Download Chapter 18 Vocabulary Marie Antoinette (1755

Chapter 18 Vocabulary
Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was the wife of Louis XVI and the daughter of the Austrian Empress
Maria Theresa. Initially popular in France, she became “that Austrian woman” and was accused of sexual
promiscuity and personal extravagance. After the royal family tried to flee France in 1791, she and her
husband were brought back to Paris where he was deposed, the monarchy abolished and the family was
subsequently imprisoned at the Temple Prison. Eight months after her husband's execution, Marie
Antoinette was herself tried and executed for treason by guillotine on October 16th, 1793.
Gracchus Babeuf (1760-1797) led the Conspiracy of Equals which called for more radical democracy
and more equality of property. They believed that the Revolution was not complete because the rich were
still in control; the poor had no real relief and were not represented in the new government. Even though
they were partly correct, the Directory was determined to crush any more social changes that might
endanger property or political stability. Babeuf was arrested, tried and executed. Babeuf’s execution
brought an end to the French Revolution but not its accomplishment in the Constitution of the Year III.
Étienne Loménie de Brienne (1727-1794), the archbishop of Toulouse and a bitter foe of Charles
Alexandre de Calonne, replaced Calonne as French Minister of Finance. But once in office, Brienne
discovered to his horror that the financial situation of France was as bad a Calonne had said and
immediately sought a similar land tax. The Parlement of Paris claimed it could not authorize any such
land tax and like the Assembly of Notables declared that such a land tax could only by authorized by the
Estates General. Brienne then appealed to the clergy and asked to church to help pay the debt but the
upper clergy (dominated by aristocrats) refused. So in July, 1788 Louis was forced to summon the
Estates General. Brienne resigned and Necker was reappointed finance minister.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was the Irish-born British political philosopher and member of Parliament
(whom we have already met as the father of Conservatism and supporter of the Americans in their war
for independence) who in 1790 published Reflections on the Revolution in France in which he argued
that the French Revolution would end disastrously because it was not rational and ignored the
complexities of human nature and society. Although he did not believe in divinely appointed monarchs or
and that the people had the right to replace an oppressive government, he did believe in hereditary
government, private property, and argued strenuously for gradual, constitutional reform, not radical
revolution. He predicted further violence, the possible deaths of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and
that the Revolution would end in military despotism. Some scholars think he was referring to the young
liberal aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette but it would be Napoleon who would fulfill his prophecy.
Charles Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802) replaced Jacques Necker as the French finance minister
and immediately proposed a series of reforms to encourage internal trade, lower some taxes, reduce the
indirect taxes on the peasants; and at the same time authorize a new land tax that all landowners would
have to pay whatever their social status. Calonne also wanted to create local assemblies made of
landowners represented not by their status but by how much land they owned. Lastly, Calonne wanted
more control over Church property.
As France neared financial collapse, Calonne realized he needed public support. So in February 1787, he
met with an Assembly of Notables (dominated by upper clergy and aristocrats and when they refused to
agree even a little bit, (as they howled for Calonne’s expulsion and the reappointment of Necker), Louis
XVI, who was well meaning but was utterly lacking in political resolution and skill, gave in to the
aristocrats. Louis drove Calonne into exile and replaced him with Étienne Loménie de Brienne. He
joined the Émigrés and became an associate of the Count of Artois. In 1802, Napoleon later allowed him
to return to France and shortly thereafter he died.
Georges Jacques Danton (b. 1759), who had been an invaluable leader during the dark days of 1792 and
had been a member of the Committee of Public Safety before Robespierre joined the group, was one of
Robespierre’s victims when Robespierre turned on his fellow Jacobin republicans. Danton was accused
of being insufficiently supportive of the war, profiting from the Revolution and lacking in political moral
virtue. Danton was condemned and executed in April, 1794.
