The French Revolution as a phenomenon of
modernization.
The pardox: The Ancien Regime
as a "bourgeois-absolutist synthesis" SeeReadings, p. 11.
The immediate Background
The Economic Crisis.
Inflation
and unemployment --- See W-R-W,
128-129.
The fiscal crisis ----- inequity of the tax system.
1787, Brienne forced to the
same conclusions as his predecessors.
In effect four revolutions:
Aristocratic:
Liberal-bourgeois 1789-1792 --- driven by the
threat of social revolt.
Social 1792-1794
National 1792-1815
Crane Brinton, Anatomy of Revolution. Revolutions
proceding to the left from a moderate through a radical and then back
to a more moderate phase described by the metaphor of a disease attacking
the body --- first mild symptoms deteriorating into a life-threatening
fever and subsequently recovery of the patient, partially changed
(immunized) from the experience.
Defection of the
Elites 1787-1789
Seizure of
Power by the Moderates. 1789-August,
1792
Accession
to power by the Radicals: The Republic of Virtue and the Reign of
Terror August 1792-July 1794
Thermidorian
Reaction. July
1794-Nov., 1799
The Course of the Revolution
The First Stage
of the Revolution: : The Defection of the Elites, 1787-1789
Called Assembly of Notables
to call for support --- no agreement; cry for Estates General
Parlement blocked attempt to decree
new taxation, called for Estates General
Necker replaced Brienne and in August 1788, arranged
to call Estates General for the coming Spring.
The debate over the Estate structure
revealed the next, bourgeois-liberal, phase
of the revolution. .
The Estate Structure:
First Estate ----- 100,000 higly varigated
Second Estate --- 400,000 highly varigated:
Nobles of the Sword
Nobles of the Robe
Third Estate ---- 25,000,000
Enlightened, affluent ---- liberal
bourgeoisie ---- roughly 6%
Peasantry ------ 75% highly varigated and
revolutionary on social and economic issues.
Renewed violence under the pressure of foreign
invasion. . Centennia 1792.7
King placed in custody, 10. August -- need
for a new Constitutional Convention.
September Massacres.
"The Second Revolution"-
Seizure of Power by the Radicals:
The social and national phase.
The Battle of Valmy, 20. September (Centennia
1792.8)
and the momentary stabilization of the The
Convention--- September 1792-1795
The composition of the Convention. Right:
165 (Girondins, the Left in Legislative Assembly) ---
Center or the Marsh 435
-----Left, i.e. "The
Mountain, 150. All were republicans and almost all
had been Jacobins in either National or Legislative Assembly.