CLASS 9TH FRENCH REVOLUTION NCERT
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NCERT CLASS 10TH |
In this article we're going
to talk about the French
Revolution.
And what makes this especially
significant is that not only
is this independence from aA
monarchy-controlled empire,
like in the American
independence, this is an
actual overthrowing
of a monarchy.
A monarchy that controls
a major world power.
Depending on how you view it,
the American Revolution came
first and kind of put out the
principles of self-governance
and why do we need kings
and all of that.
But the French Revolution was
the first time that those type
of principles really took foot
in Europe and really overthrew
a monarchy.
So just to understand kind of
the environment in which this
began, let's talk about what
France was like in 1789.
Which most people kind of view
as the beginning of the
Revolution.
One, France was poor.
Now, you wouldn't think that
France was poor, if you looked
at Louis XVI, who was
king of France.
If you looked at Louis XVI,
and the clothes he wore.
If you looked at
Marie-Antoinette, his wife,
they don't look poor.
They lived in the palace of
Versailles, which is ginormous.
It's this massive palace, it
would compare to the greatest
palaces in the world.
They were living a
lavish lifestyle.
Just in case you want to know
where this is, this is what's
now almost a suburb of Paris.
But at the time it was a village
20 or 30 kilometers
away from Paris.
So they don't seem to be poor.
But the the actual government
of France is poor.
And when I say poor,
they're in debt.
They've just had two major
military adventures.
One was the American
Revolution.
They played a major part
in supporting the
revolutionaries.
Because they wanted to
stick it to their
enemy, Great Britain.
They wanted their empire
to shrink a little bit.
So France sent significant
military help and resources.
And you could imagine, that's
not a cheap thing when you're
doing it across the
Atlantic Ocean.
And even before the American
Revolution, the Seven Years'
War that ended in 1763, this
really drained the amount of
wealth that the French
government had.
And for those of you who are
more American history focused,
the Seven Years' War is really
the same thing as the French
and Indian War.
The French and Indian War was
the North American theater of
the Seven Years' War.
But the Seven Years' War is
the more general term.
Because there was also a
conflict going on in Europe
simultaneously.
The French and Indian
War and it was just
part of that conflict.
And the Seven Years' actually
engulfed most of the powers of
Europe at the time.
So France had participated in
this, ended in 1763, you had
the American Revolution.
Both of these really just
drained the amount of funds
that the government
itself had.
At the same time, the French
people were starving.
There was a generalized
famine at the time.
They weren't producing enough
grain, people couldn't get
their bread to eat.
So you can imagine,
when people are
starving they're not happy.
And to kind of add insult to
injury, you would see your
royals living like this.
But even worse than the royals,
who you don't see
every day, you saw
your nobility.
Who is roughly a little over
1.5% of the population.
But you saw the nobility really,
really, living it up.
And the nobility, just so you
know, these are people with
fancy titles who inherit land
and wealth from generation to
generation.
They don't dress too differently
from the king.
And they essentially live in
smaller versions of the palace
of Versailles.
And if you're a peasant, you
work on their fields, do all
the work, you send them
some of your crops
and they pay no taxes.
So from your point of view,
and it's not hard to
understand why you would think
this, these are essentially
kind of parasites who are
completely ignoring the fact
that you are starving
and you're
paying all of the taxes.
You can imagine people weren't
too happy about that.
And then to top it all off,
you had all of these
philosophers hanging around
talking about the
Enlightenment.
And this is kind of the whole
movement where people, and
authors, and poets, and
philosophers, are starting to
realize that, gee, maybe
we don't need kings.
Maybe we don't need priests to
tell us what it means to be
good or bad.
Maybe people could
essentially rule
themselves all of a sudden.
And obviously, the biggest proof
of the Enlightenment was
the American Revolution.
That was kind of the first
example of people rising up
and saying, we don't need
these kings anymore.
We want to govern ourselves.
For the people, by the people.
So you also had kind of
this philosophical
movement going around.
Now if you ask me my opinion of
what the biggest thing was,
I think the people starving,
you can never underestimate
what people are willing to do
when they're actually hungry.
And, this is kind
of more from the
intellectual point of view.
People said, oh there's
Enlightenment movement here.
So this is the state
of France.
They had a financial crisis.
