Much of Europe's civil strife of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries can be traced back
to one point in the late eighteenth century.
Everything from major reforms of the British
government to the Cold War itself all have
a common link, and were birthed from a defining
moment in French, European and eventually
even world history - The French Revolution.
In the late 1700s the French people got sick
of the nobles and rich people having all the
power and revolted, then chopped off a bunch
of heads.
The end.
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fine, if you really insist we'll dive a bit
deeper into one of the most important moments
in human history.
The 18th century had been a tumultuous one
for Europe's major powers.
France and Britain had once more resumed their
favorite hobby, killing each other as frequently
and as violently as possible as they clashed
for power across the world's stage.
When the king of Spain died in 1700 he left
no obvious heir to the throne, leading to
a conflict that dragged in both France and
Britain and threatened to completely upend
the balance of power across Europe.
Then forty years later the two countries were
at it again, being pulled into the War of
Austrian Succession when Archduchess Maria
Theresa was denied the Austrian throne because
in those days women were good for looking
at and not much else- certainly not ruling.
France and Britain would continue the conflict
even after Maria Theresa took the throne,
with their colonies fighting overseas and
leading to the defeat of French forces in
India in 1763.
In 1778 the fledgeling United States decided
that unlike every other British colony, it
wasn't having anymore of this taxation without
representation nonsense, and very rudely declared
a war of independence.
France, seeing an opportunity to really stick
it to Britain, immediately backed the rebels,
who would have been utterly crushed without
their help - a fact many Americans have forgotten.
All these wars left France in pretty dire
financial shape, which wasn't helped that
King Louis XVI decided that amidst two decades
of poor harvests and droughts, he'd go ahead
and spend money like it was going out of style.
As bread prices climbed and the nation realized
it was in serious financial trouble, the King
responded by increasing taxes and the peasantry
saw very little relief from an increasingly
desperate domestic situation - with most of
that revenue going to pay off debts or funding
the very expensive hobby of killing the British.
With no other option left to them, the peasants
began rioting and looting, staging labor strikes
and refusing to work until the king did something
about the worsening situation.
You know things are bad when governments start
thinking about actually taxing rich people,
and in 1786 Louis XVI's controller general,
Charles Alexandre de Calonne, created a financial
reform package that would include a universal
land tax which would not exempt the upper
classes from paying, as had historically been
done.
The proposal that rich people pay their fair
share during a time of financial crisis went
over about as well as you'd expect, and the
aristocratic classes immediately began talking
about their own revolt.
In a bid to garner support for this desperately
needed tax, the king summoned the Estates-General,
an assembly of France's clergy, nobility,
and middle class- the peasants weren't invited
because they were probably too busy farming
cow dung, or whatever peasants do.
The Estates-General hadn't been called since
1614, and in the nearly two hundred years
since the demographics of the assembly had
dramatically changed.
Whereas the aristocrats once made up the bulk
of membership, now the non-aristocratic members
made up a whopping 98 percent of the assembly,
yet they could still be overruled by the 2
percent of clergy and nobility.
Shockingly the middle classes had a slight
problem with this arrangement, and so they
immediately began to campaign for equal representation
and a complete abolishment of the noble veto,
which gave the aristocrats the right to completely
undo the middle class's vote.
All three groups agreed on the need for fiscal
and judicial reform that included a more representative
form of government, but the nobles were unsurprisingly
not willing to give up all the rights and
privileges that they enjoyed up until now.
By the time the assembly had gathered, hostilities
between the three estates had erupted into
near-violence between the different members.
The middle class, known as the Third Estate,
met alone and declared themselves the National
Assembly, then met in an indoor tennis court
and took what would become known as the Tennis
Court Oath, under which they vowed that they
would not disperse until constitutional reform
had been achieved.
Wisely discerning which way the wind was blowing,
and seeing what had happened to the British
at the hands of American rebels, most of the
clergy and forty seven nobles joined the new
National Assembly, and a begrudging King Louis
XVI disbanded the Estates-General and absorbed
its members into the new National Assembly.
Unsurprisingly many nobles did not take this
new development well at all, and King Louis
XVI moved several army regiments into Paris
and the surrounding countryside.
Parisians feared that the King was preparing
to crush the newly formed National Assembly.
