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French Revolution
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Fleeing of the French Royal Family
-Louis and Marie-Antoinette tried to flee in disguise in hopes of gathering support from Austrian Emperor Leopold II, the brother of Marie-Antoinette
-They were discovered and captured at Varennes, 40 miles from the Austrian border
-This greatly hurt their image in the public as they became known as traitors -
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Edmund Burke
The original British critic of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, inspired many of the conservatives that followed him. Argued that revolutionaries erred in thinking they could construct an entirely new government based on reason. Government Burk said, had to be rooted in long experience, which evolved over generations. -
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Maximilien Robespierre
-The leader of the Committee of Public Safety who wanted to create a “republic of virtue” in which the government would teach, or force, citizens to become virtuous republicans through a massive program of political re-education
-This began “The Terror,” in which the guillotine became the most terrifying instrument of a government to protect the republic from its dissidents and opponents and suppress almost every form of dissent
-He was eventually arrested, and his execution ended the Terror -
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King Stanislaw August Poniatowski
-Lead the Polish Patriots
- a nobleman who saw in reform the only chance for his country to escape the consequences of a century’s misgovernment and cultural decline -
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Anne- Louise- Germaine de Stael
the best-known expatriate was Anne-Louise- Germaine de Stael, the daughter of Louis XVI’s chief minister Jacques Necker. Wrote Corinne in 1807 and On Germany in 1810. Her books were banned in France. -
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Francois- René de Chateaubriand
Francois- René de Chateaubriand, an admirer of Napoleon, but he preferred monarchy. He Wrote Genius of Christianity in 1802 to draw attention to the power and mystery of faith. -
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Ludwig van Beethoven
German composer who helped set the direction of musical romanticism; his music recurring and evolving themes to convey the impression of natural growth. In 1824 his ninth symphony was explicitly political. -
Prince Klemens Von Metternich
took the lead in devising the settlement and shaping the post Napoleonic order. A well educated nobleman who spoke five languages, served as a minister in the Austrian cabinet, he worked along with the British prime minister Robert Castlereagh to ensure a moderate agreement that would check French aggression yet maintain France’s great-power status. -
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Reign of Louis XVI
-Many complained that he showed more interest in hunting or in making locks than in the problems of the government
-His ineffectiveness and the queen’s growing unpopularity helped undermine the monarchy as an institution
-Was tried and found guilty of treason, and was executed on Jan. 21, 1793 -
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Marie- Antoinette
-Wife of Louis XIV and Queen of France
-Greatly criticized for her extravagant lifestyle and indifference to the misery of the poor, and by 1789, she became an object of popular hatred
-Tried and execution in October 1793 -
Fiscal Crisis late 1780s
-Because France supported the Americans against the British in the American War of Independence, about half of their national budget went to paying interest on the debt
-The government had been trying for years to modernize the tax system, but peasants bore the greatest burden of taxes, and tax collection was corrupt and not systematic, so bond and annuity holders from the middle and upper classes now demanded a clearer system of fiscal accountability -
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Simon Bolivar
Simon Bolivar, European educated son of a slave owner who became one of the leaders of the Latin American independence movement in the 1820s. Bolivia is named after him. -
The Dutch Patriot Revolt
- Government-sponsored Dutch banks owned 40% of the British national debt and the entire foreign debt of the United States
- The Dutch Patriots wanted to reduce the powers of the prince of Orange who was the king stadholder
- With support from the middle-class, they demanded political reforms and organized armed citizen militias called the Free Corps
- They set up new elections to replace councils who supported Orange
- Prussia intervened and Orange regained his position
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The Polish Patriots
-Shocked by losing ⅓ of their territory, this group of Poles sought to overhaul the weak commonwealth along modern western European lines
-Lead by King Stanislaw August Poniatowski
-against them they had Catherine II who wanted to uphold Russian influence, but they had more freedom to act while she was tied up with the Ottoman Turks -