So a meeting was called, kind
of an emergency meeting, of
the major groups of France to
try to resolve some of these
problems. It's a fiscal crisis,
people are starving,
what do you do?
So they called the Convocation
of the Estates-General.
Let me write that down.
Which was a meeting of the
three estates of France.
Now what are the three
estates of France?
You can really just view them
as the three major social
classes of France.
The First Estate
was the clergy.
The Second Estate
is the nobility.
And then the Third Estate
is everyone else.
And this gives you a sense
of how skewed the
power structure was.
Because people kind of grouped
the power as OK, these are the
three groups and maybe they can
vote against each other.
But this was only 0.5% of the
population, this is 1.5% of
the population, this was
98% of the population.
But these people had equal
weight with these guys.
But these people had the burden
of most of the taxes.
These are the people who are
doing all the work, producing
all of France's wealth,
dying in the wars.
But these guys, despite their
small population, have more
weight than everybody else.
So you had the Convocation of
the Estates-General, where
representatives of these three
estates met at the Palace of
Versailles to essentially figure
out what to do about
this fiscal crisis.
Now obviously, these people
right here, the Third Estate,
they were angry.
They were like look, we've taken
the burden on ourselves
for much of the recent
history of France.
We're tired of you guys getting
away with not paying
taxes and just kind of
leeching off of us.
They were afraid that even more
of the tax burden was
going to be put on them.
And the nobility, or the king,
or the clergy, that they
wouldn't have to make
sacrifices.
So they came in already angry.
And so they really wanted to
meet in one big room together.
Because they actually had
roughly 600 representatives.
Which only the king at the
last minute agreed to.
Before, it was only going to
be equal numbers of them.
These guys had 300 roughly.
These guys had 300 as well.
These guys were able to say,
hey we're 98% of the
population, maybe we should
have at least 600
representative.
But even there, they wanted
to meet in the same room.
And essentially try to
make it so it's one
representative, one vote.
But obviously these other
estates, the clergy and the
nobility, said no, let's
each vote as estates.
And at the end of the day, these
guys lost. So they were
essentially forced to kind of
organize independently as a
Third Estate.
So that made them
even angrier.
So they met at an assembly hall
and said, if these guys
are going to ignore us, not
only are we going to be in
this room and start organizing
ourselves.
But we're not going to call this
the Convocation of the
Estates-General.
We're going to declare
that we are the
National Assembly of France.
That we represent the people.
We are essentially going
to become the
parliamentary body of France.
Instead of just being this
emergency Convocation of the
Estates-General.
And they actually got some
sympathy from some elements of
the clergy and some elements
of the nobility.
Now obviously, Louis XVI
was not amused by this
whole turn of events.
Here he was, he was an absolute
monarch, which means
that he held pretty much all of
the power to do whatever he
saw was fit.
And all of a sudden you had this
group of upstarts taking
advantage of this emergency
situation where he can't
continue to buy as many silk
robes as he was before.
They're taking advantage of
the situation to declare a
National Assembly of France.
To declare somehow that I'm
not an absolute monarch.
That my power is going to be
taken by this assembly.
So he wasn't happy.
So when they took a break,
he locked the door of the
assembly room.
So they couldn't get in.
And he said, oh I think
there needs to be some
repairs in that room.
Maybe you all can
assemble later.
And that was kind of his
way of saying no.
If you're declaring you're the
National Assembly of France,
I'm not going to even
let you assemble.
I'm not even going to let
you get in the room.
So that clearly didn't do a lot
to make these guys, or in
particular these guys,
any happier.
People are hungry.
These people are living
lavishly.
They've already been
not allowed to
vote in one room together.
When they vote in their own
room, and declare themselves
as representatives of the people
of France, which they
really are, the king locks the
room, doesn't let them go in.
So they go to an indoor tennis
court in Versailles.
This is a picture of
it right here.
This is an indoor
tennis court.
And that gives you an idea of
how lavish Versailles was,
that it had an indoor tennis
court in the late 1700s.
And they proclaimed the
Tennis Court Oath.
Where they proclaimed, not are
we only the National Assembly
of France, but even more than
that, we all pledge to not
stop until we create a
constitution of France.
So they went from being
a National Assembly to
essentially morphing into
a constituent assembly.
We're going to create
a constitution.
And they had sympathy from some
elements of the clergy
and the nobility.
