The French Revolution

A Captivating Guide to the Ten-Year Revolution in France and the Impact Made by Napoleon Bonaparte

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Timeline of the French Revolution

Chapter 1 – A Brief History of the French Monarchy

Chapter 2 – Philosophies of the Times

Chapter 3 – France in the 18th Century

Chapter 4 – Marie Antoinette, Madame Deficit

Chapter 5 – Taxes, Famine, and the Enlightenment

Chapter 6 – Sieyes’ “What is the Third Estate?”

Chapter 7 – The National Assembly

Chapter 8 – Death of the Dauphin

Chapter 9 – Bastille Day

Chapter 10 – The First Mayor of Paris

Chapter 11 – Declaration of the Rights of Man…and The Women’s March

Chapter 12 – France at War

Chapter 13 – The Flight to Varennes

Chapter 14 – Storming the Tuileries

Chapter 15 – The Monarchy is Outlawed

Chapter 16 – The Fate of the Colonies

Chapter 17 – The Louisiana Purchase

Chapter 18 – The Reign of Terror

Chapter 19 – The New French Calendar

Chapter 20 – Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte

Chapter 21 – In the Days and Years Afterward

References

Introduction

Few historical events are as greatly revered and entirely misunderstood as the French Revolution that began in 1789. The memory of this complicated and lengthy political, violent uprising has been generally painted in broad—and oversimplified—strokes.

The modern world remembers “Let them eat cake,” a contemporary idiom attributed to anyone the common class viewed as irredeemably aristocratic. Few are aware of the free evening meals given to anyone visiting the Palace of Versailles while King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette ruled. Almost no one is aware that King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette restricted their personal budgets more than any other royal before them, or that the king wanted to spread out the tax burden onto the aristocracy instead of the working classes.

Modern Americans have almost entirely no idea that the members of the French Revolution felt a bond of brotherhood with the newly-established republic of the United States of America. The ideas of the Enlightenment spanned the Atlantic Ocean, inspiring the middle classes of both nations to take government into their own hands for the sake of their future. Through the chaos of the transition between two ancient monarchies and the self-governments of France and the United States, the countries were founded on very similar principles.

While the French Revolution was certainly centered around two lavish monarchs and an enlightened common class, there was so much more going on behind the scenes. Even after the abolition of the French monarchy, France struggled to find a balance between public self-governance and European stability. A fragile government, merely a shell of its former self following the Reign of Terror under Robespierre, was no match for the military and political prowess of Napoleon I.

It was a long road from the days of the Bourbon kings to the internationally respected democracy we know today. Chances are good that if we could ask the poor working peasants of late 18th -century France just what started all the trouble, they’d tell us it was all about bread.

Timeline of the French Revolution

It’s difficult to tell the complex tale of an infamous historic revolution that involved so many characters, so many leaders, so many ideals and so many interconnected events. Because it has been necessary to move backward and forwards in time throughout this text, I’ve included a simplified timeline of events to keep the reader on track.

All sub-topics will resolve themselves in the end, but if you find yourself a little lost in history, feel free to refer back to this timeline at any point.

1789

January - King Louis XVI calls for the Estates General to convene. They meet in May.

June 20 – Tennis Court Oath

July 14 – Storming of the Bastille

August 26 – Declaration of the Rights of Man

October 5-6 – The Women’s March on Versailles. Royal family kidnapped and installed within the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

1790

May 19 – National Assembly declares France a constitutional monarchy

1791

June 20-21 – The royal family escapes the Tuileries but is discovered at Varennes

September – Louis is presented with the French Constitution, which he signs

1792

April – French Assembly declares war on Austria and Prussia

August 10 – Storming of the Tuileries.

September 21 – The National Convention outlaws the monarchy and declares a French Republic

1793

January 21 – King Louis XVI, called Citizen Capet, is executed by guillotine

February – France declares war on the Netherlands and Great Britain

October 5 – New Republican calendar adopted

October 16 – Queen Marie Antoinette is executed by guillotine

1794

February 4 – France outlaws slavery

July 28 – Robespierre, leader of the government, is executed by guillotine

1795

June 5 – Louis Charles, last son of Marie Antoinette and Louis Bourbon, dies

1798

July 1 – Napoleon, as General of the French Army, lands in Egypt

1799

November – Napoleon plans a coup d’etat with members of the government

1804

May 14 – Napoleon Bonaparte is declared Emperor of France

Chapter 1 – A Brief History of the French Monarchy

The Kingdom of the Franks was established in the 5th century, during a time when the once extensive and powerful Roman Empire had deeply declined. King Clovis I is largely considered the first monarch to rule over a unified French kingdom, thus beginning the Merovingian Dynasty in about 481. His family ruled for a difficult three centuries, the dynasty punctuated by infighting within the family, until Pope Zachary proclaimed Pepin the Short ruler of the Franks in 751. Pepin was succeeded by his famous son, Charles I, who is remembered under the compressed title of Charles le Magne: Charlemagne.

Under Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, France’s dedication to Roman Catholicism intensified. The kingdom’s borders also expanded, while nearby realms with non-Christian religious populations were oppressed. In the following centuries, France solidified itself as a large and influential part of Europe, with ties to the Papacy that were, at times, stronger even than those of the Italian states .

As international trade routes were delineated, France became an important part of the European silk industry. Farming innovations allowed people to finely grind a multitude of grain crops and grow deeply-rooted legumes. With improved food production and a return to the trade and infrastructural prowess of the Roman Age, France and its capital of Paris grew. People returned to the towns and took up professional trades, solidifying France’s place in the future as a manufacturing and industrial center.

The royal line of French kings thereafter remained within the descendants of Pepin the Short until after the tumultuous reign of King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette. Louis was a member of the House of Bourbon, founded by the controversial King Henry of Navarre in the late 16th century. A distant cousin of the recently deceased King Henry II of the House of Valois, Henry of Navarre was forced to convert to Catholicism before taking over the throne of France. Upon his coronation, France and the Kingdom of Navarre were joined together.

When Louis XVI inherited the crown in 1774, he was the king of France and Navarre. The people of his kingdom were split into a strict dichotomy, with the royalty and nobility enjoying the finest textiles, cuisine, architecture, and manufactured goods in all of Europe, and the common working class living from hand-to-mouth in cramped quarters and dire poverty. The French king was aware of this divide between the classes, and he was arguably quite empathetic to the needs of most people in his realm. In fact, both Louis and his queen had charitable personalities and happily used their own incomes to pay for the housing and medical care of many children and peasants within their estates. They adopted many orphaned children and raised them as aristocrats, and erected cottages within castle grounds to house tradespeople, farmers, and maintenance workers. Unfortunately for the royalty themselves, Louis’ charities and political reforms lacked the ability to truly alleviate the pains of France’s underfed masses .

During the reign of Louis XVI, France was in the Age of Enlightenment. People were writing or reading liberal philosophy that encouraged individuality and the empowerment of the individual versus the state. Many French people had grown disillusioned with the Catholic Church, particularly with the power the Church held over the king and subsequently the people themselves. Clergymen dictated to the people while avoiding taxation, a fact that angered many contemporary French. A growing population, the rise in liberal philosophies, and the constant need for more food all combined to create a perfect storm that changed France forever.

Though the philosophical elements of the French Revolution were influential mainly to the nobility and upper-middle-class professionals of the time, the infrastructural elements of the time meant that even the poor working and agrarian classes participated in the events that led to the deposition of the French monarchy. Though King Louis XVI inherited an indebted and hungry country at the young age of 19, it’s not necessarily the case that more experience and age would have made him a better leader. His grandfather, Louis XV, was a well-loved king, but he was still a ruler who spent frivolously on himself, his mistresses, and his own households. The younger Louis did much of the same, but without a startling and unprecedented change in royal habits in a short number of years, it’s unlikely the revolution could have been avoided.

