The French Revolution: Crash Course World History #29

CrashCourse
10 Aug 201211:54
EducationalLearning
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TLDRThe French Revolution video discusses the economic and social turmoil in late 18th century France that led to the overthrow of the monarchy. It covers the fiscal crisis and food shortages that angered commoners, the calling of the Estates General, the Tennis Court Oath, the storming of the Bastille, the Declaration of the Rights of Man that established equal rights, and the ensuing Reign of Terror under Robespierre. Finally, it analyzes the radical but uncertain legacy of the French Revolution, which questioned old assumptions about rights and governance but resulted in Napoleon's ascendancy.

Takeaways
  • 😠 France was in debt and the tax system was unfair, with nobles and clergy not paying taxes.
  • 😤 Popular discontent grew due to hunger from harvest failures and anger at the lavish lifestyle of the royals.
  • 🤬 The Third Estate broke away and formed the National Assembly, signaling the start of revolution.
  • 😡 The Bastille was stormed, feudalism abolished, and Declaration of Rights adopted as revolutionary fervor grew.
  • 🤯 Attempts to rein in the revolution led to increasing radicalization and The Terror under Robespierre.
  • 😨 16,000 enemies of the revolution including royals and Robespierre himself were guillotined.
  • 😓 France went through numerous constitutions and coups with rulers seizing power.
  • 😠 Napoleon rose to power and proclaimed the revolution was over but France was not a democracy.
  • 😟 The revolution saw a return of monarchy and nobility but without absolute monarchies.
  • 🧐 The ideas on universal rights were very radical and influential, but debated whether revolution succeeded.
Q & A
  • What were some of the systemic problems France faced in collecting taxes in the 18th century?

    -France had an unfair tax system called the Ancien Regime where the nobility and clergy who had all the money rarely paid taxes, leaving the peasants to carry the tax burden. This caused France to go deeply into debt.

  • How did the calling of the Estates General lead to the revolution?

    -The Third Estate broke off from the Estates General after disagreements and formed the National Assembly, starting the revolution. When King Louis XVI locked them out of their meeting hall, they moved elsewhere and took the Tennis Court Oath to write a constitution.

  • What major events helped galvanize the French revolutionaries early on?

    -The storming of the Bastille on July 14 to get weapons was a major flashpoint. Also, the Women's March on Versailles in October that brought the royal family back to Paris signaled the people's control.

  • What was the Reign of Terror and what were its effects?

    -The Reign of Terror from 1793-94 was a violent purge of counter-revolutionaries by Maximilien Robespierre's radical regime. Over 16,000 were executed by guillotine, including Marie Antoinette and eventually Robespierre himself.

  • How did the French Revolution change measurements of time?

    -During the radical phase of the revolution, the calendar was changed to have 10 days per week and months were renamed to remove religious references.

  • What was the Declaration of Rights of Man?

    -Ratified in 1789, it established equality and natural rights for all male citizens, making these intrinsic to the new French constitution. This was far more radical than the American Bill of Rights.

  • How did the French Revolution lead to Napoleon's rise?

    -The post-Terror instability led to Napoleon's coup as First Consul in 1799, making him dictator. He proclaimed the revolution was over but the Napoleonic Code preserved some Enlightenment ideals.

  • Why did other European monarchs oppose the revolution?

    -Leaders like Leopold II of Austria feared the growing republican sentiments and wanted to preserve monarchy. So they threatened counter-revolution, helping radicalize the revolutionaries.

  • How revolutionary was the final outcome of the French Revolution?

    - France returned to having a king and nobility, so it wasn't very democratic in the end. But Enlightenment ideals were spread and absolutist rule was over, making it quite radical.

  • What is the revolution's disputed legacy?

    -Some see the French Revolution as mostly spreading state domination rather than liberty. But its universal ideas on rights and sovereignty were highly influential, even if democracy didn't immediately result.

Outlines
00:00
🏛️ Establishing Context of French Revolution

The paragraph establishes context by mentioning how the French Revolution is seen as a bloody mess but argues it changed human history more than the American Revolution. It then sets up the systemic tax collection issues France faced due to the Ancien Regime system of kings and nobles not paying taxes.

05:03
🚩 Triggering the Revolution

The paragraph discusses factors triggering the revolution - debt from funding American Revolution, crop failures causing hunger, perceived excesses of nobles and royals. It then covers key events like formation of the National Assembly, Tennis Court Oath, storming of Bastille.