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The Belgian Independence Movement
-Upper class people resisted the Enlightened reforms of Joseph II, and democrats saw it as an opportunity to get a more representative government
- A secret society formed armed companies to prepare an uprising
- Delegates from various provinces declared themselves the United States of Belgium
- Social division ended the rebellion for the democrats when aristocratic leaders got Catholic clergy and peasants on their side -
Jacobin Club
-Many deputies in the National Convention belonged to this devotedly republican club, named after the former monastery in Paris where the club first met
-From Paris, it headed a national political network of clubs that linked all the major towns and cities -
The Great Fear
-Caused by the growing unrest of the peasant population in France do to food shortages, unequal distribution of land, and unfair taxes
-The term used by historians to describe the French rural panic of 1789, which led to the peasant attacks on aristocrats or on seigneurial records of peasants’ dues
-Turned into peasant attacks on aristocrats, refusing to pay dues to their lords, and a persistence of violence from them -
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Monarchy to Republic
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The Estates General opens at Versailles
-It was a body of deputies from the three estates, or orders, of France: the clergy (First Estate- 100,000 from the Catholic Church who owned about 10% of the land and collected a 10% tax), the nobility (Second Estate- 400,000 men and women who owned 25% of the land, enjoyed many tax exemptions, and collected rents from their peasant tenants), and everyone else (Third Estate- 95% of the nation)
-The last time the Estate General had met it was 175 years before, but Louis XIV called them to meet -
The Third Estate decides to call itself the National Assembly
-Traditionally, voting took place between the Estates by order and would conserve the power of the nobility and clergy, but the Third Estate wanted the voting to be counted by head, which would give them an advantage
-When an agreement could not be reached, the deputies of the Third Estate declared themselves the National Assembly. 2 days later, the clergy voted to join them, so a few days later, the nobles had no choice but to join them -
Tennis court oath
-This oath was taken by members of the newly formed National Assembly to express the determination of the Third Estate to carry through a constitutional revolution
-They swore an oath not to disband until they had given France a constitution that reflected their newly declared authority
-It took place on a nearby tennis court -
The Fall of the Bastille
-Though Louis XIV originally seemed to agree with the National Assembly, he sent thousands of soldiers to Paris, which caused people to worry that he was plotting against them
-This was confirmed, and common people began to react violently
- attacking places where either grain or arms were stored. On July 14, 1789, an armed crowd marched on the Bastille (a fortified prison that symbolized royal authority), and the prison officials ended up surrendering -
National Assembly abolishes Feudalism
-Noble deputies from the National Assembly announced their willingness to give up their tax exemptions and seigneurial (a feudal lordship) dues
-decreed the abolishment of the “feudal regime,” so freeing the serfs and eliminating all special privileges in matters of taxation
-With this, the peasants achieved their goals because now, talent, rather than birth, was the key to success -
National Assembly passes the Declaaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
-the deputies wrote a preliminary draft of the new constitution
-established the sovereignty of the nation and equal rights for citizens
-granted freedom of religion, freedom of press, equality of taxes, equality before the law, and pronounced all men free and equal (which caused all sorts of new questions, like about women, black people, and slaves) -
Women's March to Versailles
-A crowd of several thousand women marched 12 miles from the center of Paris to Versailles
-Demanded the king’s help in securing more grain for the hungry and reassurance that he did not intend to resist the emerging revolutionary movement
-Thousands of men joined them and they broke into the royal family’s private apartments and killed 2 of their body guards -
The Civil Consitution of Clergy
-motivated partly by the ongoing fiscal crisis, the National Assembly confiscated all the church’s property and promised to pay clerical salaries in return
-The Civil Constitution of Clergy set pay scales for the clergy and provided that the voters elect their own parish priests and bishops just as they elected other officials -
Declaration of the Rights of Women
-Some women viewed their exclusion from the rights as a betrayal of the promised new order and their reacted
-In the Declaration of the Rights of Women, Olympe de Gouges played on the language of the Declaration to make the point that women should be included -
The Constitution of May 3 1791
