BOOK: ANALYZING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION PART 2

Question 1

Part 2 ATFR: NEW POPULAR MOVEMENTS AND SIGNIFICANT IDEAS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

• What were the growing expectations of the bourgeoisie in the Third Estate?
• Dangerous ideas of utility and merit

= Bourgeoise belief: A person's...
= Should not depend...
= Birth: ... status... determined...
= Utility...
= Merit = Combination of...

Answer 1

• Bourgeoisie belief: A person’s social importance should not depend upon their birth, BUT upon the utility and merit. Thus, this rejected the prestige of noble birth
• Note: Birth = An individual’s status as either commoner or nobility, determined at birth
• Note: Utility = usefulness, in terms of productive labour
• Note: Merit = Combination of an individual’s personal abilities

Question 2

Part 2 ATFR: NEW POPULAR MOVEMENTS AND SIGNIFICANT IDEAS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

• Historians debate the role of the bourgeoisie
• The Marxist theory of a revolutionary bourgeoisie
• Revisionist historians ‘revise’ the Marxist explanation

= Believed that Enlightenment…

Answer 2

= Georges Lefebvre
= Albert Soboul
= George Rude
- All argued that the French Revolution was a milestone in the development of human society
- Also believed that Enlightenment (etc) ideas were the ideology of this new capitalist class

• Historical accident = The revisionist ideas that historical events happen simply by chance… there are no long-term causes that make them inevitable (George Taylor)
• Many of the bourgeois who did resemble ‘capitalists’ (big financiers and factory owners) = hostile to both Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas

Question 3

Part 2 ATFR: NEW POPULAR MOVEMENTS AND SIGNIFICANT IDEAS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION

• Other social forces: The challenge from the liberal nobility

Answer 3

• Aristocratic salons: Intellectual gathering of high society in private mansions
• Altruistic: Unselfish in relation others
• Traditional tensions with the nobility (Opposition): e.g. between the court nobles and the provincial nobles

Question 4

Part 2 ATFR: HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• The making of a crisis: The nation’s financial problem
• The perception of royal wastefulness

Answer 4

• Minister of Finance: Calonne = 20th August 1786 (France’s financial situation was serious
• People believed the financial crisis was caused by mismanagement and by excessive expenditure
• Wrongly blamed the crisis on the lavish expenditure of the court (e.g. Marie-Antoinette)

Question 5

Part 2 ATFR: HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• The old regime tries to reform itself
• A warning voice not heeded: Turgot (1774 to may 1776)
• A clever appearance of fiscal reform: Necker (October 1776 to May 1781)

Answer 5

• Turgot = Economists. Was Controller General of Finances from 1774 to May 1776
• Motto: ‘No new taxes, no new loans, no bankruptcy’
  Hoped to introduce a single tax on land and to avoid costly involvement in the American War of Independence
• Six Edicts (1776) = angered the privileged classes by suggesting abolition of the labour tax
• Warned the King about the war = “The first shot will drive the State to bankruptcy”
• Necker (Director of the Treasury)
• Thought tax farming was wasteful (The collection. of royal taxes by individuals on behalf of the government
• Borrowed 520 million Euros to finance the American War

Question 6

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• Calonne’s attempt at reform (November 1783 to 1787)

Answer 6

• Controller general in 1783
• It was wasteful for private tax collectors (tax farmers) to collect indirect taxes for the government
• Was hesitant to ask the uncooperative parlaments and therefore appealed to guidance to another traditional council: The Assembly of Notables

Question 7

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• The financial crisis becomes a political crisis
• The first phase (1787-1788)
• The Assembly of Notables

Answer 7

• Marxist historians = French Revolution unfolded in four distinct stages
• 1: the aristocratic revolt
• AON: almost completely noble
• Supported Calonne’s proposal that a representative assembly allocate and collect tax, accepting the principle of TAXATION BY REPRESENTATION

Question 8

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• Attempted reform by Brienne
• The King and Parlaments