10:04
🗽 Ideals and Legacy

The paragraph evaluates the revolution's legacy - whether it succeeded in spreading Enlightenment ideals of universal rights though didn't bring democracy. It compares revolution's effects on inequality versus America and argues its insistence on universal ideals was most radical.

Mindmap
Continued Inequality and Lack of Democracy After the Revolution
Spread of Enlightenment Ideals of Equality and Rights
Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte as Military Leader
The Reign of Terror and Guillotining of Enemies of the Revolution
Execution of Louis XVI
Declaration of the Rights of Man
Abolition of Feudalism
Storming of the Bastille
Tennis Court Oath by Third Estate
Meeting and Deadlock of Estates General
Crop Failures and Widespread Hunger
Unfair Tax System Favoring Nobility and Clergy
Economic Crisis and Debt
Consequences and Legacy
Key Events
Causes of the Revolution
The French Revolution
Alert
Keywords
💡Ancien Régime
The Ancien Régime refers to the social and political system in France before the French Revolution. It was characterized by an absolute monarchy, feudalism, and privileges for the clergy and nobility while most French people lived in poverty. This systemic inequality in French society eventually led to calls for social and political reform.
💡Estates General
The Estates General was an assembly representing the three estates of French society - the clergy, nobility and commoners. Louis XVI called a meeting in 1789 to try to fix France's financial crisis. However, disagreements between the estates led the Third Estate (commoners) to break away and form the National Assembly.
💡National Assembly
The National Assembly was created by representatives of the Third Estate during the Estates General meeting. They sought to establish a constitution and have a greater voice in governing France. After they were locked out of their meeting hall, they made the Tennis Court Oath to keep working until a constitution was achieved.
💡Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen
Issued by the National Assembly in 1789, this Declaration laid out basic rights for all people, including liberty, property, security, and equal treatment under the law. This embodied Enlightenment ideals that power should come from the people.
💡Maximilien Robespierre
A Jacobin leader, Robespierre was a key figure during the radical phase of the Revolution called The Terror. Under the Committee of Public Safety, thousands were executed. Later Robespierre himself was guillotined as more moderate voices regained influence.
💡The Terror
The Terror refers to the final radical phase of the French Revolution from 1793-1794, marked by violence and mass executions of perceived enemies of the Revolution. Led by Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, The Terror showed how radical movements often turn against their own.
💡guillotine
The guillotine was introduced as a more egalitarian method of execution. However, it became strongly associated with the mass killings during the Terror. Enlightenment thinker Dr. Joseph Guillotine invented it.
💡Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte emerged from the political chaos after the Terror to become ruler of France. Though he called the Revolution over, his reign showed France did not achieve its democratic ideals. He crowned himself emperor in 1804.
💡plebeian
A member of the lower class commoners. Also referred to as the Third Estate, they resented the privileges of clergy and nobles. Their representatives spearheaded the drive for reform in the Estates General.
💡bourgeoisie
The urban middle class, including merchants, bankers, doctors, lawyers etc. They provided support for the early liberal stages of the Revolution but opposed its later radical phases.
Highlights

The French Revolution asked new questions about the nature of people’s rights and the derivation of those rights.

France had a systemic problem collecting taxes because nobles and clergy never paid taxes.

By 1789, France was deeply in debt from funding the American Revolution and half its budget went to paying interest.

The Third Estate broke off from the Estates General and formed the National Assembly, starting the revolution.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man established equal rights for all people, unlike the American Bill of Rights.

The Women's March on Versailles forced the royal family to move to Paris, signaling their reduced power.

The revolution became more radical, with calls for a republic instead of a constitutional monarchy.

The National Assembly fighting protesters made them lose revolutionary credibility.

Other monarchies feared the French Revolution would inspire revolutions elsewhere.

Invading Austria backfired and turned opinion against King Louis XVI.

After the king's execution, The Terror began, with thousands executed at the guillotine.

The revolution went through many constitutions and governments in a short period of time.

Napoleon rose to power promising to uphold revolutionary ideals but became an authoritarian ruler.

The revolution ultimately replaced one authoritarian regime with another.

The legacy is debated - did it spread Enlightenment ideals or enhance state power?

Transcripts
00:00

Hi, my name is John Green, this is Crash Course World History, and today we’re going to

00:03

talk about The French Revolution. Admittedly, this wasn’t the French flag until 1794,

00:07

but we just felt like he looked good in stripes. As does this guy. Huh?