- Enacted in Russia under a reform-minded parliament established a hereditary monarchy with somewhat strengthened authority, ended the veto power that each aristocrat had over legislation, granted townspeople limited political rights, and vaguely promised Jewish emancipation
- Turned Catherine II’s attention away from the Patriots in Poland
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Declaration of War on Austria
-Louis and Marie-Antoinette hoped that a war with Austria would lead to the defeat of the Revolution, so he declared war on Austria
-Prussia immediately entered on Austria's side
-The war, expected to be brief, actually continued for the next 23 years -
The Second Revolution
-Frustrated with the inaction of the Legislative Assembly, the ordinary people of Paris revolted and attacked the Tuileries palace, the residence of the king
-The king and his family sought refuge in the meeting room of the Legislative Assembly, where frightened deputies ordered elections for a new legislature
-This lead to removal of king’s authority -
Monarchy abolished & French Republic established
-The National Convention established the first republic in French history
-The republic was designed only to answer to people, not to any royal authority -
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Reign of Terror
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De-Christinaization campaign
-During the French Revolution, the campaign of extremist republicans formed against organized churches and in favor of a belief system based on reason (tried to form the Cult of Reason to replace Christianity)
-Their campaign included closing many churches, selling church buildings, and trying to force the clergy to abandon their clerical vocations and marry
Great churches became storehouses for arms or grain, and their stones were sold off to contractors. -
The execution of Louis XIV
-The National Convention, split almost down the middle on how to handle the king’s fate, was split into 2 groups- the Girondins and The Mountain
-In the end, The Mountain, who sat in the highest seats of the National Convention, were supported in a very narrow majority to execute the king
-showed officially how, “no man is above the law” -
Beginning of uprising in the Vendée/ Catholic and Royal army formed
-In the Vendée region in western France, resistance turned bloody and prolonged civil war peasants, artisans, and weavers joined under noble leadership to form a “Catholic and Royal Army Their motives were to fight back against the reforms of the Republic (like killing the king, getting rid of priests, selling goods of the churches, taking from the upper classes, and forming a draft for war) In Vendée, an organized army fought the republic directly, while in nearby Brittany. -
Arrest of Girondins
-Insurrection (revolt, disagreement) lead to the arrest of the Girondin deputies, but then further insurrections were sparked in several departments -
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Thermidorian Reaction
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Thermidorian Reaction
-The violent backlash against the rule of Robespierre that dismantled the Terror and punished Jacobins and their supporters (closed the Jacobin Club, arrested and put to death some leaders in the National Convention) -
Slavery abolished in the French Colonies
-Slaves in northern St. Domingue organized a large-scale revolt, so to restore authority, the Legislative Assembly in Paris granted civil and political rights to the free blacks
-When the Spanished joined Great Britain in the war with France, they offered freedom to any slaves rebels that joined their armies, so the French commissioner freed all the slaves in his jurisdiction without the permission of the govt. in Paris in order to prevent military disaster -
Directory of Government takes office
-Those who remained from the National Convention prepared another constitution and set up a 2-house legislature and an executive body— the Directory, headed by 5 directors -
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Reign of Frederick William III
Frederick William III appointed a reform commission after a crushing defeat of Prussia in 1806 that left his country greatly reduced in size. On its own recommendation he abolished serfdom and allowed non-nobles to buy an enclose land. Peasants gained their personal independence from their noble landlords, who could no longer sell them to pay for debts. -
Directory invades England
he Directory set aside its plans to invade England.
- Gave Napoleon command of the army raised for that purpose, and sent him across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt. The directory government hoped that French occupation of Egypt would strike a blow at British trade by cutting the route to India. -
Napoleon Bonaparte
- First Consul, a titled received from the ancient Roman republic. Napoleon created something new, the French Empire with himself as emperor. He ruled under his first name. Transformed France from a republic with democratically elected leaders to an empire with a new aristocracy based on military service. Within a year Napoleon successfully ended the French Revolution and steered France toward an authoritarian state. Commander of French Army in Italy.
