The French Revolution and Empire (^) ‹ 121
✪ Napoleon Bonaparte
✪ Lazare Carnot
✪ the Duke of Wellington
Introduction
Between 1789 and 1799, the Kingdom of France underwent a political revolution that
unfolded in three phases:
• A moderate phase (1789–1791), in which the politically active portions of the bourgeoi-
sie, or merchant class, attempted to curb the power and privilege of the monarchy, the
aristocracy, and the clergy and to create a limited constitutional monarchy similar to that
which existed in Great Britain
• A radical phase (1791–1794), in which the politicized urban working class of Paris seized
control and attempted to create a democratic republic and a more materially, politically,
and socially egalitarian society
• An end phase, known as the Thermidor (or Thermidorian Reaction), after the name of
the month of the revolutionary calendar in which it occurred. In this phase, members of
the Committee of Public Safety turned on Robespierre, who was executed. The result-
ing power vacuum led to the resurgence of the moderates and bourgeoisie who, after
purging the radical elements from power, began dismantling Robespierre’s reforms by
removing price controls and printing more money.
The National Convention then wrote a new constitution, guarding against both dic-
tatorship and republicanism, and favoring the propertied middle classes. This system had
representative legislative bodies, but became known as the Directory, after the five-man
executive committee. Politically weak, by 1799 the Directory’s power over foreign policy
was usurped by military generals, including Napoleon Bonaparte, who staged a coup
d’état in November of that year. Napoleon embarked on an ambitious campaign to create
a French Empire that would span most of Europe. Upon his defeat in 1815 by a coalition
of European powers, the French monarchy was restored, and the Kingdom of France was
returned to its traditional boundaries.The Ancien Régime in Crisis
The phrase Ancien Régime, or Old Regime, refers to the traditional social and political hier-
archy of eighteenth-century France. It was composed of three “Estates”:
• The First Estate, made up of the clergy, included all ordained members of the Catholic
Church in France.
• The Second Estate, made up of the nobility, included all titled aristocrats.
• The Third Estate, made up of the citizenry, included everyone who was not either clergy
or nobility and whose membership accounted for 96 percent of the population of France.
Together, the clergy and the nobility wielded enormous power and enjoyed tre-
mendous privilege, while the various groups that made up the Third Estate bore the
tax burden.
The Catholic Church in France functioned as a branch of the government bureaucracy.
It registered births, marriages, and deaths; collected certain kinds of agricultural taxes; andKEY IDEA16_Bartolini_Ch16_119-132.indd 121 27/04/18 1:55 PM