Count of Artois (later, Charles X) (1757-1836) was the most influential of the Émigrés and the younger
brother of Louis XVI. He helped to formulate the king’s disastrous plan to flee France. After the fall of
Napoleon in 1815, his brother (not the dead Louis XVI) became king as Louis XVIII (the dead son of
Louis XVI being counted XVII) and when he died in 1824, the Count of Artois became Charles X until
he was driven into exile during the Revolution of 1830.
Frederick William II (r.1786-1797) was the Prussian king who promised to protect Poland and its
reformers but, after Catherine the Great’s armies entered Poland at the invitation of self-serving Polish
nobles, he changed his mind and participated with Catherine in the 1793 Second Partition of Poland.
Tadeusz Kosciuszko (like Lafayette, a veteran of the American Revolution) was a Polish officer who
resisted the 1792 invasion of Poland by Russian forces but was defeated and driven into exile. In 1794,
when Polish officers mutinied when they were told they had to merge their military units with Russian
units, he returned from exile to lead the revolt and was initially successful. But as the rebellion spread,
the language and the symbolism of the French Revolution began to appear in Polish cities terrifying the
Russians, Prussian and Austrians. But by November, the much larger Russian, Austrian and Prussian
armies crushed the revolt and imprisoned Kosciuszko.
Olympe de Gouges (1748 -1793) was butcher’s daughter of the middle class but rose to be a playwright
and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings would reach far beyond France. In 1791 she
published a Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in which she challenged the
practice of male authority and the notion of male–female inequality. She demanded that women be
regarded as citizens and given the right to own property. She declared, “Women, wake up; the tocsin
(warning signal) of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights.” As the
Reign of Terror intensified and the Jacobins began to fear women’s political organizations, Olympe de
Gouges was tried and executed on November 2nd 1793.
The Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834) was a liberal French aristocrat and a hero of the American
Revolution, who was offered command of the National Guard after the storming of the Bastille. It was
Lafayette who gave the guard a new badge (cockade): the red and blue stripes from the colors of the
Parisian coat of arms, separated by the white stripe of the royal flag. This would eventually become the
tricolor flag of the French Revolution. Edmund Burke predicted that Lafayette would become the dictator
of France. When the Revolution turned violent, the Jacobins threatened him and he tried to flee to the
United States but was caught by the Austrians and spent five years in an Austrian prison. Napoleon
secured his release and after Napoleon fell from power, Lafayette became a liberal member of the
Chamber of Deputies until his death.
Louis XIV was the Bourbon King of France who ruled from 1643 to 1715. An adherent to the Divine
Right of Kings, worked hard to create a centralized state and eliminate the remnants of Feudalism.
During his reign he sought to dominate Europe and fought three major wars: During Louis's reign France
was the leading European power and fought three major wars: the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678), the
War of the League of Augsburg (or Nine Years’ War, 1688–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession
(1701-1714). At his death just shy of seventy-five, he was succeeded by his five year old great grandson,
Louis XV. His reign took France to the pinnacle of its glory and yet he sowed the seeds of its destruction
by his foreign wars and lavish spending.
Louis XV was the King of France from 1715 to 1774. Although France possessed Europe’s largest
population, an efficient governmental bureaucracy and a strong – even though weakened – economy,
Louis XV inherited a bankrupted France drained by his great grandfather’s wars and lavish spending. His
own pleasure seeking, and his gifts to the nobility and his favorites, financial scandals like the
Mississippi Bubble and the Wars of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Year’s War – and
participation in the American Revolution drained France even more.
Louis XVI (r. 1774-1793) was the well-intentioned but weak-willed king of France who could not stop
France’s escalation into bankruptcy. In 1789 he called the Estates General and quickly lost control. The
Third Estate demanded sweeping political and social reform. After the National Assembly was formed,
he tried to lock them out of their meeting hall which caused them to take the Tennis Court Oath as they
vowed to give France a constitution. Louis and his family - disguised as servants – tried to flee from
France. They travelled as far as Varennes but the king was recognized and soldiers escorted the royal
family back to Paris and it was obvious that the king was a counterrevolutionary. On September 20th
1792, the Convention abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. In December1792, Louis was put
on trial for treason as Citizen Capet. In spite of Girondist support, Louis was convicted of conspiring
against the liberty of the people, condemned and guillotined on January 31st, 1793.
