French Revolution

• pays d'etat - traditional privileges of provincial estates
• 1st Estate = 1%, 2nd Estate = 1%, 3rd Estate = 98% of population
• 1st Estate (Church):

  • owned 10% of land
  • gained money from tithe and renting land to peasants, paid don gratuit to monarch
• Second Estate:

  • Owned 33% of land
  • nobility of sword (inheritance) and nobility of robe (purchased a venal office)
  • Made money from renting land, Church revenue, paid little tax
• 3rd Estate:

  • paid land tax, tithe, taille and corvee (forced 2-week labour on roads)
  • held only 32% of the land
• Taxes divided unevenly over generalites, governed by intendants
• Philosophes:

  • Montesquieu - argued for 'separation of the three powers' (legislative, executive, judiciary) for true liberty, instead of divine right monarchy
  • Voltaire - all estates should 'bear the expenses of the estate equally, because they belong to the state equally'
  • Rousseau - Social Contract said 'man is born free and everywhere he is in chains' (referring to estates system), and 'A law not ratified by the people in person is no law at all'
• Debt of one billion livres from American War of Independence, Lafayette returned with ideas of democracy and independence
• Compte Rendu (1781) by Jacques Necker omitted extraordinary war debts
• France faced bankruptcy by 1786, in debt by 112 million livres
• Calonnes presented tax reforms (abolishing internal barriers and introducing a direct tax on landowners) to Assembly of Notables in February 1787
• George Rude: 'The Notables refused to endorse ministerial reforms because their own cherished fiscal immunities were threatened', Assembly dissolved in May 1787
• Simon Schama: 'the nobles were the first revolutionaries'
• Brienne's tax reforms also rejected by Parlement in August 1787: 'taxes should be consented to by those who had to bear them'
• 6 August 1787: Louis exiled Parlement of Paris to Troyes, sparking revolt in the lower courts, after failing to assert lit de justice
• Royal Session, 19 Nov 1787: when parlement protested against Louis forcing loans through, he said 'That is of no importance to me...It is legal because I will it', and exiled magistrates with lettres de cachet
• Parlement declared 'fundamental laws of the realm' in May 1788:

  • Estate-General's right to 'freely...grant subsidies'
  • parlements' right to register new laws
  • freedom of all Frenchmen from arbitrary arrest
• Lit de Justice on 8 May suspended Parlement of Paris
• Day of Tiles, 7 June 1788 - 'breakdown of royal authority' (Schama)
• Harvest crisis - bread price doubled from 1787-89, became half a labourer's weekly wage - 300 bread riots across France
• Cahiers de doleances - 89% of nobles willing to forgo privileges, most peasants wanted abolition of seigneurial rights
• Reveillon riots (27-28 April 1789)

  • wallpaper manufacturer's house and factory stormed, rioters clashed with gardes francaises
• Convention of Estates in May 1789

  • fell apart because 3rd Estate wanted credentials to be checked as a full body rather than by Estate
  • 1st Estate defected (2/3 were impoverished parish priests) and formed National Assembly
  • Tennis Court Oath (20 June 1789)
• Bastille stormed 14th July 1789, political prison for recipients of lettres de cachet, representing royal absolutism - heads of prison decapitated and mounted on pikes
• After Bastille: 'It is a revolt' - Louis, 'No, it is a revolution' - Louis' master of wardrobe
• Great Fear (20 July - 6 August 1789): peasants began to arm themselves in 'fear of the brigand' (Lefebvre), poached lands of lords and destroyed Manorial Rolls
• Night of Patriotic Delirium (4 August 1789) - nobles in National Assembly forfeited pays d'etat and introduced principle of equal taxation