A big part of the problem between France’s people and their royal family was Queen Marie Antoinette. Though she learned to speak French and never once returned to her native Austria after her marriage to Louis XVI, Marie remained a fixture of hatred and mockery among the French. She was made fun of in cartoons and newspapers, and blamed for all the extravagant spending of the royal house. The queen was even blamed for telling the king how to spend his money and rule his kingdom, though there is evidence to show that Louis allowed no such thing.

Regardless of his attempts to pacify the populace, there were an overwhelming number of events, people, and beliefs that could not easily be quelled during the lead-up to the French Revolution. Because of all these, as well as his regard for the safety of himself and his family, King Louis XVI was the last serving Bourbon king, as well as the last undisputed King of France and Navarre.

After the French monarchy was deemed illegal, both the king and queen were sent to the guillotine and the French nobility, clergy, and commoners attempted to share the administration of the country. The job was unwieldy and the various classes of people struggled to cooperate with one another. To make things more difficult, France was at war. A talented military general named Napoleon Bonaparte became the country’s most well-loved leader after proving himself on the battlefield again and again, and his political prowess earned him the top spot as emperor of France.

In many ways, the Napoleonic Era was more chaotic than the last years of King Louis XVI’s reign, and it led to the eventual call for the reestablishment of the monarchy. That too would not last.

Chapter 2 – Philosophies of the Times

The French people were reaching a breaking point by the mid-to-late 17th century because of a failing economy that left them hungry, cold, and unable to care consistently for themselves and their families. King Louis XV spent the nation into heavy debt that was passed onto his grandson, Louis XVI, and the latter was unable to enact the fundamental changes to his country’s taxation laws to handle the problem. All the people needed to spark their imaginations was some unique literature that told them they deserved the power to participate in state decisions and enjoy personal freedom—those came in the form of the Enlightenment philosophers.

François-Marie d’Arouet was one of the most vital of these philosophers. Born in 1694, Arouet read and wrote on the subjects of science, politics, and civil liberty until his death in 1778. In the early part of the 18th century, his work and ideas caused him so much personal trouble he was exiled to England in 1726. He studied the constitutional monarchy under King George I and Prime Minister Robert Walpole, and found the political philosophies of his homeland lacking. Arouet, better known under his nom de plume of Voltaire, returned to France three years later with even more controversial ideas.

Arouet believed that France’s future lay in the stripping of privileges of the clergy and nobility. He’d seen firsthand the constitutional monarchy of England and was inspired by the way that country allowed its people a freer life in terms of religious and governmental legislation. Whereas in France the aristocratic classes were untaxed, England’s nobility contributed to the coffers of their nation so that the general population could be better cared for. In a series called Letters on the English , written for a French audience, Voltaire outlined the many ways in which he believed his country of birth could be improved by following the example of its neighbor.

The letters were a flattering portrayal of England in the 18th century, as well as an affront to the French system which had sent him first to prison and then to exile. In all, 24 letters summarized the subjects of the Quakers, the Church of England, Presbyterianism, Arians, parliament, government, trade, health, science and math, and several famous English people themselves.

In comparing French Catholicism, which was held in very strict regard, to that spiritual pursuit of the English Quakers, Voltaire found that he much preferred the latter. Quakers gathered regularly for meetings of the mind and were not led by priests, baptized, or made to take communion. Of the Anglican religion, established in the 16th century by English King Henry VIII, the French writer was also impressed, though unhappy that so many facets of Catholicism were still found there.

Religion made up a great deal of Voltaire’s subject matter, but it was his work on parliament and taxation that really struck a chord with the middle class back home. In England, the parliament was a large body of men whose purpose was to discuss the issues of the day and come to an agreement (or potential disagreement) with the reigning monarch. Taxes, which had been under constant development for hundreds of years at that point, were meant to serve the greater good of the nation. Furthermore, the constitutional monarchy was intended to collect such taxes fairly and disperse them as best benefited the country, not just the monarch and the aristocracy.

Perhaps most importantly of all was Voltaire’s impressions of the great English philosopher John Locke. Locke is called by some the “Father of Liberalism,” and yet by others as the man who founded empiricism in Europe. He was a logical thinker who believed that theories—on anything from government and religion to science—should develop based on empirical, or solid, data. It was an unusual idea for people nearly 300 years ago, whose lives had been governed by the authority of kings and priests since birth. Even the philosophy that people had the ability and right to think for themselves and examine facts was a little wild and revolutionary. Unsurprisingly, liberal ideas such as these were immediately unpopular with clergy and people of the highest classes.

Isaac Newton was another man of science, logic, and liberal philosophy, one who is generally remembered today for his contributions to the realm of science. The most important idea posited by Newton at the time was that of Natural Law, in which he assumed there were underlying and essentially simple laws to describe everything in the world and the universe. Newton’s followers, including Voltaire, believed so much in natural law that they believed it could not only be applied to the movements of the stars or the life cycles of plants and animals, but to social hierarchy and government. The question became clear: What natural laws exist concerning the organization of human communities and civilizations?

It was a question that Voltaire pursued with the help of his long-time mistress, Emilie du Chatelet. Chatelet was a physicist, mathematician, and a fellow author whose marriage to a French nobleman had not been a love match. She and Arouet had a not-uncommon arrangement where they often lived together and even visited with her husband on friendly terms. Together, the couple developed their ideas on the laws governing the physical world and the human structures they were a part of. Chatelet favored the physical sciences, while Voltaire tended to veer toward a criticism of religion and class systems. When Emilie died suddenly in 1749, her partner was inconsolable.

Arouet, Locke, Newton, Montesquieu, and their peers mostly died before the French Revolution truly got underway, but the widespread acceptance of their ideas on reform, poverty, and the Catholic Church were part of an important school of thought known as the Enlightenment. In France, these philosophies of equality and governance for the people by the people were key to the times. There were several other philosophers whose work echoed the sentiments of Arouet and delighted readers in France and the rest of Europe. By the later 18th century, the Enlightenment was fully underway.

Chapter 3 – France in the 18th Century

The 18th century was the last of the old-styled monarchies known as the French Ancien Regime. This period marked the transition from feudalism to democracy, and from a purely agricultural economy to an industrial nation. Before the French Revolution, the urban labor force was organized into professional guilds; the peasants were subject to high taxes and feudal duties to aristocratic landlords. Though most of the poor people of pre-1789 France were free, a percentage of the peasantry were classified as serfs and bound into a certain level of servitude. Serfs were forced to work the land and provide agricultural commodities such as grain for their lords.

It was during this formative century that landowners realized they could use surplus commodities to earn a profit from the labor of their serfs. Cotton, potatoes, and corn were highly marketable in the cities of France, but also in neighboring European countries. To keep their workers under control and working without wages, French lords regarded their serfs as an integral part of the growing market economy and refused them independent rights .

Working under very similar social and economic structures, Eastern European regions like Bohemia, Russia, and Transylvania’s working classes rose against the aristocracy and nobility throughout the second half of the century. In retribution, the local monarchies violently squashed the rebellions and tightened the reigns of the peasantry. In France and the rest of Western Europe, kings and queens watched with trepidation, wondering if their turn for revolt would come soon.