00:11

So, while the American Revolution is considered a pretty good thing, the French Revolution

00:14

is often seen as a bloody, anarchic mess, which...

00:16

Mr. Green, Mr. Green! I bet, like always, it’s way more complicated than that.

00:20

Actually no. It was pretty terrible. Also, like a lot of revolutions, in the end it exchanged

00:24

an authoritarian regime for an authoritarian regime. But even if the revolution was a mess,

00:29

its ideas changed human history - far more, I will argue, than the American Revolution.

00:33

[theme music]

00:42

Right, so France in the 18th century was a rich and populous country, but it had a systemic

00:46

problem collecting taxes because of the way its society was structured. They had a system

00:51

with kings and nobles we now call the Ancien Régime. Thank you, three years of high school French.

00:56

And for most French people, it sucked, because the people with the money - the nobles and

01:00

the clergy - never paid taxes. So by 1789, France was deeply in debt thanks to their

01:05

funding the American Revolution - thank you, France; we will get you back in World Wars

01:09

I and II. And King Louis XVI was spending half of his national budget to service the federal debt.

01:14

Louis tried to reform this system under various finance ministers. He even called for democracy

01:18

on a local level, but all attempts to fix it failed and soon France basically declared

01:22

bankruptcy. This nicely coincided with hailstorms that ruined a year’s harvest, thereby raising food prices

01:27

and causing widespread hunger, which really made the people of France angry, because they love to eat.

01:32

Meanwhile, the King certainly did not look broke, as evidenced by his well-fed physique

01:36

and fancy footwear. He and his wife Marie Antoinette also got to live in the very nice

01:40

Palace at Versailles thanks to God’s mandate, but Enlightenment thinkers like Kant were

01:44

challenging the whole idea of religion, writing things like: “The main point of enlightenment

01:48

is of man’s release from his self-caused immaturity, primarily in matters of religion.”

01:54

So basically the peasants were hungry, the intellectuals were beginning to wonder whether

01:57

God could or should save the King, and the nobility were dithering about, eating foie

02:02

gras and songbirds, failing to make meaningful financial reform.

02:05

In response to the crisis, Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General, the closest

02:09

thing that France had to a national parliament, which hadn’t met since 1614. The Estates

02:14

General was like a super parliament made up of representatives from the First Estate,

02:17

the nobles, the Second Estate, the clergy, and the Third Estate, everyone else.

02:21

The Third Estate showed up with about 600 representatives, the First and Second Estates

02:25

both had about 300, and after several votes, everything was deadlocked, and then the Third

02:29

Estate was like, “You know what? Forget you guys. We’re gonna leave and we’re

02:33

gonna become our own National Assembly.”

02:36

This did not please King Louis XVI. So when the new National Assembly left the room for

02:40

a break, he locked the doors, and he was like, "Sorry, guys, you can't go in there. And if

02:44

you can't assemble, how you gonna be a National Assembly?"

02:47

Shockingly, the Third Estate representatives were able to find a different room in France,

02:51

this time an indoor tennis court where they swore the famous Tennis Court Oath. And they

02:55

agreed not to give up until a French constitution was established.

02:58

So then Louis XVI responded by sending troops to Paris primarily to quell uprisings over

03:03

food shortages, but the revolutionaries saw this as a provocation, so they responded by

03:07

seizing the Bastille Prison on July 14th, which, coincidentally, is also Bastille Day.

03:10

The Bastille was stormed ostensibly to free prisoners - although there were only seven

03:13

in jail at the time - but mostly to get guns.

03:16

But the really radical move in the National Assembly came on August 4, when they abolished

03:19

most of the Ancien Régime - feudal rights, tithes, privileges for nobles, unequal taxation,

03:25

they were all abolished - in the name of writing a new constitution.

03:28

And then, on August 26th, the National Assembly proclaimed the Declaration of Rights of Man

03:32

and Citizen, which laid out a system of rights that applied to every person, and made those

03:36

rights integral to the new constitution. That’s quite different from the American bill of

03:40

rights, which was, like, begrudgingly tacked on at the end and only applied to non-slaves.

03:43

The DoRoMaC, as I called it in high school, declared that everyone had the right to liberty,

03:48

property, and security - rights that the French Revolution would do an exceptionally poor

03:53

job of protecting, but as noted last week, the same can be argued for many other supposedly

03:57

more successful revolutions. Okay, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

04:00

Meanwhile, back at Versailles, Louis XVI was still King of France, and it was looking like

04:04

France might be a constitutional monarchy. Which might've meant that the royal family

04:07

could hang on to their awesome house, but then, in October of 1789, a rumor started

04:12

that Marie Antoinette was hoarding grain somewhere inside the palace.