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The Constitution of 1799
made Napoleon the First Consul with the right to pick the council of state which drew up all laws. With this title he promised to be a man above party and to restore order to the republic. First Consul, the most important of the three consuls established by the French Constitution of 1800, the title given to Napoleon was take from ancient Rome.
- He exerted control by choosing men loyal to him. Government was no longer representative in any real sense -
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Napoleon
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Pope Pius VII
Validated all sales of church lands, and the government agreed to pay the salaries of Bishops and Priests who would swear loyalty to the state. Catholicism was officially recognized as the religion of majority of French citizens. -
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Reign of Alexander I
Reign of Alexander I Personal negotiations between Napoleon and tsar Alexander I resulted in a humiliating settlement imposed on Prussia, which paid the price for temporary reconciliation between France and Russia. The treaties of Tilsit turned the Prussian lands west of the Elbe River into the kingdom of Westphalia under Napoleon’s brother Jerome. -
Concordat with Pope Pius VII
a concordat with Pope Pius VII ended a decade of church-state conflict in France. The pope brought the huge French Catholic population back into the fold and Napoleon gained the pope’s support for his regime. -
Napoleon named himself First Consul for life
Napoleon named himself First Consul for life and in 1804 with the pope’s blessing, he crowned himself emperor. He took the first step toward creating a new nobility by founding the Legion of Honor. Napoleon worked hard at establishing his reputation as an efficient administrator with broad intellectual interests. -
Napoleon's victories
Napoleon won striking victories against the Austrians at Marengo and Hohenlinden in 11800, forcing them to agree to peace terms, once the Austrians had withdrawn, Britain agreed to the Treaty of Amiens, which effectively ending hostilities on the continent. Lasted only until 1803. -
Selling of Louisana Territory to the United States.
Wanting to continue and take control over the Caribbean island, there was a continuation of resistance among the black population and an epidemic of yellow fever forced Napoleon to withdraw his troops from St. Domingue and abandon his plans to take over and extend his empire into the Western Hemisphere, as a part of his retreat Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States. -
Civil Code
The French legal code formulated by Napoleon, it ensured equal treatment under the law to all men and guaranteed religious liberty, but it curtailed many rights of women. It was also referred to as the Napoleonic Code, it reasserted the Old Regime’s patriarchal system of male domination over women and insisted on a fathers control over his children.
- The civil code protected many of the gains of the French Revolution by defining and ensuring property rights, religious liberty, and equal rights -
Battle of Austerlitz
Napoleon promptly captured twenty-five thousand Austrians, who had been joined by their new ally, Russia. This battle of Austerlitz, is considered Napoleon’s greatest victory was fought on December 2 1805 the first anniversary of his coronation. -
British Ruled the Seas
The British ruled the seas and financed anyone who would oppose Napoleon. Continental System, inaugurated by Napoleon, it prohibited all commerce between Great Britain and France, or France’s dependent states and allies. At first, the system worked British exports declined along with manufacturing and unemployment increased. The boycott of British goods in France and its satellites ordered by Napoleon, had success but was later undermined by smuggling. -
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Resistance to French Rule
Resistance to French Rule. Smuggling British goods was only one way of opposing the French. Almost everywhere in Europe, resistance began as local opposition to French demands for money or draftees, but eventually prompted a more nationalistic patriotic defense. Spain and Portugal continued to resist the reign of Napoleon and eventually started the Spanish war for independence. -
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The Spanish War for Indepndence
The Spanish War for Independence, in 1807 Napoleon sent 100,000 troops through Spain to invade Portugal, Great Britain’s ally. The royal family fled to the Portuguese colony of Brazil, but fighting continued aided by a British army. The spanish clergy and nobles raised bands of peasants to fight the French occupiers. Peasants hated French requisitioning of their food supplies and sought to defend their priests against French anticlericalism. -