Riots broke out, but it would take more time for the people to organize on a large scale in France. First, they had to endure more restrictions on their traditional lifestyle, like stricter hunting laws. Hunting was a huge part of daily life in all classes of French society, with strict laws to ensure the bulk of the bounty went to landowners and the royal family. Serfs and peasants were allowed to hunt certain species only, with strict penalties placed on anyone hunting the landowner’s deer. Under Louis XVI, these laws actually became harsher at the insistence of the nobility, who felt their privilege was constantly being questioned by the king.

At this time, most of the population was comprised of working families who depended on the father and older males to work in the fields and produce food. There was a very high mortality rate, particularly for infants and women of childbearing age. Married couples had as many children as possible to help with the workload. In the mid-1700s, these families started to experiment with modern agricultural methods like crop rotation and fertilization, expanding their yield to the delight of landowners and tax collectors. It took decades for such methods to catch on throughout the kingdom, but this was the beginning of a very important shift toward modernist farming techniques.

In urban centers, professionals in the French guilds were also developing new methods of production and manufacturing. The industrial era was taking hold, allowing textile workers to produce large quantities of beautiful printed fabrics for merchants to trade abroad. These in-demand prints were crafted using American cotton and pure French technique. They revolutionized both local and international fashions of the period to construct clothing that is still referenced by modern designers.

The number of Europeans and French expanded considerably during this time, largely because of the modernization of agriculture and the popularity of New World crops like the potato. Unfortunately, mortality remained high, and it was difficult for families to feed themselves as the population swelled. Starvation was a trend that would plague King Louis XVI, who struggled to address the issue of food scarcity throughout his entire reign.

After inheriting the throne from his grandfather, Louis did try to lessen the financial and economic burden of the French people, though he is remembered little for these attempts. He wanted to be a good, enlightened king, and he did propose changing French laws for the benefit of those in the lower classes. The most significant of his legislative changes addressed the persecution of non-Catholics within France, of whom there were a great deal.

France had been aligned with the Catholic Church since its formation as a unified nation in the 5th century, so Catholicism had been an integral part of the French identity for over a millennium before Louis XVI succeeded to the throne. Throughout that time, French kings had legislated the persecution of Jews, Muslims, and even members of other forms of Christianity, like Protestantism.

In the 16th century, new religious philosophies swept Europe, thanks to the translation of the Bible into multiple local French languages. Up until the 12th century, Catholic scripture was only printed in Latin, since its spread in other languages was highly restricted with the Pope deeming it inappropriate. Catholicism taught that only ordained members of the clergy were knowledgeable enough about the subject of religion to read and interpret scripture for the masses. The idea of an individual reading the Bible for him or herself was considered ludicrous. When these French Bibles became more readily available, religious philosophy exploded into mainstream French society.

There were many names for the people who came to adopt evolved versions of Christianity, but in France, they were mostly referred to as Huguenots. Though the etymology of the term is uncertain, the beliefs these people developed were the primary basis for what today is known as Protestantism. Protestant, of course, evolved from the word “protest,” as in a protest against the secrecy of the supposed writings of god.

After centuries of intense anti-Huguenot violence and hatred, King Louis XVI decided it was time to put the religious divides within France to an end. On November 7, 1787, Louis signed the Edict of Versailles, which granted non-Catholics the right to marry and hold legal citizenship within France. Before this legislation, which became known as the Edict of Tolerance, one had to convert to Catholicism before being granted such rights.

The edict was brought to Parliament the following January and was ultimately accepted, thanks to the strong political pressures placed on the delegates by Guillaume-Cretien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes and Anne-Robert-Jacques Turbot. It was probably the most significant law the last Bourbon king brought to his country.

Chapter 4 – Marie Antoinette, Madame Deficit

King Louis XVI received a great deal of blame for the fact that his kingdom was starving and suffering from insurmountable debts, but strangely it was his wife who bore the brunt of the criticism. Her first mistake, so to speak, was being Austrian instead of French—though the marriage of Louis and Marie Antoinette was arranged to help repair the damaged relationship between the two countries. It was a plan that never quite worked out, and the French people never warmed to their foreign queen though she worked hard to learn their language and applaud the artists of her adopted country.

It was tradition that the French royal family spent an enormous amount of money on their own personal wardrobes, jewelry, landscaping, and architecture, a fact that did not change when Louis XVI came to power with Marie Antoinette beside him. The new king’s father had not only spent a great deal on himself but on a succession of formal mistresses, the last of which was Madame du Barry. It was an era in which French kings—and many European kings—were expected to lavish the riches of their country upon a wife and at least one mistress, and Louis XV took the expectation to heart. Apartments, clothes, and jewelry for Madame du Barry had cost the old king at least as much as Marie Antoinette spent on her own wardrobe, though few had been nearly as disrespectful towards du Barry as they were to the new queen. The French people called their queen Madame Deficit and blamed her wholeheartedly for the state of the French coffers. For King Louis XVI’s part, he took no official mistresses and focused his budgets elsewhere.

Both Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI had large personal budgets, and it was true that the queen lacked common sense where money was concerned. She often had to borrow from her husband’s budgeted money or one of her own promised charitable donations to pay for the building and landscaping work she commissioned around the Palace of Versailles. The gardens of the palace reached outwards for miles, featuring fountains, follies, carefully-sculpted trees and bushes surrounding walking paths, and even a secret inner chamber.

Her most ambitious project centered on the Petit Trianon, a small castle on the grounds of Versailles which had been primarily used by Madame du Barry before she was banished from court. Marie Antoinette gutted much of the interior of the little castle and brought in elaborate modern features such as movable kitchen banquettes and curtains which could be shut from across the room using a system of pulleys. When she was happy with the state of Petit Trianon itself, the queen designed and constructed an entire miniature village around the structure, including another immense set of gardens. It was called the Hameau de la Reine—the Queen’s Hamlet.

The Hameau de la Reine featured brand-new English gardens, sculptured monuments, and eventually its very own lake. There was a little dairy, chickens, animals, tiny cottages, and pristine buildings in which Marie spent most of her time. The queen absolutely loved bringing her young children to the Hameau and showing them how to find eggs, pet the sheep and goats, or pick wildflowers. She also hosted little intimate parties for her close friends, a habit that put her on the outs with much of the nobility who felt they deserved an invitation too .

To add to the fantasy and drama of the little village, the queen wore beautiful, simplistic versions of peasant wear in stark white while she puttered in the garden picking vegetables and herbs. The scene seemed almost an outright insult to the millions in France who were suffering within such a lifestyle, unable to provide care for their families or put enough food on the table.

Even if she hadn’t focused so much energy and money on the palace grounds, everyone could see that Queen Marie Antoinette was spending a fortune on her clothing. Fashion was perhaps the passion of the queen’s life, turning from an obligation into a fanciful occupation that made her the fashion icon of the 18th century. Even today the designs of those lush, overtly-ribboned, lacey, heavily-embroidered gowns and tiny silken shoes continue to influence modern clothing designers and textile artisans. Marie experimented with color and prints even during a time when French citizens were forbidden from purchasing foreign prints. She combined colors and patterns in bold new ways, bringing in English-style gowns and modernizing them for the French court. The queen’s annual clothing budget is estimated to equal about $3.6 million US—though some years she overspent by double.

In view of Marie Antoinette’s lavish spending, the commoners overlooked the fact that she had requested the Queen’s Belt tax, a tax that was specifically meant to pay for her wardrobe, to be thrown out when she became queen. On top of that first act of sparing austerity, the queen and king hosted regular evening meals at the Palace of Versailles that could be attended by anyone.