04:17

And in what became known as the Women's March, a bunch of armed peasant women stormed the

04:21

palace and demanded that Louis and Marie Antoinette move from Versailles to Paris. Which they

04:27

did, because everyone is afraid of armed peasant women. And this is a nice reminder that to

04:31

many people at the time, the French Revolution was not primarily about fancy Enlightenment

04:36

ideas; it was mostly about lack of food and a political system that made economic contractions

04:41

hardest on the poor.

04:43

Now, a good argument can be made that this first phase of the revolution wasn’t all

04:46

that revolutionary. The National Assembly wanted to create a constitutional monarchy;

04:51

they believed that the king was necessary for a functioning state and they were mainly

04:54

concerned that the voters and office holders be men of property. Only the most radical

04:59

wing, the Jacobins, called for the creation of a republic. But things were about to get

05:03

much more revolutionary - and also worse for France.

05:06

First, the Jacobins had a huge petition drive that got a bit unruly, which led troops controlled

05:11

not by the King but by the National Assembly to fire on the crowd, killing 50 people. And

05:16

that meant that the National Assembly, which had been the revolutionary voice of the people,

05:21

had killed people in an attempt to reign in revolutionary fervor. You see this a lot throughout

05:25

history during revolutions. What looked like radical hope and change suddenly becomes "The

05:31

Man" as increasingly radical ideas are embraced. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

05:35

Meanwhile, France’s monarchical neighbors were getting a little nervous about all this

05:38

republic business, especially Leopold II, who in addition to being the not holy, not

05:42

Roman, and not imperial Holy Roman Emperor, was Marie Antoinette’s brother. I should

05:47

note, by the way, that at this point, the Holy Roman Empire was basically just Austria.

05:50

Also, like a lot of monarchs, Leopold II liked the idea of monarchies, and he wanted to keep

05:54

his job as a person who gets to stand around wearing a dress, pointing at nothing, owning

05:58

winged lion-monkeys made out of gold. And who can blame him? So he and King William Frederick II

06:03

of Prussia together issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which promised to restore the French monarchy.

06:08

At this point, Louis and the National Assembly developed a plan: Let’s invade Austria.

06:13

The idea was to plunder Austria’s wealth and maybe steal some Austrian grain to shore

06:16

up French food supplies, and also, you know, spread revolutionary zeal. But what actually

06:20

happened is that Prussia joined Austria in fighting the French. And then Louis encouraged

06:25

the Prussians, which made him look like an enemy of the revolution, which, of course,

06:28

he was. And as a result, the Assembly voted to suspend the monarchy, have new elections

06:32

in which everyone could vote (as long as they were men), and create a new republican constitution.

06:37

Soon, this Convention decided to have a trial for Louis XVI, who was found guilty and, by

06:41

one vote, sentenced to die via guillotine. Which made it difficult for Austria and Prussia

06:45

to restore him to the throne. Oh, it’s time for the open letter?

06:51

An Open Letter to the Guillotine. But first, let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today.

06:56

Oh, there’s nothing. Oh my gosh, Stan! Jeez. That’s not funny!

07:00

Dear Guillotine, I can think of no better example of Enlightenment thinking run amok. Dr. Joseph Guillotine,

07:05

the inventor of the guillotine, envisioned it as an egalitarian way of dying. They said

07:10

the guillotine was humane and it also made no distinction between rich or poor, noble

07:15

or peasant. It killed equally.

07:17

You were also celebrated for taking the torture out of execution. But I will remind you, you

07:20

did not take the dying out of execution. Unfortunately for you, France hasn’t executed anyone since

07:25

1977. But you’ll be happy to know that the last legal execution in France was via guillotine.

07:31

Plus, you’ve always got a future in horror movies.

07:33

Best wishes, John Green

07:34

The death of Louis XVI marks the beginning of The Terror, the best known or at least

07:38

the most sensational phase of the revolution. I mean, if you can kill the king, you can

07:41

kill pretty much anyone, which is what the government did under the leadership of the

07:45

Committee of Public Safety (Motto: We suck at protecting public safety), led by Maximilien Robespierre.