Answer 8

• Brienne: New Finance Minister
• retried Calonne’s idea of provincial assemblies
  Reformers demanded the principle of no taxation without representation (e.g. the King could not impose taxes without approval by the representatives such as the Estates General)
• Struggle with he parlaments = July 1787
• The King ordered the parlaments to quit Paris and RETIRE to Troyes

Question 9

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• The disaster of the riyal session: 17 November 1787
• The monarchy’s retreat into authoritarianism
• The explosion of popular resistance: may and June 1788

Answer 9

• Brienne called a Royal Session of the parlement
• An attempt to reconcile the divided estates
• Using his power of arbitrary arrest to exile three judges
• King accusing the magistrates of the parlement of exceeding the power. The magistrates accused the king of despotism

Question 10

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• THE DAY OF TILES
• Remonstrance: French for ‘PROTEST’

Answer 10

• The magistrates of the parlement(s) were hailed as defenders of the people’s rights
• Protests and demonstrations erupted demanding their recall
• Parlements were supported in many places by craftsmen, wig and lace makers, domestic servants and other common people whose livelihoods would be THREATENED if they were abolished.
• Grenoble 10th June 1788: people stood on roofs, throwing tiles on the soldiers who had come to arrest the magistrates
• The people of Grenoble = public DESPOTISM

Question 11

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• PARLEMENT
• Painted themselves as the champions of the people (That’s how they were perceived/labelled)

Answer 11

• King’s ministers proposed fiscal and taxation reforms (1780s) = resisted by several institutions of the Ancient Regime - The PARLEMENTS resisted reform
• The supreme courts of law in pre-Revolutionary France
• There were 13 parlements (Courts of review)
• Cannot initiate or amend laws
• Paris Parlement: Block royal edicts, either as a protest against specific policies.
• Rejecting the proposed fiscal and taxation reforms = King Louis XVI exiles the parliament to Troyes

Question 12

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• Consulting the nation: The Books of Grievances (Cahiers de Doleances)

Answer 12

• The calling of the Estates General = required the election of deputies AND the drafting of Books of Grievances
• Books of Grievances: Respectful statements of concerns to the King who would respond as he wished
• Revealed the rising or unmet class expectations among ALL social groups (e.g. the working classes)
• Do they give a true picture of the grievances of the French nation in 1789 or just of the people who controlled the writing of the books?

Question 13

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• The Third Estate: A multi-stage process gives dominance to educated people
• The cahiers of the Third Estate
  Note: the cahiers of the three orders agreed most unpolitical and administrative reform

Answer 13

• Third Estate: included an illiterate majority who relied on local bourgeois to write the documents for them
• Dossiers = Sets of papers containing information
• Cahiers did not represent the Third Estate as a whole = Bourgeois over peasant mentality. Bourgeois eliminated local peasant grievances about the feudal system and feudal dues
• HISTORIAN - Annie Moulin = describes local officials who “interpreted, perhaps even concealed the real intentions, of those tongue-tied and illiterate peasants who voiced their grievances”

Question 14

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• Political reform: The attack on absolute power
• Administrative reform
• Legal and Judicial reform

Answer 14

• A broad agreement that the King’s absolute legislative power should be modified
• Laws should be made by a national representative assembly
• Agreed that centralized administration was inefficient… better handled by regular meetings of provincial assemblies
• General agreement that France should abolish the venal public office (The legal purchase of public office - noble title attached. wealthy bourgeois who wanted to rise into the Second Estate
• General agreement on legal and judicial reform.
• Demanded that the law act with more humanity
• Lettres de cachet = should be abolished

Question 15

HOW FRANCE’S FINANCIAL CRISIS BECAME A POLITICAL CRISIS, 1774 - 1789

• Fiscal reform (the reform of taxation)

Answer 15

• Demanded national control of spending
• Agreed on removing taxes such as the labour tax (corvee)
• Agreed on the abolition of the internal tax barriers and the salt tax (GABELLE)