On July 11th 1789, the king dismissed Jacques
Necker, his only non-noble minister who was
popular with the people due to his advocacy
for national reform.
Parisians saw this as further proof that the
King was going to crush their attempt at a
more representative government and rioted,
seizing 32,000 muskets and cannons from a
military hospital and turning their sights
on the Bastille and its gunpowder stores.
Surrounded by angry rioters, Bernard-Rene
de Launay, governor of the Bastille, invited
delegates from the revolutionary force to
negotiate a surrender.
Promising not to open fire, he greeted the
men warmly as they sat to discuss terms, yet
when the talks dragged on the people outside
grew restless and became convinced that their
delegates had been imprisoned inside the infamous
fort.
A group of them climbed an outer wall and
lowered a drawbridge, letting the horde inside
the courtyard, but when they attempted to
lower a second drawbridge, de Launay ordered
his soldiers to shoot, killing 100 civilians.
Later a troop of French Guards, loyal to the
Parisian people, laid siege to the fort with
their heavy cannons, and de Launay was forced
to surrender.
The former governor was marched down to city
hall and murdered and his corpse was decapitated.
His head would not be the last to roll.
With their victory in Paris, revolutionary
fervour swept across the nation and peasants
began an open revolt.
After decades of exploitation, the peasants
looted and burned the homes of tax collectors,
landlords, and the elite, triggering an exodus
of the nobility from France.
Known as the Great Fear, the revolution would
go on to inspire the National Assembly to
formally abolish feudalism on August 4th,
1789.
Known as the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen, this bold proclamation
did away with the old system of exploitation
by the nobility and called for a system based
on equal opportunity for all, freedom of speech,
popular sovereignty, and representative government.
Struggling to balance the power of the King
with that of the people, the constitution
would go on to adopt a constitutional monarchy
which allowed the king to have royal veto
power and to appoint ministers.
This did not sit well with many of the most
influential revolutionary leaders, who desired
a constitution akin to that of the United
States.
There should be no king, they argued, and
France should become a grand republic.
They also demanded that Louis XVI be put on
trial for his many crimes against his people.
In April of 1792 the newly elected Legislative
Assembly, its members voted into power by
the people, declared war on Austria and Prussia,
whom they believed were harboring counterrevolutionary
French nobility, and in the hope that a defeat
of these two major powers would further spread
their revolution, exporting more democratic
ideals across Europe.
On August 10th King Louis XVI was arrested
by a group of radical revolutionaries, who
demanded that the king be put on trial immediately
both for his past crimes against the nation
and for harboring secret desires to crush
the new democratic Legislative Assembly.
In September a wave of violence swept across
the nation, with the massacring of counterrevolutionaries
who wanted a return to monarchic power.
The Legislative Assembly was disbanded and
replaced by a new National Convention which
immediately declared the abolition of the
monarchy and the birth of the French Republic.
On January 21st, 1793, King Louis XVI was
sentenced to death for high treason and crimes
against the state.
He was sent to the infamous guillotine and
nine months later his wife, Marie-Antoinette
would face the same fate.
Interestingly, she never actually said the
line most famously attributed to her.
The myth goes that when told that the peasants
were starving and had no bread to eat, the
flippant and out-of-touch Marie Antoinette
simply responded with, “Well, then let them
eat cake!”
A myth is all it is though.
France's revolutionary zeal would soon go
out of control though, with a bloody Reign
of Terror that lasted ten months and saw thousands
of suspected enemies of the revolution lose
their heads.
This Reign of Terror would itself lead to
yet another revolution by the French people
known as the Thermidorian Reaction.
With a severely weakened National Convention
and the French people pretty sick of the politician's
crap, it was decided that executive power
would lie with a five-member Directory which
would be appointed by parliament.
Many protested this new regime, which were
swiftly put down by the French military, now
led by a very successful general, you may
have heard of - Napoleon Bonaparte.
From here on out everything worked out just
fine and there were no major problems in Europe
ever again.
Just kidding, the Directory proved to be a
huge disaster which relied on military force
to maintain rule and paved the way for Napoleon
Bonaparte to overthrow them and declare himself
Emperor.
Then he immediately plunged the entire European
continent into several wars that nearly cost
France its independence.
Why do you think the French had so much trouble
figuring out how to make democracy work?
Let us know in the comments, and as usual
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