The French Revolution, 1789–1799: Rights, Republic and Terror

A kingdom in crisis

In 1789, France was one of the richest and most powerful countries in Europe. So why did it explode into revolution?

Historians separate long-term causes, which built up over decades, from short-term causes that turned a crisis into a revolution.

Long-term causes

• An unequal society. French law divided people into three estates. The clergy and nobles were a tiny minority but had special rights and paid far less tax. Everyone else, about 98 per cent of the people, was in the Third Estate.
• A growing middle class. Lawyers, merchants and professionals (the bourgeoisie) were educated and often wealthy, but they were shut out of top positions reserved for nobles.
• Enlightenment ideas. Writers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu (from the unit The World, 1650–1789) questioned absolute monarchy and argued for rights and the separation of powers.

Short-term causes

• Debt. France had borrowed heavily for wars, including its support of the American Revolution. By the late 1780s, a large share of the budget went to interest on loans.
• Bad harvests. The harvest of 1788 was poor. Bread prices rose sharply in 1789, and bread was the main food of poor families.
• A political deadlock. To raise taxes, King Louis XVI called the Estates-General, an assembly that had not met since 1614.

1789: from Estates-General to National Assembly

The Estates-General opened in May 1789. Each estate had one vote, so the clergy and nobles could outvote the Third Estate two to one. In January 1789, the writer Emmanuel Sieyès had asked in a famous pamphlet (quoted here in English translation): What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it ask? To become something.

• 17 June: the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly, claiming to speak for the nation.
• 20 June: locked out of their hall, members met on a tennis court and swore not to separate until France had a constitution (the Tennis Court Oath).
• 14 July: Parisians, fearing the king would use troops against the Assembly, stormed the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison. The date is now France's national holiday.
• 4 August: the Assembly abolished feudal privileges.
• 26 August: it adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
• October: thousands of Parisian women marched to Versailles over bread prices and brought the royal family back to Paris.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

The Declaration's first article says, in a common English translation, that "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights." Its third article says that "the principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation." That is popular sovereignty: power comes from the people, not from God or birth.

The Declaration also promised equality before the law, freedom of opinion and religion, and protection of property.

But who counted as a citizen? The 1791 constitution divided men into "active" citizens, who paid enough tax to vote, and "passive" citizens, who did not. Women could not vote. In 1791 the writer Olympe de Gouges published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, arguing that women were born free and equal too. She was executed during the Terror in 1793. Enslaved people in France's colonies were not included at first either; the next lesson shows how the Haitian Revolution forced that question.

1792–1794: war, republic and Terror

In 1791 the king tried to flee Paris in disguise and was caught at Varennes. Trust collapsed. In April 1792 France went to war with Austria (soon joined by Prussia), and invasion seemed close.

• September 1792: a new assembly, the National Convention, abolished the monarchy and declared France a republic.
• January 1793: Louis XVI was tried and executed.
• 1793–1794: facing foreign war and revolts inside France, the Convention gave power to the Committee of Public Safety, led by figures such as Maximilien Robespierre. Revolutionary courts tried "enemies of the Revolution". About 17 000 people were officially sentenced to death, and many more died in prison or in the brutal repression of revolts such as the one in the Vendée.
• The Convention also introduced a mass army through conscription (the levée en masse) and, in February 1794, abolished slavery in France's colonies.

In July 1794 (Thermidor), Robespierre's opponents turned on him, and he was executed. A more conservative government, the Directory (1795–1799), followed. It was weak and depended on the army. In 1799 a young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, seized power.

Why does it matter? Legacies

The French Revolution gave the world much of its political vocabulary. The words left and right come from where members sat in the 1789 Assembly: supporters of change on the left, supporters of the king on the right. It spread the ideas of citizenship, nationalism and rights across Europe and the Atlantic. It also showed how revolutions can turn violent when they face war and division.

Historians still debate it. Some stress its gains (the end of feudal privilege, legal equality, the idea of rights). Others stress its costs (the Terror, the wars that followed). Both views use evidence; the skill is to weigh them.