René Nicolas Charles Augustin de Maupeou (1714-1792) was appointed Chancellor of France in 1770
by Louis XV. Maupeou abolished the Parlements, exiled their members to different parts of France, taxed
the aristocrats and made the government more efficient. These efforts collapsed when Louis XV suddenly
died in 1774. Louis XVI dismissed Maupeou and attempted to regain the favor of the aristocrats by
restoring the Parlements and confirming their old powers.
Jacques Necker (1732-1804) was a Swiss banker and appointed by Louis XVI in 1776 to make reforms
and increase income. In 1781, he produced a report which implied that the financial situation was not as
bad as was thought. He argued that if the monies spent on the American war effort were not factored in,
then the budget was actually in the black (i.e., had a surplus). Necker’s report also revealed that a large
portion of the government’s expenses were pensions given to aristocrats and favorites of the royal court.
Court aristocrats were infuriated and Necker soon left office but his report still made it difficult for
government officials that were was a “real” need to raise taxes.
In 1788, when de Brienne resigned and as the Estates General was being organized, Necker was
reappointed finance minister. He advocated Doubling the Third to satisfy the people but failed to
address the matter of voting by head count which is what the Third Estates wanted. After the National
Assembly had formed itself, the king tried to regain power, He tried to dismiss Necker without
consulting the National Assembly which infuriated the population and helped provoke the Storming of
the Bastille. He remained in office until 1790 and retired to his estate in Switzerland.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) was an English-American activist, author, political theorist and
revolutionary; the author of Common Sense and a strong supporter of the French Revolution. In 1791, he
wrote a book, The Rights of Man, as a criticism of Edmund Burke’s book Reflections on the Revolution
in France and as a defense of revolutionary principles. Paine argued that the good of the monarch and
the good of the people are the same; and that the French Revolution should be understood as an attack on
despotism, not the monarchy itself.
Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) was a scientist, clergyman, political theorist and radical who is best known
the discovery of oxygen and being the founder of Unitarianism. Because of his revolutionary ideas,
government inspired mobs drove him out of the country.
William Pitt the Younger was the British Prime Minister who in the 1790s began to take measures to
suppress reform and popular movements. Mobs inspired by his government drove Joseph Priestly from
the country and later suppressed the London Corresponding Society (a moderate but radical-leaning
working class group concentrating on reform of the Parliament). Pitt was even able to have Parliament
suspend Writs of Habeas Corpus (which requires a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or
into court thus making it impossible to hold a prisoner without sufficient evidence) and making the
writing of certain ideas treasonable but was not able to curb freedom of the press.
Pope Pius VI (r. 1775-1799) was the pope who reacted harshly to the removal of the Refractory clergy
and condemned not only the Civil Constitution of the Clergy but also the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen; Pius even condemned the French clergy who had signed the oath to support the Civil
Constitution of the Clergy, especially bishops who had ordained new, elected clergy. The pope’s
condemnations marked the opening of a Roman Catholic offensive against the Revolution and liberalism
in general that continued throughout the nineteenth century.
Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) was the person who most idealized the Republic of Virtue and
who became the de-facto dictator of the Committee of Public Safety. He was a shrewd politician and his
own man. He opposed the war in 1792 fearing it would help the monarchy; he defied the Sans-Culottes
by continuing to wear breeches and powdered wigs; in short he believed that the Republic of Virtue
meant complete support of republican government, the renunciation of selfish gains and the destruction
of enemies of the Revolution. Nevertheless, in spite of his ideals, his name became synonymous with the
Reign of Terror. But Robespierre would soon overextend himself.
