BOOK: LIBERATING FRANCE PART 2

Question 1

LF: THE REVOLUTION TAKES SHAPE

• Introduction: The Estates-General
• Louis fails to offer reform

Answer 1

• The hall of Mirror
  1) clergy = private audience (doors closed)
  2) nobles = doors not fully closed
  3) Third Estate = wait for three hours and were taken to a lesser salon
• Simon Schama: “Like a crocodile of sullen schoolboys”
• 5th May = opening ceremony for the sitting of the Estates General

Question 2

LF: THE REVOLUTION TAKES SHAPE

• The Reveillon Riots

The Revolution takes SHAPE: Declaration of the National Assembly

Answer 2

• 23rd April 1789
• “Death to the Rich, death to the Aristocrats”
• Food shortages thus became associated in the people’s minds with the taxation crisis and with plots to dismiss the Estates General.
• 17th June = declared themselves the National Assembly France
• 20th June = The NA arrived at Plaisirs but the doors were locked

Question 3

LF: THE REVOLUTION TAKES SHAPE

• The Tennis Court Oath
• The Royal Session

Answer 3

• Never to separate until France had a constitution
• 600 deputies swore the ‘Oath of the Tennis Court’
• 23rd June 1789 = The decision to form the National Assembly was annulled
• NA = Remain seated
• 24th June “We, too are citizens!” (Simon Schama)
• 25th June = Duc d’Orleans joined the NA

Question 4

LF: THE REVOLUTION TAKES SHAPE

• Necker’s dismissal

Answer 4

• 11th July 1789 - necker was dismissed
• “Felt to some like a declaration of war on the part of the king”
• Camille Desmoulins: urged the crowd to identify themselves as patriots by pulling green leaves for the trees
• Green was to be the identifying mark of patriots and revolutionaries
• Simon Schama: “To arms to arms and let us take a green cockade, the color of hope” “I would rather die than submit to servitude”
• 12th July = The monastery of St. Lazare was looted (grain and weaponry)
• 14th July = Crowds invaded the Hotel des Invalides (military hospital)