(The numbers in parentheses come from the document we were given to work off.)
Causes
of the French Revolution
Between 1700 and 1900 A.D., three important events
happened in Western history: the Industrial Revolution, the Second Great
Awakening, and the French Revolutions. The effects of each still exist today,
but the French Revolution became the most famous. Three factors led the common
people of France to revolt. First, a large amount of the French population
became wanted to change their country. Second, between 1700 and 1900, most
Frenchmen lived in the very poor, lower class with no way to better themselves
within their current system. Third, after aiding the Colonists in the American
Revolution, the French learned that democracy could replace monarchy.
Modern enlightened thought began in France, where men
published works such as Encyclopedie by
Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert and philosophical treatises. Those
works spread through France extremely quickly—as quickly as Martin Luther’s
works in the 16th century. Even though the readers did not act on
the ideas in the Encyclopedie and treatises,
they kept the works in mind for several decades (5), and because of these
works, people, especially in the middle class (4), began to form non-Judeo-Christian
ideas of morality, human nature, and government. However, for the most part,
the middle class acted upon the ideas. Albert
Mathiez said, “The Revolution had been accomplished in the minds of men long
before it was translated into fact” (4). Thus, the Revolution began in the
thoughts of the people, but no one acted upon it, until two things provoked and
made them brave enough to make a change.
In 1789, during the Old Regime of the French government, the
people had three classes, called estates. The First Estate consisted of clergy,
about 1% of the population, who owned 10% of French land. The nobility, the
Second Estate, comprised 2% of the population and owned 30% of the land. 97% of
the people, middle class, peasants, and city workers, made up the Third Estate
and owned 56% of the land (2) and the government taxed their land quite heavily,
while taxing the First and Second Estates lightly. Between 1787 and 1789,
Arthur Young went to France and described what he saw, thus: “In the south of
France there is a taille. There is an injustice of levying the amount each
person can pay...The children are terribly ragged...Stories arrive every moment
from the provinces of riots...The price of bread has risen above people’s
ability to pay...” (1). What Arthur Young described is now often called the
Bread War of 1789, since people did begin fighting the government with weapons
instead of words. Because the middle class members of the Third Estate held the
Enlightenment’s ideas in mind for several decades and also made up a great deal
of the population, they had the ability to lead and organize a revolution. Enlightenment philosophy had given them the
argument for revolution, and after the Bread War of 1789, they now had a
reason. They saw no way to escape starvation except through force. Sometimes,
farmers held strikes, which of course did nothing to feed the population but
made their point clear. Even women rioted—something very unusual for the time—and
would go to the marketplaces and threaten merchants with pitchforks and other
household tools, until the merchants sold the bread at a reasonable price. However,
the most surprising riot took place during the storming of the Bastille, a
prison. Rioters freed the prisoners and executed some French governmental officials
visiting the prison. Thus began the French Revolution.
The Americans first completely threw off a monarchial
rule, which many Frenchmen also wanted to do. When the Frenchmen who fought in
the American Revolutionary War as allies came back to France, they had gained
some valuable experience in staging revolutions. Further, they liked the idea
of a democracy and saw that America had a fairly stable system even that early
in its history. Thus, Lord Acton described the American revolution as “The spark
[that]... caused the Revolution to break out” (5). After the American Revolution, the French had an argument, a reason,
and now some experience in deposing one government and forming another. Based
on the acts of the Americans, the French drew up a list of complaints and
presented them to the Estates General, a governmental body similar to the
United States Congress or England’s Parliament. The French middle-class had
some of the same complaints as the American Colonists presented to Great
Britain, including “That the king be forced to reform the abuses and tyrrany of
letter de cachet...That every tax be
granted only for a limited time...and be borne equally by all classes...” The
complaints also suggested reforms directly in the Estates General, such as scheduling
meetings for definite times, instead of when the king called, and an accurate
counting of votes (3)—again similar to the Americans asking for representation
in Parliament. When these did not succeed quite as well as hoped, the French
also imitated the Americans by actively fighting.
France had a very difficult time building a democracy, mostly
because of the Enlightenment influence that removed God from the government, going
so far as outlawing churches. However, they did eventually work out a good
system of non-monarchial government that still exists today. In the 18th
century, France suffered due to high taxes, which caused poverty, starvation, and
discontent, which almost always leads to rebellions. The causes of the French Revolution sprang from what the Frenchmen had:
a large population with well-thought out arguments, a reason, and knowledge.
No comments:
Post a Comment