King Louis XVI and his wife were not ignorant of the fact that the people of France were hungry, though perhaps they did not quite understand how terrible the problem was. They’d both been brought up as aristocrats who wanted for absolutely nothing, and it is possible they believed their small sacrifices made a bigger impact on the commoners than they actually did. Both the king and queen happily decided to cut their personal budgets and use much of what was left to fund charities. The money went to churches and to organizations for young widowed mothers, as well as to trade workers who had been injured and were unable to work. They prided themselves on hiring local tradespeople to design, construct, and maintain their immense palace and its grounds, as well as make their clothing and interior furnishings, thereby keeping the ultra-local economy quite healthy. Unfortunately, these acts were not far-reaching. Since the charitable money was so specific in cause or locality, the majority of the population saw no impact.

Marie probably believed she was a most gracious and giving queen, particularly because her charity extended to many orphaned children. In fact, she and King Louis formally adopted several children who had been abandoned or orphaned. They raised these children alongside their own, giving them an excellent education and everything they needed to grow up healthy and aristocratic. Marie Antoinette in particular was very dedicated to needy children of all classes, including young slaves brought to her as gifts from exotic countries. These children were sent to school, all expenses paid, and given their own households.

Still, the queen was called Madame Deficit and blamed for the fact that France could neither feed itself nor pay off its debts. Cruel caricatures were published of Marie Antoinette to the delight of the nation, including that very famous cartoon in which she told her husband to “let them eat cake” if the people were so hungry. In fact, that particular idiom was already a firm part of the French vernacular before Marie Antoinette so much as put a foot over the France-Austria border, so its use was merely to goad on the temper of the people. Over the course of the French Revolution, Marie’s life came under threat several times, but she never abandoned her husband and family. She told an audience outside her window that she’d all but forgotten how to speak anything but French, trying her best to endear them to her. Sometimes her entreaties worked, but never en masse. In the end, the French thought the Queen of France was still just a spoiled foreigner from an enemy nation. She was truly loved only by her own family and a few fast friends.

Chapter 5 – Taxes, Famine, and the Enlightenment

There were three major issues facing King Louis XVI when he ascended the throne in 1774: his country’s existing debt, the lack of affordable grain and bread, and the growing intellectual middle class. As a teenaged monarch, he depended on his Conseil du Roi , but as it was comprised of older, much more experienced men who had served the old king, his was not a confident voice among them. This is not to say that young Louis did not have a more modern point of view than his father, because in fact he was excited by the Enlightenment and wanted to make many liberal changes to the realm. Change proved difficult, however.

One of the first things the council suggested to their young king was to support the rebelling citizens of the overseas British colonies in the Americas. It was another huge financial burden, but Louis’ advisors felt it was a pertinent move. Supporting the American rebels would both weaken France’s political and economic rival, Great Britain, and eventually integrate French trade into the fabric of the burgeoning new country. For both reasons, Louis was convinced to send ships, soldiers, and supplies to the American colonies in 1778. His military leaders were not only there to provide physical might, but to counsel the disorganized Americans in the finer methods of warfare. In classic Louis XVI style, the king’s communications with his new ally were overwrought with pleasantries that nevertheless framed his insistence that all French troops sent to America were to be respected and obeyed to the letter.

France’s intensive military support in the American War of Independence was ultimately successful, cementing both a bond between itself and the United States and ongoing animosity between itself and Great Britain. The latter was King Louis XVI’s next target.

To wage war upon Great Britain, French ministers knew it was necessary to amass a very large amount of money, but no one seemed to have an acceptable plan as to how to procure or repay that money. Louis’ council ran through several finance ministers over the course of his country’s five years abroad, starting with Anne Robert Jacques Turbot and Guillaume-Cretien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes. Turbot and Malesherbes insisted that a special tax must be levied from the nobility to pay for the immense military campaign, but in Parliament the idea was angrily dismissed—as were the ministers themselves. Next up was Jacques Necker, who was in favor of international borrowing. Necker was fired in 1783, but the loans still stood.

By 1787, the king needed a realistic solution. He assembled his experts and brought in a new finance minister, Etienne-Charles de Lomenie de Brienne, to face the nobility and explain the situation. Shocked at the sheer size of the country’s debts, the nobility rejected taxation again, insisting that their indebtedness to the king did not include money but soldiers and accumulated land taxes. Brienne convinced Louis that the nobility were still his subjects and the money had to come from somewhere. They tried to pass the taxation laws in Parliament and again, ultimately, failed.

In retrospect, funding the American Revolution was an ironic move for King Louis XVI. In helping the Americans to overthrow their monarch, Louis spent more than one million livres and accrued a debt triple that size during the span of the military campaign. His own country’s debt further impoverished his own people and made them much more pliant to the idea that their own monarchy might be overthrown.

Money was the most significant problem facing the French under Louis XVI, but as far as the poor were concerned, the real problem was that there was not enough food to go around. Turbot also had his hand in this issue, since he’d convinced the king in 1774 to deregulate the grain market on the principles of laissez-faire economics. Up until that point, France had employed strict laws upon grain handlers and bakers to ensure that bread was of good quality and grain was not stockpiled to create false scarcity and high prices.

Bread had been the main source of nourishment for the peasantry and working classes of France for centuries, and police forces were responsible for overseeing its fair distribution. The bevy of rules in the grain and bread markets included very specific measures to subsidize regions suffering through a bad growing season with the surplus of grain from better-off regions. Deregulation changed all of that and made it possible for producers and vendors to stockpile, bakers to mix cheap ingredients into their flour, and the price to rise too high for the average buyer.

Though the peasantry remained socially immobile, the upper middle class grew and started to become financially stable. Millions more people had access to education, and with free time to read and learn, many commoners became entranced with the Enlightenment philosophies of Voltaire, Montesquieu, the Marquis de Sade, and other French and European writers. They, too, believed that they deserved equal footing with the clergy and the aristocracy. They began to let go of the millennia-old belief that the monarchy was an untouchable regime placed in authority by God .

This rising middle class at the time was not the poor assemblage of peasantry that history has depicted it as; it was a collection of people who were no longer so poor they could not see past the next loaf of bread. These were people with enough means to feed and clothe themselves, keep roofs over their families’ heads, and potentially start small businesses. They had specialized skills and provided a variety of services to the country. They had enough to look around them and realize they were not valued by their country the way they should be.

These people were part of the Third Estate: a class of French people that encompassed the poorest of the poor and the growing upper middle class.

Chapter 6 – Sieyes’ “What is the Third Estate?”

What is the Third Estate?

Everything.

What has it been until now in the political order?

Nothing.

What does it want to be?

Something.

The people of France had long been stratified into social classes according to their monetary and land wealth. The highest stratum was that of the ruling king. He enjoyed ultimate power over the realm and immediate access to the nation’s resources, including money, food, and luxury goods. The First Estate came directly beneath the king, and this included the clergy. The Second Estate, just under that of the clergy, was comprised of the nobility—people with ancestral ties to the royal family or other powerful families .

At the end of the 18th century, France was becoming more aware of the peasantry and just how the commoners contributed to the French economy. Those people who worked the land, grew and harvested grain, baked bread and provided services. These were the people of the Third Estate, which Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes explained in detail in his critical 1789 pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate?” He proposed that it comprised the poor and middle working classes, those who did the job of feeding the country and manufacturing goods.

It suffices to have made the point that the so-called usefulness of

a privileged order to the public service is a fallacy; that, without help

from this order, all the arduous tasks in the service are performed by

the Third Estate; that without this order the higher posts could be

infinitely better filled; that they ought to be the natural prize and

reward of recognized ability and service; and that if the privileged

have succeeded in usurping all well-paid and honorific posts, this is

both a hateful iniquity towards the generality of citizens and an act of

treason to the commonwealth.