On March 24th, 1794, he managed to execute certain radical members of the Sans-Culottes and then
turned on his fellow republicans in the Convention even getting a law passed that permitted the
revolutionary tribunal to convict suspects on flimsy evidence. Finally on July 26th, he made an illtempered (angry) speech in the Convention declaring that other leaders of the government were
conspiring against him. No one felt safe. So on July 27th, he was shouted down when he tried to speak
and arrested that night. He had not political friends for he had killed leaders of the Sans-Culottes and
offended those members who had supported Danton. The next day he and about eighty of his supporters
went to the guillotine.
Abbé Sieyès (1748-1836) was priest, political writer and one of the chief political thinkers of the French
Revolution. His 1789, his pamphlet, What is the Third Estate?, became the manifesto of the Revolution:
What is the Third Estate? Everything! What has it been in the political order up till the present?
Nothing! What does it ask? To become something!
--------------------------------------Active and Passive Citizens were created by the Legislative Assembly to limit popular pressure on the
government under the Constitution of 1791. Only active citizens (those men paying actual taxes equal to
three days of local labor wages) could vote. They chose electors who, in turn, voted for the members of
the Legislative Assembly. Only wealthy men (about 50,000 out of 25 million) could be electors or
members of the Assembly. Although the poor were limited in their participation, the government was
nevertheless transformed from hereditary privilege to men of propertied wealth.
Assignats were bonds issued as collateral for confiscated church lands when the Assembly decided on
November 2nd, 1789 to finance France’s enormous debt by confiscating the property of the Roman
Catholic Church and sell the land to pay the debt. These Assignats were so popular that they came to be
used as money. Moreover, the government printed too many of these bonds and so the value of the bonds
fell and caused inflation which put terrible pressure of the working poor in the cities.
The Battle of Valmy (September, 1792) was a huge French victory over the invading Prussians and
forced the invaders to withdraw giving the revolutionaries a great moral victory. – and allowing the
victorious French general, Charles François Dumouriez, to go on the offensive in Belgium (the
Austrian Netherlands), rout the Austrian army and occupy the entire country by the beginning of winter.
The Cahiers de Doléances (or list of grievances) was presented to the king as the Estates General was
about to meet and they criticized government waste, church taxation and the hunting rights of the
aristocracy and also called for regular meetings of the Estates General, fair taxation, more local authority
in government and a free press.
The Chapelier Law of June 14th, 1791 forbade the formation of workers associations. The Assembly
saw the efforts of the workers to organize as an attempt to reassert the old medieval guilds and thus to
oppose the new and revolutionary values of political and social individualism.
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a law passed by the National Constituent Assembly on July 12
1790. Its goal was to subordinate the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government. The
law (which the king tried to stop) reduced the number of bishoprics from 135 to 83, creating a diocese for
each of the new Departments. It also provided for the election of parish pastors and bishops who became
salaried employees of the state. All religious orders were dissolved except for those which cared for the
sick or ran schools. Monks and nuns were encouraged to return to private life and a small percentage
eventually married. This law was the great blunder of the Assembly because it created immense
opposition within the French church and a hostility that has lasted to the present day.
The Constitution of the Year III (1795) replaced the Constitution of 1793 which had never gone into
effect. The Constitution of the Year III which was a reflection of the Thermidorian determination
to reject both constitutional monarchy and radical democracy went into effect on August 22 1795.
The new constitution created a legislature of two houses.
The upper body or Council of Elders was to consist of men over forty years of age who were either
husbands or widowers. The lower body or Council of Five Hundred was to consist of men who were at
least thirty but could be married or single. The executive body was a five person Directory chosen by
the Council of Elders from a list submitted by the Council of Five Hundred. Voting was limited by
property qualification except for soldiers who were allowed to vote whether or not they owned property.
Corvée was the French peasants’ indirect tax on labor they had to perform on public works which de
Calonne proposed to change into money payments.
