210
O
n July 14, 1789, an enraged
Parisian mob, seeking
weapons to defend their
city from a rumored royal attack,
stormed the crumbling fortress
known as the Bastille and murdered
its governor and guards. This
violent defiance of royal power
has become the symbol of the
French Revolution, a movement
that not only engulfed France
but also reverberated around the
world. The ideas articulated in the
revolution spelled the beginning
of the end for Europe’s absolute
monarchies and inspired their
eventual replacement by more
democratic governments.
The French Revolution originally
set out to sweep away aristocratic
privilege and establish a new
state based on the Enlightenment
principles of liberté, égalité, and
fraternité. But although it was
introduced by a surge of optimism,
the revolution soon degenerated
into a violence that played out
over several years and that would
be brought to an end only by the
dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte.
It remains a story of confusion and
chaos, of a collision between a
privileged old order, the ancienrégime, and a new world that
struggled, often violently, to
create a coherent new order.A country in disarray
The French king, Louis XVI, well
meaning but indecisive, was
hardly the man to confront any
crisis, let alone one as grave as
that facing France in 1789. In the
previous century, his great-great-
great-grandfather Louis XIV,
the Sun King, had established
France as an absolute monarchy,
with all power concentrated in the
king’s hands, and his palace atTHE STORMING OF THE BASTILLE
Enlightenment
thought establishes a
belief in a new political
order based on liberty.The Bastille prison
is attacked by a
violent mob.A sustained period
of instability, rioting,
civil war, and
state-sanctioned
executions follows.A political crisis
arises in France, and
the overthrow of the
old order seems
suddenly possible.Attempts are made to
construct a new society:
the monarchy is abolished
and a republic declared.The underpinning belief
in liberté, égalité,
fraternité changes not
just France, but the world.IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
The French RevolutionBEFORE
May 1789 Louis XVI
summons the States General.
In June, the commons forms
the National Assembly, taking
effective power in the name
of the people.AFTER
April 1792 The Legislative
Assembly declares war on
Austria and Prussia. The first
French Republic is declared.
January 1793 Louis XVI
is executed.March 1794 The Terror is at
its peak. In July, Robespierre,
its prime exponent, is executed.October 1795 Napoleon
forcibly restores order to a
turbulent Paris.November 1799 Napoleon
effectively becomes the ruler
of France.The French Revolution was
the greatest step forward
in the history of mankind
since the coming of Christ.
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables (1862)US_208-213_Bastille.indd 210 26/02/2016 15:49
211
The storming of the Bastille
symbolized the start of the French
Revolution. The prison held only seven
prisoners in July 1789, but its fall had
great importance.Versailles as the most sophisticated
court in Europe and a bastion of
aristocratic privilege.
Louis XVI thus ruled over a
country where nobles refused to
surrender any privileges, and taxes
were paid almost exclusively by an
oppressed peasantry: France was
effectively bankrupt. In the late
18th century, France’s population
was expanding rapidly, but unlike
England, France had not had an
agricultural revolution and remained
particularly vulnerable to any failure
of the harvest, as happened in
1787 and, again, in 1788. These
desperate summers were followed
in 1788–89 by a bitterly harsh
winter, leading to mass starvation.The king’s response
The financial crisis critical, Louis
was desperate to raise further
funds while preserving his
authority, so he summoned what
was called the States General, asemi-parliamentary body that had
last assembled in 1614. It consisted
of clergy, the first estate; nobles, the
second; and the commons
(essentially a kind of bourgeoisie,
lawyers predominating), the third.
The States General met at Versailles
on May 5, 1789. Almost instantly,
the nobles and clerics tried to assert
that their votes should be worth
more than those of the commons. In
response, on June 17, the commons
declared itself a National Assembly,
vesting power in itself instead of the
crown. In August, with peasant
uprisings across rural France, the
Assembly abolished feudal taxes
and aristocratic privileges and
issued what it called the Declaration
of the Rights of Man, a statement
asserting fundamental freedoms.
In October 1789, events were
suddenly accelerated when a vast
crowd, outraged by the lack of
bread in Paris, descended on
Versailles and forcibly removed theroyal family to Paris, ransacking the
palace for good measure. In what
would become an unnerving
foretaste of the violence to come,
the severed heads of the guards at
Versailles were paraded on stakes
as Louis and his family were
escorted to the capital.
It had been comparatively easy
to overthrow the existing royal
government, but it would prove
infinitely harder to establish a new
government. It was presumed that
a kind of constitutional monarchy
would be the most obvious solution.
In the event, France found itself
wrenched between those arguing
for this more or less moderate option,
and those in favor of a much more
radical republican alternative.The First Republic
Although in most important respects
Louis’s reign seemed by now to be
doomed, the king had not entirely ❯❯See also: Louis XIV begins personal rule of France The Battle of Quebec 191 ■ Diderot publishes the Encyclopédie 192–95 ■
The signing of the Declaration of Independence 204–07 ■ The Battle of Waterloo 214–15 ■ The 1848 revolutions 228–29CHANGING SOCIETIES
Terror is nothing more
than speedy, severe, and
inflexible justice; it is thus
an emanation of virtue.
Maximilien Robespierre,
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