Seiyes, an Abbe with the Catholic Church, argued that the realm was much more reliant on the workers in the Third Estate than anyone truly realized. His treatise on the overlooked French worker was inspired by the king’s call to assemble the Estates General, a sort of parliament of representatives from the various classes of the realm. It was the ideal time to call the estates into question and decide whether the ancient class structures of France were due for closer examination.

Seiyes was a member of the privileged First Estate because of his position as an Abbe, but he was influenced by the strong liberal philosophies of the time and believed that his estate—and that of the nobility—must give up some privilege so the commoners could live better lives. Though most privileged French families and individuals didn’t care for Seiyes’ ideas, the Third Estate itself most certainly did. When Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General, these issues were at the forefront of the assembly, as were the insurmountable debts of the country itself.

The king’s call for assembly went out in the summer of 1788; it met at the beginning of May 1789. More than 175 years had passed since the last Estates General assembly had met in 1614 under King Louis III to discuss the perceived threat of the Protestant Huguenots in France. The assembly under King Louis XVI needed to present all possible solutions for the country’s debt repayments, which, funds for the American Revolution included, came to an astonishing 12 billion livres.

The king and queen met with the three French estates in Versailles, which was several miles outside of Paris. Deputies for the commoners, the clergy, and the nobility numbered about 1,200 in total, with the Third Estate represented by an overwhelming majority, including Emmanuel Seiyes himself. After the king spoke his welcome, Jacques Necker, still the country’s finance minister, addressed the assembly.

According to Necker, the national budget had a deficit of 56 million livres, which could be eradicated with a well-placed tax. All present shunned such a measure and desired instead to discuss the more personally pressing matters of the estates. Knowing that the king intended to offer more power to the delegates of the commoners than had ever before been granted, the clergy and nobility voiced their concerns about losing their traditional power. On the other end of the spectrum, the commoners felt their sheer numbers should grant them at least equal footing with the other two estates of France.

Louis XVI was not only unable to make his people agree on a debt repayment solution, but his treatment of the Third Estate satisfied neither side. By mid-June, the Third Estate withdrew from discussions with the First and Second Estates and declared itself a new council, fully representative of the true population of France. They were the National Assembly.

Chapter 7 – The National Assembly

The king’s council urged swift and strict action toward the delegates who quit the Estates General. The matter was particularly divisive because Louis’ nature was to give the people what they wanted, yet he preferred to do so without being bullied by the people he represented. It thoroughly annoyed Louis that his parliamentarians couldn’t join together under the banner he presented to them, and though he didn’t make a big show of anti-National Assembly legislation, the king did try to frustrate their efforts to assemble and make change.

The day the National Assembly met to discuss their French Constitution, they found the public meeting hall locked. Not to be thwarted, the Third Estate’s representatives and some members of the nobility and the clergy took their meeting to a nearby tennis court and went ahead with their plans. It was the 20h of June 1789, when these self-proclaimed members of the new National Assembly took the so-called Tennis Court Oath and swore not to disperse until they had a plan for the future governance of France. They decided to draft a French Constitution that would provide adequately for every member of society without overburdening any particular class segment.

When attempting to meet again in the days after taking the oath, the National Assembly found that they were no longer welcome in the meeting hall nor the tennis court. This time, it was clear that Louis had intentionally locked the group out of their public meeting places in a weak attempt to scatter them and dissipate their resolve. At the same time, French Guards were posted throughout Versailles to preempt any violence or treason on the part of the political rebels. As a last resort, the NA took refuge in a church to hide away from the soldiers and discuss business. It was during that first meeting within the walls of the clergy’s home base that the NA gathered the support of the majority of church members from the Estates General. It was a major breakthrough for the Third Estate, who now only awaited the validation of the king and the aristocracy.

King Louis XVI was not a despotic ruler; he craved the love of his people and always said as much in his letters and speeches. He decided that the best way forward was to change the legislation concerning the Estates General so that it met the needs of the people in the National Assembly. Essentially, Louis tried to “fix” his existing parliament so that those in the NA could just come back to the Estates General and reaffirm him as the head of parliament and state. This was partially successful in that eventually the three estates were reunited, but it was under the umbrella of the people’s National Assembly. The ancient tradition of the Estates General had ended and the Third Estate would have a firm say in its own future.

With incoming support from Paris and other cities throughout the country, the newly-formed assembly confidently reestablished itself as the National Constituent Assembly on July 9 of the same year. They formally asked the king to remove the armed guards from Versailles and Paris and allow them to draw up a national constitution. King Louis did not rid his home and capital city of the French troops; in fact, he welcomed the addition of foreign soldiers from allied European monarchies. Furthermore, he offered to remove the NCA to a different city if members felt uncomfortable where they were. The offer was an insult; if separated from Paris, the assembly would lose the power of its popularity in the capital. Members knew they needed to stay at the capital if they had any hope of changing the government.

The National Constituent Assembly feared the presence of so many armed soldiers would lead to violence and rioting, as well as the forced dissolution of its own organization. In self-defense, the NCA took matters into its own hands and formed the National Guard, a Parisian-based set of troops ostensibly tasked with protecting the city from external attacks. It was a separate force to the king’s own French Guard, and answerable only to the NCA. The National Guard soldiers wore blue and red ribbons on their hats and flew the blue and red flag of the city at their headquarters at the Hotel de Ville.

Parisians themselves were almost entirely in favor of the National Guard, excited by the idea of their own protective force. Thousands of men joined the brigade, which in its first months was very disorganized. Despite the lack of arms and ammunition, the National Guard was a well-respected body that Paris was proud of. The assembly’s soldiers stood at the ready to contend with any disruption by the royal guards, thereby constricting the king. Already, Louis XVI was dealing with the disobedience not only of the Third Estate and the blue-and-red cockaded troops, but of his own royal troops as well.

Though the commoners, the clergy, the nobility, and soldiers of all affiliation declared no ill will toward King Louis, the monarch had long since lost any semblance of authority in his kingdom. He had tried and failed to order the nobility to pay tax; he had tried and failed to order the Estates General to work together under his direction; and finally, he failed to command his own soldiers to put an end to the treasonous actions of the National Constituent Assembly .

All around King Louis XVI, the ancient and unquestioned rule of French kings was disappearing. Ironically, most people still held the utmost respect for the office of the King itself, but not for Louis. Instead of admitting their lack of faith in the king, they professed to have his best interests at heart. Never blaming Louis for any fault they called out, the revolutionaries blamed finance ministers, nobles, philosophers, and most commonly, Queen Marie Antoinette. By the autumn of 1789, the best Louis could hope for was to become the figurehead of a French constitutional monarchy. He had lost all control of Paris, and by extension, France.

Chapter 8 – Death of the Dauphin

At the time of the Estates General, the royal family was still very much focused on the future of the Bourbon line. Times were difficult, but Louis XVI as yet had no reason to believe his eldest son, Louis-Joseph, wouldn’t inherit his kingdom when he died. The young prince, born September 21 of 1781, was seven years old when Paris started to push back against the monarchy. The government was not considered a true hindrance in regards to the future of the little Dauphin du France—not yet, anyhow—but his health was.

Louis-Joseph had been sick for several years by the time the National Constituent Assembly was formed. From the age of four, the boy suffered from a series of high fevers that frightened his family and caretakers. He was moved to the Chateau de la Muette on the outskirts of Paris where the air was cleaner and considered to have a healing quality. At Muette, Louis-Joseph received close personal care, recovered, and was returned to Versailles with his parents and siblings. Only a year later he was sent back to the Chateau amid a smallpox scare .