The Cult of Reason was decreed as the new religion of France by the Convention on November 10th
1793 and set about making churches across France into Temples of Reason. The Cathedral of Notre
Dame in Paris saw the largest of these ceremonies when its Christian altar was turned into an Altar to
Liberty and an inscription To Philosophy was carved in stone over the cathedral's doors. Across France
churches were desecrated by the removal of statues along with the destruction of crosses, bells and other
external signs of worship. Clergy were persecuted; sometimes forced to marry; sometimes murdered.
Some churches were torn down or used as barns for animals. The only major voice to oppose DeChristianization was Robespierre who believed that De-Christianization would be a political blunder that
would erode loyalty to the Revolution.
The Cult of the Supreme Being was a replacement for the Cult of Reason ordered by Maximilien
Robespierre in May of 1794 and was a deistic cult that reflected Rousseau’s vision of a civic religion that
would create greater public morality.
The Declaration of Pilnitz was issued by Frederick William II of Prussia and Leopold II of Austria on
August 27th 1791 and was intended to frighten the French revolutionaries and protect Louis. The two
monarchs promised to intervene in French affairs to protect the royal family and to preserve the
monarchy if the other major European powers agreed. The last provision made the declaration
meaningless because Great Britain would not have given its assent. But it was taken seriously in France
where the revolutionaries saw themselves surrounded by aristocratic and monarchical enemies that
intended to undo the Revolution by force.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, drawing on enlightenment principles and the
Virginia Declaration of Rights (drafted by George Mason and James Madison in1776), was intended to
be a statement of broad principles that would outline the Constitution that the National Constituent
Assembly was writing. Issued on August 27th 1789, it proclaimed that all men were born free and equal
in rights; that these natural rights were liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression; that all
citizens were equal under the law; that all employment should be according to merit. Moreover, the
declaration endorsed due process of law and the presumption of innocence until guilt is proven. Finally, it
affirmed freedom of religion and that taxation should be fair, that is, proportionate to one’s ability to pay;
and that right to property was an inviolable and sacred right. Its two most powerful ideas were civic
equality and popular sovereignty.
Deficit Spending is when a government spends more than it takes in.
Departments were the names given to the new “states” that replaced the old French provinces. They
were approximately equal in size and named after rivers, mountains and other geographical features. The
Departments were further subdivided into districts, cantons and communes. Elections for these new
divisions were indirect (like those of the Legislative Assembly) and these Departments have remained
unchained into our currents times.
Doubling the Third was the process by which the king’ royal council strengthened the Third Estate by
allowing it to elect twice as many representatives as the clergy or nobility. Thus the Third Estate could
easily dominate the assembly if voting was done by majority vote rather than by order (i.e., majority
meant the total votes cast; order meant the total votes cast in each order or estate.); So the catch was that
the First and Second Estates could still outvote the Third Estate, if the voting was by order instead of
majority.
Émigrés were about 16,000 aristocrats who fled France and settled in other countries near the French
border and become involved in counterrevolutionary activities.
The Estates General was an assembly that represented the entire French population through groups
known as estates. The First Estate consisted of about 100,000 Roman Catholic clergy; the Second
Estate consisted of about 400,000 aristocrats; and the Third Estate the rest of the population or about 24
million people. The First Estate was dominated by the upper clergy (bishops and cardinals); the Third
Estate was extremely diverse. Its most important members were the Bourgeoisie or upper middle class
professionals such as bankers, merchants, doctors and lawyers. The vast majority were peasants, who
were impoverished, bound to the land, and still owing the aristocracy medieval fees and services. The
poorest members were not the peasants but city workers who worked in the most menial jobs.
The French Republican Calendar was issued by the Convention in 1793 and began dating from the first
day of the French Republic until it was replaced by Napoleon in 1805. There were twelve months of
thirty days each, with names associated with the seasons and climate. Every tenth day, rather than every
seventh, was a holiday. Many of the most important events of the succeeding years became known by
their dates on the revolutionary calendar.
