning in May of 1789, when King Louis XVI called for the Estates-General for the first time in more than a century, the French Revolution was a decade of sweeping social change that violently abolished the French aristocracy and helped usher in a global shift away from monarchies. It also, however, saw the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and the transformation of France’s new secular republic into something more authoritarian and militaristic. So this was an influential version of a new historiography which was motivated by the wish to write international history, not focused on one country, but to see processes which connected many societies. It was conceived as a ‘Western Atlantic revolution’. All these revolutions were happening around the Atlantic. Palmer had worked with and been inspired by a very important French historian, Jacques Godechot, who is now forgotten outside France. But I always remember him and like to recall his contribution because his was the original idea that the French Revolution was not an exclusively French event, that it was rather part of a series of events and upheavals that influenced the whole of Europe, and the whole world. This form of international history was later criticized as bringing into academic history the ideological priorities of the Cold War. By February 1795, France had annexed the Austrian Netherlands, established their frontier on the left bank of the Rhine and replaced the Dutch Republic with the Batavian Republic, a satellite state. These victories led to the collapse of the anti-French coalition; Prussia made peace in April 1795, followed soon after by Spain, leaving Britain and Austria as the only major powers still in the war. [188] In October 1797, a series of defeats by Bonaparte in Italy led Austria to agree to the Treaty of Campo Formio, in which they formally ceded the Netherlands and recognised the Cisalpine Republic. [189]

The original formulation was provided by the great American historian, R. R. Palmer, who taught at Yale. He was interested in world history in the 1950s and 60s. He wrote an influential book called The Age of the Democratic Revolution, which tried to connect the American and French revolutions. Before Palmer the conventional historiographical view was that the American Revolution was a political revolution and the French Revolution primarily a social revolution which changed society in France and in Europe. Palmer tried to say that there was a continuum, that they were both revolutions against the aristocracy. That proved quite an influential approach and was interpreted at the time as a way of reclaiming the revolutionary character of the American Revolution. The subtext was that this approach did not concede the revolutionary origins of the modern state only to the Soviets. There was a similar argument at about the same time, voiced by Hannah Arendt, the great American Jewish political philosopher, who also stated that the American Revolution was a real revolution, not just a change in the form of government. Robespierre accumulated almost dictatorial powers during this period. Attempting to curtail the Revolution's rampant dechristianization, he implemented the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being to ease France into his vision of a morally pure society. His enemies saw this as an attempt to claim total power and, fearing for their lives, decided to overthrow him; the fall of Maximilien Robespierre and his allies on 28 July 1794 brought the Terror to an end, and is considered by some historians to mark the decline of the Revolution itself. Thermidorians & the Directory: 1794-1799

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Pros: Detailed, balanced, and professional in all senses, McPhee offers a compelling portrait of one of the revolution’s most controversial figures. Carlyle, Thomas & Sorensen, David R. & Kinser, Brent E. & Engel, Mark. The French Revolution . Oxford University Press, 2019.

The long-term impact on France was profound, shaping politics, society, religion and ideas, and polarising politics for more than a century. Historian François Aulard wrote: Across France, 6 million people participated in the electoral process for the Estates-General, and a total 25,000 cahiers de doléances, or lists of grievances, were drawn up for discussion. When the Estates-General of 1789 finally convened on 5 May in Versailles, there were 578 deputies representing the Third Estate, 282 for the nobility, and 303 for the clergy. Yet the double representation of the Third Estate was meaningless, as votes would still be counted by estate rather than by head. As the upper classes were sure to vote together, the Third Estate was at a disadvantage. The bloodshed did not end with the death of Robespierre; Southern France saw a wave of revenge killings, directed against alleged Jacobins, Republican officials and Protestants. Although the victors of Thermidor asserted control over the Commune by executing their leaders, some of those closely involved in the "Terror" retained their positions. They included Paul Barras, later chief executive of the French Directory, and Joseph Fouché, director of the killings in Lyon who served as Minister of Police under the Directory, the Consulate and Empire. [136] Despite his links to Augustin Robespierre, military success in Italy meant Napoleon Bonaparte escaped censure. [137] Former Viscount and Montagnard Paul Barras, who took part in the Thermidorian reaction and later headed the French Directory In Constantinople itself, the Patriarch, who had disowned the revolution, was executed by the Turks along with a number of other senior prelates. The same happened to the Archbishop of the Autocephalous Church of Cyprus, Kyprianos, and the whole hierarchy in Cyprus. The same happened in Crete and in many other places. So the church offered its own hecatomb to the revolution. The Church did not plan the revolution, originally, but they were held responsible by the Ottoman authorities for the disobedience and the disloyalty of the people and that, of course, gave a national aura to the church. Later, in elaborating a new national ideology, the church became part of the new understanding of what had happened.In 1789, the most populous French colonies were Saint-Domingue (today Haiti), Martinique, Guadeloupe, the Île Bourbon (Réunion) and the Îlede la France. These colonies produced commodities such as sugar, coffee and cotton for exclusive export to France. There were about 700,000 slaves in the colonies, of which about 500,000 were in Saint-Domingue. Colonial products accounted for about a third of France's exports. [191] While all revolutionaries professed their devotion to liberty in principle, "it appeared to mean whatever those in power wanted." [164] For example, the liberties specified in the Rights of Man were limited by law when they might "cause harm to others, or be abused". Prior to 1792, Jacobins and others frequently opposed press restrictions on the grounds these violated a basic right. [165] However, the radical National Convention passed laws in September 1793 and July 1794 imposing the death penalty for offences such as "disparaging the National Convention", and "misleading public opinion." [166] Fighting continued for two reasons; first, French state finances had come to rely on indemnities levied on their defeated opponents. Second, armies were primarily loyal to their generals, for whom the wealth achieved by victory and the status it conferred became objectives in themselves. Leading soldiers like Hoche, Pichegru and Carnot wielded significant political influence and often set policy; Campo Formio was approved by Bonaparte, not the Directory, which strongly objected to terms it considered too lenient. [189] Fighting continued despite general war weariness, and the 1798 elections saw a resurgence in Jacobin strength. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in July 1798 confirmed European fears of French expansionism, and the War of the Second Coalition began in November. Without a majority in the legislature, the Directors relied on the army to enforce decrees, and extract revenue from conquered territories. Generals like Napoleon and Joubert were now central to the political process, while both the army and Directory became notorious for their corruption. [156]