From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1970s, the French Revolution was most
commonly described as the result of the growing economic and social importance of the
bourgeoisie, or middle class. The bourgeoisie, it was believed, overthrew the Old Regime
because that regime had given power and privilege to other classes-the nobility and the
clergy-who prevented the bourgeoisie from advancing socially and politically. Recently
this interpretation has been replaced by one that relies less on social and economic factors
and more on political ones. Economic recession in the 1770s may have frustrated some
bourgeois in their rise to power and wealth, and rising bread prices just before the
Revolution certainly increased discontent among workers and peasants. Yet it is now
commonly believed that the revolutionary process started with a crisis in the French state.
By 1789 many French people had become critical of the monarchy, even though it had
been largely successful in militarily defending France and in quelling domestic religious
and political violence. They resented the rising and unequal taxes, the persecution of
religious minorities, and government interference in their private lives. These resentments,
coupled with an inefficient government and an antiquated legal system, made the government
seem increasingly illegitimate to the French people. The royal court at Versailles, which
The Essay on French Government
The modern French government is run very much like the government of the United States. France is a democratic republic that is divided into three branches, the Executive branch, the Legislative branch, and the Judicial branch. The Legislative branch is made up of the Parliament, which like the United States Congress, is divided into two houses. Those being the Senate and the National Assembly. ...
had been developed to impress the French people and Europe generally, came to symbolize the
waste and corruption of the entire Old Regime.
In this general crisis, revolutionary leaders began to turn on each other. The Girondins
who favored federalism, fought a battle to the death with the Jacobins, who denounced the
Girondins for lacking revolutionary zeal and for aiding, intentionally or not, counter-
revolutionary forces. The Jacobins already dominated the convention, but on June 2,
pressured by the sans-culottes, they consolidated their power by arresting 22 Girondin
leaders.
During the following months, the government put down the federalist revolts, sometimes
sevearly. A new democratic constitution was taken up but never implemented. In Robespierre’s
view, constitutional government would have to wait until fear and repression had eliminated
the enemies of the Revolution. The Jacobins operated through the existing convention and
agencies responsible to it. They used the Committee of Public Safety, composed of 12 men led
by Robespierre, to provide executive oversight and the Revolutionary Tribunal to try
political cases. Additionally, the Jacobins sent representatives from the convention with
wide-ranging powers to particular areas to enforce Jacobin policies.
The most urgent government business was the war. On August 17th, 1793, the convention
voted the levee en masse, which mobilized all citizens to serve as soldiers or suppliers in
the war effort. To further that effort, the convention quickly enacted more legislation. On
September 5 it approved the Reign of Terror, a policy through which the state used violence
to crush resistance to the government. On September 9th the convention established sans-
culotte paramilitary forces, the so-called revolutionary armies, to force farmers to
surrender grain demanded by the government. On September 17th the Law of Suspects was passed,
which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined “crimes
against liberty.” On September 29 the convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread
to other needed goods and fixed wages. On December 4th the national government resumed
The Term Paper on Freedom Of The Press Revolution Government Revolutionary
The Importance of the Press The newspaper is a powerful medium. It is powerful because it has the ability to influence the way that people view the world, as well as their opinion of what they see. In peaceful times (or in times of oppression, for sometimes they can appear to be happening at the same moment) the press is usually one of the instruments used by the state in order to maintain the ...
oversight of local administration. On February 4th, 1794, it abolished slavery in the
colonies. In the end of it all, Napolean