The Girondists (so named because they came from the Department of Gironde in Southwest France)
were a group of Jacobins that dominated the early days of the Legislative Assembly. Although they were
determined to deal severely with the enemies of the Revolution, their attitudes were milder than the
Mountain or Sans-Culottes. They tried to prevent the execution of Louis XVI and were the first to be
targeted during the Reign of Terror.
The Great Fear was a result of the rioting that followed the Storming of the Bastille and swept through
much of the countryside. Peasants, afraid the royal troops being sent to suppress their uprisings and
driven by rumors of grain shortages, attacked churches, monasteries and many manor houses (châteaux)
destroying many legal records and documents. They were determined to hold on to the grain supplies
which they considered theirs – and to reclaim the property of the nobility which they also considered was
rightfully theirs. It was if the great mass of peasants – so long oppressed by forced labor and brutal
taxation – suddenly woke up and struck out at their tormentors in the upper clergy and nobility.
The Jacobins were the most famous or infamous of the clubs organized when the Third Estate met at
Versailles. They were so named because they met in a former Dominican priory (urban monastery) in
Paris dedicated to St. James (St. Jacques in French). The Jacobins were excellent networkers and they
established local Jacobin clubs throughout France. Moreover, their members in the National Assembly
had earned a reputation for demanding a republic and eliminating the monarchy - and as such were
among the most radical members of the National Assembly. They were fervent followers of Rousseau –
and spread his ideas of popular sovereignty and republicanism.
The Legislative Assembly replaced the National Constituent Assembly when the Constitution of 1791
had been completed. When the new Legislative Assembly met on October 1st, it was filled with new
members – not so conservative who had to deal the challenges from resistance to the Civil Constitution of
the Clergy, the king’s attempted escape and the Declaration of Pilnitz.
The Levee en Masse, the idea of Lazare Carnot, drafted the entire population of France into the war
effort and directing all economic production for military purposes. Young men became soldiers; middle
aged men manufactured arms and weapons or provided logistical support for the army; women made
tents and bandages or worked in hospitals – even children and the elderly had roles to play. Never before
had Europe seen a nation organized so efficiently and the revolutionaries raised an army of more than a
million men - larger than any in European history.
The Mountain were the radical wing of the Jacobins and got their name because their seats were high up
in the assembly hall; they worked with the Sans-Culottes to win the war and root out the enemies – real
or imagined - of the Revolution.
The National Assembly came about as a result of the Third Estate to secure voting by majority rather
than by order in the Estates General. To trump (override) the first two estates, the Third Estate refused to
sit as a separate body (order) as the king wanted. For several weeks, there was a standoff until June 1st,
when the Third Estate invited the other two estates to join them in organizing a new legislative body. A
few priests of the lower clergy joined them and on June 17th the body declared itself the National
Assembly. Two days later, led by liberal members of the nobility, the Second Estate narrowly voted to
join the New National Assembly.
The National Constituent Assembly was proclaimed in June of 1789 after the National Assembly had
achieved a de facto Glorious Revolution to show that the main objective of the newly named assembly
was to write a constitution which would be completed in 1791.
The Paris Revolutionary Commune was formed after the Prussian commander invading Belgium, the
Duke of Brunswick, threatened to destroy Paris if the royal family was harmed. This only stiffed support
for the war and in response the Government of Paris created the Paris Revolutionary Commune, a
committee which became its own unelected political entity - and soon came to dominate the Revolution.
They led the August attack on the Tuileries Palace in which the Swiss Guard was massacred and sent
gangs of thugs into the prisons in the September Massacres to put on trial and arbitrarily murder over
1,400 victims - and invited the other French cities to follow this example.
The Commune then forced the Legislative Assembly to call for the election of a Convention which was
charged with writing another new constitution. And when the Convention met on September 20th, it
abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. When the Jacobins and Sans-Culottes made common
cause after the king’s attempted flight, the Paris Revolutionary Commune was and would be their chief
vehicle of political action.