This time, the king insisted that his heir be properly fortified against the disease that had killed millions throughout all of Europe. He had the boy inoculated using a very rudimentary—but nonetheless successful—method. A smallpox sufferer was located and one of his or her scabs was scraped. The material was rubbed over the skin of the little prince, possibly up his nose or along his lips. It was a radically modern technique that saved many lives from the smallpox virus, possibly the Dauphin included. That very same year the inoculation had been introduced to the world by an English doctor named Edward Jenner.

Despite the constant administrations to Louis Joseph’s health, he never spent a full year healthy. In 1786, when the prince was five years old, he once more fell ill to the high fevers of his earlier youth. He was also under some personal stress at that age since his household and education changed hands from women to men, as was tradition. From that point on, little Louis Joseph’s lessons included reading and writing, European languages, French history, and the history of his own royal family. There was a lot for a future French king to learn and the process started as early as possible. Louis XVI wanted his heir to be as educated and intellectual as possible, a feat that was quite achievable. The boy enjoyed books and history and had a great deal of intellectual potential.

There was a ceremony to mark the start of formal schooling for Louis Joseph, which was attended by the family and members of the highest nobility. Though he made it through the event, the audience saw how the little prince walked with difficulty because of a curvature in his spine. To correct the problem, the Dauphin was forced to wear iron corsets that were both heavy and incredibly uncomfortable. Between his fevers, sickness, and the corset, Louis Joseph was a fatigued and overburdened child. Much like his own father, he was perhaps not built for the intensive job he was born into.

While his father struggled to regain control over the various estates, the eldest royal son became sicker and sicker at the Chateau de Meudon, just southwest of Paris. At the Chateau, the lady-in-waiting of Princess de Lamballe had the opportunity to spend time with the little boy and sadly watch him sink into deeper illness during the first part of 1789.

The is her account of the prince’s personal state at that time.

April 8 th . This afternoon we went to see the little dauphin. It is heartbreaking. Such endurance, such consideration and patience go straight to the heart. When we arrived someone was reading to him. He had had a fancy for lying on his billiard table where they had placed his mattress. My princess and I looked at it, and it occurred to us both that it resembled the mournful state bed after death.

On June 4, 1789, the Dauphin du France died at the Chateau de Meudon. It was tuberculosis that claimed his young life, though he fought years against the developing disease. The youngest of the family, Princess Sophie, had died in 1787, so after the sickly prince’s death, there were only two children left to Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. The title of Dauphin fell to Louis Joseph’s younger brother Louis-Charles, born in 1785. French monarchal law stated that the crown could not pass to a female heir, so the eldest of the family, Marie-Therese, was passed over in favor of her brother.

The funeral was held on June 13 at the Basilica of St. Denis, which was soon afterward ruined by anti-royal rioters. Only a few weeks later, the French Revolution truly began with the storming of the Bastille.

Chapter 9 – Bastille Day

On July 14th , 1789, Paris fell into chaos. A day earlier, a meeting of the NCA contingent in Paris had agreed to recruit 40,000 National Guardsmen from the city and outlying suburbs, but the soldiers remained unarmed. Many of them broke into a renown hotel to steal arms and barrels of gunpowder along with food. They found weapons, but the gunpowder had been recently brought to the Bastille, which held the bulk of the city’s armory. Disappointed, members of the National Guard rushed to the Bastille along with citizen rioters to loot whatever ammunition they could.

By 1789, the Bastille had little purpose except to hold prisoners of high birth and surplus military weapons and ammunition. In fact, there were plans to empty the castle of both these cargos and open the space to the public. After all, the Bastille was a magnificent piece of 14-century architecture. Originally built to protect Paris from English invaders over the course of the Hundred Years’ War, the Bastille Saint-Antoine had been a part of most of France’s major domestic military campaigns. On July 14th , when looters came, there were only 7 prisoners, about 80 invalid guards stationed there for light duty, and 30 or so extra Swiss troops.

Around 900 French citizens surrounded the fortress on the afternoon of July 14th , demanding access to the weapons and gunpowder inside. The commander stationed at the Bastille at that time was Bernard-Rene de Launay, who invited two of the crowd’s leaders into the castle for a diplomatic discussion. Later, a third joined, but no satisfactory conclusion could be reached. Before de Launay could decide on a plan of action, rioters managed to lower the drawbridge into the Bastille, carting de Launay away and murdering him outside the fortress.

Hundreds rushed through the gates and stormed the prison, excitedly claiming weapons and running to free the prisoners. The seven incarcerated men consisted of four alleged and nameless forgers, the Count de Solages, Whyte de Malleville, and a man simply called Tavernier. Many of the rioters paraded the freed prisoners through the streets of Paris, believing themselves to have cut the incarcerated men loose of their tyrannical and barbaric prison bonds. Whyte de Malleville waved to the people as he passed.

Following the surprising violence in Paris, there were international reports of the delicate situation of King Louis XVI, his family, and the country as a whole. The following newspaper story, focused on the escape of the long-suffering prisoners within the walls of the Bastille, was printed in Great Britain.

A national revolution, brought about in a period so short, had had no parallel in the History of the World: and though fatal to some, the lives that have been lost in this great accomplishment, are, in point of numbers, inconsiderable.

In another article:

Three Hundred Thousand Men are in arms.

After committing various acts of violence, the Party attacked the Bastille, which they soon broke open; and, similar to the Riots in the year 1780 with us, all the prisoners were set at liberty. Here, Friends long lost again met each other! Here CAPTIVITY regained its freedom—and DESPAIR found instant consolation!...

…And if further circumstance were wanting to complete the catastrophe, a price of 500,00 Livres Tournais is offered to him who brings

“The Person of the QUEEN alive or dead!”

Every July 14th , France celebrates Bastille Day, or the National Celebration, with a military parade along the main street of Paris, the Champs-Elysees. The parade is witnessed by the president of the Republic.

Chapter 10 – The First Mayor of Paris

The time soon came when Paris itself needed a leader, and one man seemed best for the job: Jean Sylvain Bailly. Born in 1736, Bailly was a scientist by trade and therefore a rare part of the new Enlightened France. His studies included astronomy and mathematics, which meant he was held in high regard by the philosophers and free-thinkers of his day.

Before he became involved in social philosophy and politics, Bailly was foremost dedicated to the emerging natural sciences. Born in Paris to artist parents, Bailly originally intended to join the art world before his scientific studies caught the better part of his attention. He was an excellent student who eventually predicted the next appearance of Halley’s Comet and documented finite observations on over 500 stars. An observatory was built at the Louvre with his assistance, and in 1763 he was elected to the Academy of Sciences. A few years later, he was also elected a foreign member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences .

He was also elected to several literary academies, after which he dedicated much of his study to the history of science itself. Bailly wrote several important scientific books, including Essay on the Theory of the Satellites of Jupiter in 1766 and Discourse on the Origin of the Sciences and the Peoples of Asia in 1777.

On May 12, 1789, Bailly was elected deputy of Paris to the Estates General. That June, he was voted president to the National Assembly. Bailly was an important figure at the Tennis Court Oath, and in 1791 he joined the Jacobin Club— an early revolutionary club – under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre. Bailly shared the views of his revolutionary peers that only without the monarchy could France truly solve its problems of poverty, debt, and unfair class structure.