So eventually Louis XVI,
he kind of saw the
writing on the wall.
The people are angry.
And every time he tries
to mess with them,
they only get angrier.
And they only go to even
more extreme measures.
So just to kind of make it seem
like he's going along, he
says, OK that's cool, guys.
Whatever you all want to do.
Yeah, maybe I'm open to it,
we are in an emergency.
And maybe it is unreasonable,
I have been a little bit
unreasonable.
So he lets them be, he lets
them assemble again.
But while that's happening,
people start to notice that
troops are converging
on Paris.
And they're obviously being
sent there by the king.
And not only are they just any
troops, a lot of the actual
troops, even though they are
French troops, there under the
authority of France's
military.
They're actually
foreign troops.
So, if you think about it, these
would be the ideal types
of troops to put down any
type of insurgency,
or any type of rebellion.
Or even better, to go
in and dissolve
the National Assembly.
So people start getting
a little bit
paranoid, you can imagine.
Now on top of that, Louis XVI's
main financial adviser,
Necker, Jacques Necker.
He was sympathetic to the Third
Estate, to the plight of
the Third Estate.
And he said hey, Mr. King, I
think it's reasonable for you
to essentially budget your
expenses a little bit better.
And maybe a little bit less
of a lavish lifestyle.
Considering the state of the
government's budget.
And the state of the people of
France, they're starving.
Why don't you do that
a little bit?
But Louis XVI, instead
of taking his
advice, he fired him.
He fired the financial
adviser.
So taken together, troops are
converging on Paris, you have
this Tennis Court Oath, Louis
XVI has fired his adviser,
people are going hungry.
They're genuinely
going hungry.
People in Paris said, the king
is going to try to suppress us
again, this is no good.
And especially if he does
it with troops,
we have to arm ourselves.
So they stormed the Bastille.
This right here is a picture
of the Bastille.
And this is most famous, when
you when you first learn about
it, or maybe this is the first
time you're learning about it.
They put political prisoners
there and they freed the
political prisoners.
But in reality, there
were only seven
prisoners in the Bastille.
So it's not like thousands and
thousands of political
prisoners were being held there
and there were freed.
The real value of the Bastille
to the revolutionaries, we
could say, is that there
were weapons there.
There was a major arms
cache there.
And so by storming the Bastille
and getting the
weapons, they all of a sudden
could essentially fend off any
type of threat that the
troops would have.
But this is also kind of the
very beginning of the real
chaos of the French
Revolution.
And as we're going to see over
the next several years, the
chaos only gets worse
and worse.
It's almost on a lot of levels
a lot worse than the American
Revolution.
Because what actually happened
in the cities and what fellow
Frenchman started doing to do
each other was really on many
levels barbaric.
And you actually saw it here for
the first time, where the
governor of the Bastille, the
guy who was in charge of it,
he had the standoff between
the troops.
And he eventually called
for a ceasefire.
Because he's like, oh there's
too much bloodshed.
But once the revolutionaries got
to him, they stabbed them,
they cut his head off, and
they put it on a pike.
Then they went back to the mayor
of Paris, they shot him.
So clearly, things were really
getting out of hand.
But most people associate the
storming of the Bastille as
kind of the landmark event
of the French Revolution.
Even today, people celebrate
Bastille Day.
And that is July 14, 1789.
So just to give you a sense
of how quickly all of this
happened, the Convocation
of the
Estates-General, that was in May.
The Tennis Court Oath
was in June.
And then in July, you have the
storming of the Bastille.
And then in August, just to kind
of complete the idea that
we are definitely in a
revolutionary period.
The National Assembly, that
started off at the tennis
courts with the Third Estate,
they declared their equivalent
of the Declaration
of Independence.
They declared their Declaration
of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen.
Which was essentially their
version of the Declaration of
Independence.
And it essentially put
everything into question of
what is life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness?
I'm using words from the
American Revolution.
But this was their Declaration
of Independence.
It wasn't a constitution, it
was just a statement of the
things that they think need
to govern any type of
constitution or country.
Or the ideas that any country
should be based on.
So I'm going to leave
you there.
We've really now started
the French Revolution.
And now, you're going to see
that over the next several
years, it's only going to get
bloodier and bloodier and even
more complex.
And when everything is said and
done, it's actually not
going to end that
well in terms of
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