Parlements were French legal courts, usually dominated by aristocrats.
The Proposed Polish Constitution of 1791was drawn up by Polish patriots; it provided for a heredity
(not an) elected monarch, real power for the king and his council, the establishment of a bi-cameral diet
and elimination of the Librum Veto.
The Reign of Terror was a period of time from the fall of 1793 to the summer of 1794, when of people –
from the nobility to clergy to Bourgeoisie to shop keepers and peasants – were arbitrarily arrested and –
in many cases – executed by the guillotine. This ferocity was justified because the revolutionaries
believed that the preservation of the Revolution was more important than personal security or property or
even people’s lives.
Among the first victims were Marie Antoinette and the Girondists. The death toll was in the tens of
thousands, with over 16,000 executed by guillotine and another 25,000 by other means such as mass
shootings and drowning. However only about 8% were aristocrats and 6% clergy; the larger groups were
14% middle class, and 72% workers or peasants accused of hoarding, evading the draft or desertion.
Refractory Clergy were clergy who refused to take an oath to support the Civil Constitution of the
Clergy. So in reprisal, the National Constituent Assembly removed them from them their clerical
functions both sacramental and administrative.
Republic of Virtue was a social/political order loosely modeled on Rousseau’s Social Contract,
especially the part where he emphasizes that a person ought to sacrifice himself for the better good, in
this case the Revolution. And it was in this idea of putting the public good above the individual good that
caused the Committee of Public Safety to carry out its policies of terror.
The Sans-Culottes were the common people of Paris. Sans-Culottes means “without breeches” and
referred to the long trousers of working men as opposed to aristocratic knee breeches. The Sans-Culottes
were shopkeepers, artisans, and poor workers. Persistent food shortages and rising inflation had made
their difficult lives even worse; they felt that they had been ignored by the old regime and taken for
granted by the wealthy men of the National Assembly. They were angry and knew what they wanted: an
end to inflation, food shortages and every form of social inequality. They were bitterly anti-monarchial,
strongly republican and even suspicious of representative government. In short, they believed that the
people should make the decisions of government.
A Suspensive Veto is a weak type of veto in which a vetoed law is merely suspended until it is
reconsidered by the legislature that passed it and becomes a law if re-passed by the same majority in the
legislature that passed it the first time.
The Society of Republican Women was founded in May 1793, by Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe.
The society’s purpose was to fight the internal enemies of the Revolution. Its members saw themselves a
militant citizens and the filled the galleries of the Convention to hear the debates and cheer their favorite
speakers. But as they became more radical – seeking stronger control on food prices, ferreting out food
hoarders, street fighting with working market women and demanding to wear the revolutionary cockade –
the Jacobins began to fear them and on October 10th, women’s societies and clubs were banned; and
many women became victims of the Reign of Terror. Their sin was to violate Rousseau’s vision of
separate spheres for men and women.
The Storming of the Bastille took place on July 14th 1789, when a large crowd of Parisians marched to
the Bastille (a fortress built during the hundred years’ war and in 1789 used as a prison and storehouse) to
search for weapons and ammunitions. The garrison commander foolishly ordered his soldiers to fire into
the crowd killing and wounding many. The enraged crowd became a mob and stormed the fortress
hacking the soldiers to death. One assailant used his pocketknife to sever the garrison commander’s head,
which was mounted on a pike and paraded around the streets of Paris. Bastille Day was the flashpoint of
the French Revolution and is still a national holiday in France.
The Thermidorian Reaction occurred just after the execution of Maximilian Robespierre. The fall of
Robespierre might have been just another violent turn of events but it actually had sobering effect on
France. The members of the Convention used the Robespierre’s death to reassert their power and within a
short time the Reign of Terror came to a close. This tempering of the Revolution has come to be called
the Thermidorian Reaction because many of its events happened in the month of Thermidor (July 19 to
August 17). The result was a widespread feeling that the Revolution had gone too far and a return to
center in politics was necessary.