July 15, 1789, Bailly was elected mayor of the Paris Commune. When Louis XVI visited the Hotel de Ville, then headquarters of the revolutionaries, to formally endorse the new government, it was Mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly who presented him with the symbol of the revolution: a blue, white, and red cockade. Louis bit his tongue and accepted the cockade graciously.

The first mayor of Paris was more than just a figurehead of the National Assembly. On September 27, 1791, Bailly passed a law that declared all Jews living in Paris to be French citizens, and no longer subject to traditional taxes that had been imposed on them by the Ancien Regime. It was the most significant piece of legislation the city’s first mayor would contribute, and one that King Louis claimed to support wholeheartedly.

After the royal family tried to escape the Palace of the Tuileries and run to Austria, Bailly several times calmed the riotous crowds of Paris who called for the imprisonment or abolition of the king. Though Jean Sylvain was a Jacobin and as such believed the monarchy had no part in the future of France, he was a pacifist and did not condone the use of violence by any faction of the revolution. On July 17th of 1791, the mayor encountered a mass of people collected at the Champ de Mars, signing petitions calling for the deposition of the king. The atmosphere was anxious and energetic, and Bailly knew it could turn violent at any minute. Acting quickly, he called in the army to disperse the crowd and put an end to the petitions. Things turned violent, and Bailly was blamed for the deaths of the people involved.

It was his failure to get swept up in the riots of October 1791 that caused Bailly to lose most of his support in Paris. He resigned from the office of mayor in November of the same year and retired to Nance. There he wrote his memoirs, but would never quite finish the task.

On July 17, 1793, Bailly left Nance for Milan, where he was recognized by French revolutionaries—who by this point considered him a traitor to the cause—and arrested. He was brought back to Paris and urged to testify against Queen Marie Antoinette in a brutal, personally degrading trial. He refused to do so, which resulted in a hasty trial, sentencing, and execution by guillotine on the 12th of November. The execution took place at the Champ de Mars, in revenge for Bailly’s suppression of the petitions that took place there two years earlier.

The scientific, literary, and political roles that Jean Sylvain Bailly played in 18th -century France, including the French Revolution, are still remembered as some of the most poignant of his time. Bailly was perhaps one of the purists of the Revolution, a man who stayed true to the ideals which he and his companions held to be true while King Louis XVI was still safely installed in his palace.

He wrote philosophically about the politics of the day:

That which the sciences can add to the privileges of the human race has never been more marked than at the present moment. ... The air seems to become as accessible to him as the waters.... The name of Montgolfier, the names of those hardy navigators of the new element, will live through time; but who among us, on seeing these superb experiments, has not felt his soul elevated, his ideas expanded, his mind enlarged?

Jean Petion de Villeneuve took over the office of mayor following Bailly’s retirement. Though Villeneuve was a member of the Jacobin Club just as Bailly had been, his revolutionary spirit was much more radical than that of his predecessor. Where Bailly had tried to maintain order and control over the various mobs of the day, Villeneuve put no stops on rioters who broke into the Tuileries Palace in 1792 and threatened the lives of the royal family.

For failing to protect the palace under his jurisdiction, Villeneuve was suspended as mayor by the acting government then reinstated by the Legislative Assembly. In the summer of 1792, Villeneuve brashly called for the deposition of King Louis XVI and encouraged Parisians to work themselves into a frenzy of violence that culminated in the September Massacres. Royalists and members of the clergy were targeted by the revolutionary mob as an army from Austria marched on Paris at the order of Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Holy Roman Emperor.

Villeneuve was politically ambitious, and once he secured a higher government office, he stepped down as the mayor of Paris after only having served one year. He committed suicide in 1794, fearing his arrest as part of a radical coup. Henri Lefèvre d'Ormesson replaced him, quickly resigned, and was in turn replaced by Nicolas Chambon de Montaux. Between 1879 and 1794, six men held the position, and Jean Sylvain Bailly’s time in office was by far the longest. In 1795, under a new French Constitution, the office was eradicated until 1848, after which point it was dissolved two more times.

Today, at the north corner of the Tuileries Gardens, visitors can find a statue of Mayor Jean Sylvain Bailly in front of the inscribed words: “Ils lèvent jure ils ont accompli leur serment .” The inscription translates to “They rise, swear, they have fulfilled their oath.”

Chapter 11 – Declaration of the Rights of Man…and The Women’s March

Just two months after the National Assembly had made its infamous Tennis Court Oath, vowing to construct a fair French Constitution for all the estates, the deed was done. It was ultimately a temporary document, but it has remained the basis from which all the following such documents have been written. It was a historical step forward for France that would change everything in the country, from the plight of farmers and serfs on farms to the position and financial future of the landed gentry.

Approved by the National Assembly of France, August 26, 1789

The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments…

Articles:

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

The Declaration of the Rights of Man was adopted formally by the National Constituent Assembly the very day after it was written. Two years later, it was used as the beginning of the very first French Constitution that turned France from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional monarchy. King Louis XVI signed it reluctantly, aware that his rule was now truly subject to the whims of the revolutionaries. He’d lost the power of his ancient family and potentially brought on the downfall of his own son and heir.

The men of the country had had their say, but the other half of the Third Estate had yet to say its piece. On the morning of October 5, 1789, an integral part of the French population had taken all it could of the food shortage. Paris wives gathered together in the marketplaces looking for decent bread to feed themselves and their families, and all they found was a scattering of low-quality products for impossibly high prices.

To make the bread flour go further, some indiscriminate bakers and mill workers mixed the ground wheat, rye, or barley in with sawdust, hay, or much worse. Only the nobility had the money necessary to buy pure white bread, while commoners ideally had mixed whole-grain loaves to choose from. It was also rumored that many farmers and grain sellers were hoarding the wheat and flour to make bread prices rise. Some bakers were known to be better than others, but the more expensive flour became, the more difficult it was to find—and afford—several nutritious loaves of bread every day.

By October of 1789, the marketplace shoppers could take no more. They gossiped together among the stalls of produce and grew angry. That anger spread throughout the crowd until someone decided the king needed to be consulted directly so that his majesty would see fit to solve the problem. At that point, bread riots had become common in France’s capital city, though nothing had been done to address the underlying problem of the quality and availability of affordable bread.

So, that morning, a mob of female shoppers started on a four to five-hour journey from the heart of Paris to the Palace of Versailles. It was an unprecedented move on the part of the common people; however, there had long been anger at King Louis XVI for living outside of the French capital and ostensibly hiding away in the luxury of the Versailles estates. While the middle class worked, produced food and merchandise, cooked, raised families, and looked for economic reform, the royal family hosted impossibly lavish meals, commissioned clothing, furniture, and buildings worth fortunes, and barely cast an eye on the troubles of the common person.

It was time to approach King Louis XVI and ask for help. As the women marched eastward toward Versailles, their shouts and rhetoric brought support from revolutionary Jacobins and other Parisians who wanted to have words with the royal ruler as well. By the time the group arrived at the king’s magnificent abode, its numbers had grown by tens of thousands. It was a frightening, voluminous mob that met with the king’s guards at the gates of the palace, armed with haphazard weapons that included pistols, swords, pitchforks, and brooms. Some among the protesters wanted to go for ammunition, but most of the marchers weren’t truly expecting or planning violence, so the idea was forgotten.

Alarmed, the guards allowed six women through the gates to have a conversation with the king. Louis was charming and indulgent, and the representatives of the bread shoppers were quite satisfied with the meeting. For his part, the king allowed the women he spoke with to go into the royal food storage area and distribute all the bread they saw fit. Furthermore, he stated that he would ensure the regular distribution of his own bread to ease the burden of Paris households .