07:50

The terror saw the guillotining of 16,000 enemies of the revolution including Marie

07:55

“I never actually said Let them eat cake” Antoinette and Maximilien Robespierre himself,

07:59

who was guillotined in the month of Thermidor in the year Two.

08:02

Alright, so while France was broke and fighting in like nine wars, the Committee of Public

08:05

Safety changed the measurements of time because, you know, the traditional measurements are

08:09

so irrational and religion-y. So they renamed all the months and decided that every day

08:12

would have 10 hours and each hour 100 minutes.

08:15

And then, after the Terror, the revolution pulled back a bit and another new constitution

08:19

was put into place, this one giving a lot more power to wealthy people. At this point,

08:22

France was still at war with Austria and Britain, wars that France ended up winning, largely

08:26

thanks to a little corporal named Napoleon Bonaparte.

08:29

The war was backdrop to a bunch of coups and counter coups that I won’t get into right

08:32

now because they were very complicated, but the last coup that we’ll talk about, in

08:35

1799, established Napoleon Bonaparte as the First Consul of France. And it granted him

08:41

almost unlimited executive power under yet another constitution. And when he was declared

08:46

First Consul of France, Napoleon proclaimed "Citizens! The revolution is established on

08:50

the principals with which it began. It is over." By which he presumably meant that France’s

08:55

government had gone all the way from here to here to here.

08:58

As with the American revolution, it’s easy to conclude that France’s revolution wasn’t

09:02

all that revolutionary. I mean, Napoleon was basically an emperor and, in some ways, he

09:06

was even more of an absolute monarch than Louis XVI had been. Gradually the nobles came

09:10

back to France, although they had mostly lost their special privileges. The Catholic Church

09:13

returned, too, although much weaker because it had lost land and the ability to collect tithes.

09:17

And when Napoleon himself fell, France restored the monarchy, and except for a four-year period,

09:21

between 1815 and 1870, France had a king who was either a Bourbon or a Bonaparte.

09:27

Now, these were no longer absolute monarchs who claimed that their right to rule came from

09:30

God; they were constitutional monarchs of the kind that the revolutionaries of 1789

09:35

had originally envisioned. But the fact remains that France had a king again, and a nobility,

09:38

and an established religion and it was definitely not a democracy or a republic.

09:43

And perhaps this is why the French Revolution is so controversial and open to interpretation.

09:47

Some argue the revolution succeeded in spreading enlightenment ideals even if it didn’t bring

09:50

democracy to France. Others argue that the real legacy of the Revolution wasn’t the

09:53

enhancement of liberty, but of state power.

09:56

Regardless, I’d argue that the French Revolution was ultimately far more revolutionary than

09:59

its American counterpart. I mean, in some ways, America never had an aristocracy, but

10:03

in other ways it continued to have one - the French enlightenment thinker, Diderot, felt

10:07

that Americans should “fear a too unequal division of wealth resulting in a small number

10:11

of opulent citizens and a multitude of citizens living in misery.” And the American Revolution

10:16

did nothing to change that polarization of wealth.

10:18

What made the French Revolution so radical was its insistence on the universality of

10:23

its ideals. I mean, look at Article 6 of the Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen:

10:27

“Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally,

10:32

or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.”

10:38

Those are radical ideas, that the laws come from citizens, not from kings or gods, and

10:43

that those laws should apply to everyone equally. That’s a long way from Hammurabi - and in

10:48

truth, it’s a long way from the slaveholding Thomas Jefferson.

10:50

In the 1970s, Chinese President Zhou Enlai was asked what the affects of the French Revolution

10:55

had been. And he said, “It’s too soon to say.” And in a way, it still is. The

10:59

French Revolution asked new questions about the nature of people’s rights and the derivation

11:03

of those rights. And we’re still answering those questions and sorting through how our

11:07

answers should shape society today - must government be of the people to be for the

11:11

people? Do our rights derive from nature or from God or from neither? And what are those rights?

11:16

As William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Thanks for

11:20

watching. I’ll see you next week.

11:22

Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan Muller, our script supervisor is Danica Johnson,

11:26

the show is written by my high school history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself, our graphics

11:30

team is Thought Bubble, and we are ably interned by Meredith Danko.

11:33

Last week’s phrase of the week was "Giant Tea Bag"; if you want to suggest future phrases

11:37

of the week, or guess at this week's you can do so in comments, where you can also ask

11:40

questions about today’s video that will be answered by our team of historians.

11:43

Thanks for watching Crash Course, and as we say in my hometown, Don’t Forget To Be Awesome.

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