In the weeks and months that followed Robespierre’s execution, the Convention allowed the Girondists
who had been in prison or in hiding to return to their seats. The Sans-Culottes diminished and the Middle
class grew in influence. A general amnesty was proclaimed for all political prisoners and the Committee
of Public Safety had its powers eclipsed. Some but not all of the people responsible for the Reign of
Terror were removed from public life. The Paris Revolutionary Commune was outlawed and most of its
leaders were executed. The Paris Jacobin Club was closed and the remaining Jacobin Clubs across France
were forbidden to correspond with each other.
The Republic of Virtue faded away as the dress of the Sans-Culottes disappeared among the middle and
upper classes. New plays appeared in theatres and families of victims of the Reign of Terror gave parties
in which they appeared with shaved necks (like their loved ones who had their necks shaved before the
guillotine) with red ribbons tied about them. Although the Convention continued to favor the Cult of the
Supreme Being, it allowed Catholic services to resume and priests to come out of hiding or jail. One of
the unanticipated results of the Thermidorian Reaction was a genuine revival of Catholic worship.
The Thermidorian Reaction also saw the repeal of laws passed in 1792 that made divorce more equitable
for women. The idea was to return the status of women to where it had been in 1789 under the Ancien
Regime and that included women’s rights and education. The Thermidorians sought to return family
life to where it had been before the Revolution. Church and State again worked together to reestablish
separate spheres for men and women to reinforce traditional gender roles and some historians believe that
women had less freedom in 1795 than in 1789.
In history, the term Thermidorian Reaction has come to mean a political moving back to center
from an extreme and a far greater number of people were now a part of the political process and
representation became an established foundation of French politics.
The Tennis Court Oath came about after the National Assembly formed itself. The king had decided to
reassert his royal authority and announced his intention to call a “Royal Session” of the Estates General
for June 23rd and closed the room where the National Assembly had been meeting. On June 20th, the
National Assembly discovered they were locked out and moved to a nearby indoor tennis court where its
members took an oath – the Tennis Court Oath - not to disband until they had given France a written
constitution.
The Third Partition of Poland took place as a result of a mutiny of Polish officers ordered to join their
forces with the Russian forces. Led by Kosciuszko, they were defeated and the victors (Austria, Prussia
and Russia) wiped Poland off the map and Poland would cease to exist as an independent state for a
hundred and twenty three years.
The Treaties of Basel in March, June and August of 1795 were treaties by which the Convention
concluded peace with Prussia, Spain and Hesse.
The Two-Thirds Law (passed by the Convention before it dissolved into the Constitution of the Year
III) decreed that at least two-thirds of the new legislature had to have served in the Convention itself.
Although the Two-Thirds Law was intended to give a sense of security, it had the opposite effect and
undermined public faith in the new government. And it meant more social unrest.
The White Terror was the name given to reprisal attacks on Jacobins and others responsible for the
Reign of Terror with little more due process of law than the Reign of Terror had observed. Sometimes the
Convention gave its approval; other times gangs of aristocratic or draft dodging youths roamed the streets
assaulting Jacobins. In cities like Lyons, Toulon and Marseilles, youths from the Bands of Jesus dragged
alleged terrorists from prisons and murdered them much like the September Massacres of 1792.
The Women’s March on Versailles occurred when Louis XVI hesitated in ratifying the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and Citizen causing many people to believe that he might try to regain his power and
because of the scarcity of bread and inflated prices. On October 5th, around seven thousand Parisian
women armed with pikes, guns, swords and knives marched on Versailles demanding more bread. They
milled and wandered about the palace and some spent the night. The king was frightened and finally
agreed to give his approval to the declaration. The next day, he and his family appeared on a balcony
above the crowd and listened as the crowd demanded that he and his family return to Paris with them.
Thoroughly intimidated, Louis had no choice and ordered his carriage to follow the crowd into the city
where he settled in the Tuilieries Palace in the heart of Paris.