Napoleon introduced a complete hierarchy of noble titles
Ranging from princes down to barons and chevaliers. All Napoleonic nobles had served the state. Titles could be inherited but had to be supported by wealth, to go along with their new titles, Napoleon gave his favorite generals huge fortunes, often in the form of estates in the conquered territories. However, Napoleon’s family had the greatest benefits. He wanted to establish an imperial succession, but he lacked an hier. -
Height of Napoleon's Empire
By 1812 he ruled a European empire more extensive than any since ancient Rome. He had controlled at least nominal control of almost all of western Europe. He continued to insist on French Domination.However, this empire had already begun to crumble, and with it went Napoleon’s power at Home. His empire failed because it was was based on contradiction. -
Invasion of Russia
Napoleon followed his usual strategy of trying to strike quickly, but the Russian generals avoided confrontation and retreated eastward, destroying anything that might be useful to the invaders.Napoleon engaged the main Russian force in the gigantic battle of Borodino.Russians retreated and set the wooden city on fire leaving nothing.Napoleon had made a classic military mistake that would be repeated by Adolf Hitler in the World War II, trying to fight a war on two distant fronts simultaneously -
Industrial increase
Napoleon’s chosen rulers often made real improvements in roads, public works, law codes, and education. The removal of internal tariffs fostered economic growth by opening up the domestic market for goods, especially textiles. Bologna had five hundred factories and Modena four hundred. -
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Reign of Louis XVIII
allies restored the throne to him, the brother of Louis XVI, beheaded during the Revolution. Lacked a base of support. The new king tried to steer a middle course through a charter that established a British-style monarchy with a two-house legislature and guaranteed civil rights. He was caught between nobles returning from exile who demanded a complete restoration of their lands and powers. -
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Congress of Vienna
settled the boundaries of European states, determined who would rule each nation, and established a new framework for international relations based on periodic meetings, or congresses, between the major powers. Face to face negotiations between the great powers to settle the boundaries of European states and determine who would rule each nation after the defeat of Napoleon. The congress had to decide the fate of Napoleon’s duchy of Warsaw, the German province of Saxony. -
Battle at Waterloo
Decisive battle led by British General Sir Arthur Wellesley, duke of Wellington. Napoleon’s forces attacked Wellington’s men first with infantry and then with calvary, but the French failed to dislodge their opponents. Prussians arrived and the rout was complete and Napoleon had no choice but to abdicate again, this time the allies banished him permanently to the remote island of St. Helena, far off the coast of West Africa -
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein
Frankenstein- Tells the story of a Swiss technological genius who creates a human like monster in his pursuit of scientific knowledge. Frankenstein makes the forceful point that humans cannot always control their own creations. -
Political Revolts
Political Revolts in the 1820s, took place in the periphery of Europe, in Spain, Italy, Greece, Russia, and in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America. Rebels in Spain and Russia wanted constitutional reforms. -
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Reign of Charles X
Brought about his downfall by steering the Monarchy in an increasingly repressive direction. Charles enraged liberals when he dissolved the legislature, removed many wealthy and powerful voters from the rolls and imposed strict censorship. Went into exile in England -
Treaty of Adrianople
Treaty of Adrianople, gave Russia a protectorate over the Danubian principalities in the Balkans and provided a conference among representatives of Britain, Russia, and France all of whom had broke with Austria in support of the Greeks. Greece was then declared an independent kingdom under the guarantee of the three powers. Nationalism with the support of the European public opinion, had made its way into the Metternich’s system. -
The French Revolution of 1830
Charles X brought about his own downfall by steering the monarchy in an increasingly repressive direction. In 1825 a Law of Indemnity compensated nobles who had emigrated during the the French Revolution for the loss of their estates, and a law of Sacrilege in the same year imposed the death penalty for such offenses as as stealing religious objects from churches.