Many of the market women were wholly grateful for the conduct of the king, and they accepted their free loaves of bread and dispersed. The bulk of the mob, however, was not yet satisfied. Most thought it was ridiculous that Louis lived in an estate so out of touch with the reality of everyday Paris. They shouted demands through the palace gates, insisting that their king accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man so they could enjoy more respect and better opportunities outside of the aristocracy.

Louis, probably intimidated by the immense crowds of people surrounding his home, considered their request. Already, he’d been disobeyed by the members of the Estates General. The National Assembly continued to meet and make demands despite his efforts to thwart them. Now, a potential riot stood outside the home he shared with his wife and children, hungry, frustrated, and in search of equality. King Louis XVI addressed the people and told them he accepted the principles of the Declaration. The drastically outnumbered guards breathed a sigh of relief, since this was the pacification most of the crowd needed to be mentally disarmed.

Not all the protesters were easily pleased, however, nor were they necessarily outside the palace to achieve any great political or economic goal. So, as the hours wore on into the night, the masses refused to leave. There was little else to do but ignore them at that point, so the royal family hid inside the palace and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, a contingency of the crowd wanted nothing more than to run amuck in the palace, looting and causing trouble. A small handful of such members eventually found a way past the gate and into the royal home; one was quickly killed by the guards.

The death of that one intruder sparked rage in the crowd outside, who took it as proof that the king was more concerned about his privacy than their welfare. Masses charged into the palace, killing guards and searching for the chamber of the much-maligned Queen Marie Antoinette. The queen barely escaped the greedy, riotous hands of the Paris mob before escaping through secret passages into a locked room with her children. The king stayed in his own locked room until the Marquis de Lafayette—popular with the people and the guards—calmed down both parties and arranged for a formalized meeting between the royals and the intruders.

The rioters agreed, then demanded that the king and queen be removed from their palace and live in Paris instead. The king agreed, but when the queen appeared, the tension in the room was heavy and dangerous. Marie Antoinette stood quietly at the side of Lafayette until he kissed her hand, soothing the crowd. Together, the royal couple and their children accompanied Lafayette, their guards, and the mob back to Paris where they were installed in the Tuileries Palace—a worn-down old royal residence whose faded walls were a stark contrast to the sparkle and gold of Versailles.

The family was safe, but Louis had made more concessions that he’d intended in order for them to stay that way. When speaking frankly afterward, he told his loved ones he knew then that he’d lost everything.

Chapter 12 – France at War

King Louis XVI entered into a secret agreement with the kings of Prussia and Austria during this temperamental time. Frederick William III of Prussia and Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor (brother to French Queen Marie Antoinette), were not only concerned about the French royals for personal reasons, but for the simple fact that if such a leading kingdom could oust the royal family, their smaller kingdoms could be next. They offered Louis their own troops to put down the revolutionaries and protect the French monarchs who were more restricted by local revolutionaries every month.

Suspecting that Louis had support from his brother-in-law and the Prussian monarch, the National Assembly voted to go to war with Austria and, by extension, the Holy Roman Empire in April of 1792. Prussia came to the defense of its ally, which awkwardly set both kings to the task of engaging in warfare within the very country they’d made an alliance. Ideologically, revolutionary France had gone to war, but monarchical France had not. Charles William Brunswick was the commander of the Allied Army, which was organized between Austria and Prussia to fight the French anti-royalists.

At first, the war effort was very popular with the French people, who felt they were fighting for the freedom of their homeland. Tens of thousands of regular middle-class men joined the military, just as they’d done with the Paris Guard, and the National Assembly had itself a fit, fighting, standing army. They went immediately to fight off the invading Austrians, finding their ranks a bit unskilled and overwhelmed at first. Their hearts were in their task, however, and troops stayed put for the good of their burgeoning constitutional monarchy. That first wave of free soldiers truly believed in what they were doing; the men on the front lines were both extreme revolutionaries and constitutional monarchist supporters, both fighting the same battle from slightly skewed perspectives.

Costs of the military campaign were high, which meant that war taxes raised the price of food even higher than it had been before the Women’s March. Furthermore, with so many men away from home fighting, women and children were tasked with producing food and products to meet their own needs and provide profits for landowners. Life became more difficult than ever, and some soldiers lost faith in the war effort soon after joining. The masses continued on, hopeful that the government would find a way to make the sacrifice worthwhile.

During the first episodes of the war, hunger was no better than it had been before, and in some cases, it was worse. Many people, particularly the women left at home while husbands and male relatives were off fighting, suddenly realized that the constitutional monarchy was of little use to them. Feeling let down by the administration, they called for a full-on revolution to bring about a French Republic.

After the writing of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, male commoners, members of professional trade guilds, and citizens of low classes met together as the Jacobin Club after changing their name from the Society of the Friends of the Constitution. They adopted the motto “Live Free or Die.” As a society for equality that was ironically only for men, the Jacobin club excluded the huge population of women who shared their republican beliefs. These men were comprised of various classes, led by a lawyer by the name of Maximilien Robespierre. It was due to the influence of this vast club that early French government heavily favored turning the king into a pure figurehead with no true authority over the state.

To set themselves apart from the rest of the revolutionary factions, the Jacobins wore striped trousers and red hats to represent the color of liberty. The former National Assembly, now the Convention, was filled with Jacobins calling for an end of what they saw as a useless war, and the end of the failing constitutional monarchy. As expensive and messy as the war was, it still seemed the best way forward toward equality and modernization. So, even when the eminent Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, stated that his Austrian and Prussian forces would destroy Paris if the royal Bourbon family was harmed, the Jacobian government pushed ahead. Amazingly, by November of 1792, French forces had not only expelled the enemy from Valmy but gained on Austrian soil.

The French advances did much to inflate the revolutionary ego. At the beginning of 1793, the Convention government declared it would send help to all people in search of their personal liberty—or, in short, send soldiers to any nation to subdue the local monarchy. Fearing such republican rhetoric, Great Britain, Holland, and Spain joined Austria and Prussia against their revolutionary neighbor. Almost immediately, France lost its foothold on enemy ground and was pressed back into its own territory. Things looked grim for the young, budding republic, but the people’s government was by no means prepared to back down.

By April of 1793, France needed more soldiers, and it needed them quickly. The Convention organized a draft of males aged 18 to 25 that took effect that August and recruited 750,000 fighting men. The generals who had lost previous battles were executed, a move meant somehow to motivate the new troops. The rest of 1793 was spent pushing allied forces out of France, while the following year was spent battling for new territory. The replenished French troops were incredibly strong; seeing that things had shifted out of their favor, occupied Holland signed a peace treaty in 1795. Prussia and Spain soon followed suit.

The war had changed into a territorial exploit on the part of France, and the allied nations remaining in opposition to the new government of France had to defend their own lands from annexation. That included Italy, though only Sardinia had actually declared war on France due to its own occupation by French troops. Under the leadership of military great, Napoleon Bonaparte, several regions of Italy were successfully occupied for France by 1797.

The only major player left in the war against revolutionary France was the United Kingdom. The French government changed hands constantly over the next decade, and perhaps the only things its people could depend on were war and constant political evolution. In the early part of the 19th century, bread and food supplies were heavily regulated once more, meaning that the average family finally had enough to eat. The food was hard-won, however, since over a million French men died before the revolutionary wars and subsequent territorial wars came to an end.

France didn’t stop fighting until 1815.

Chapter 13 – The Flight to Varennes

Though the royal family was under close surveillance while living in the Tuileries Palace, they did have a little free reign to come and go within the house. The Bourbons received regular visitors from the government, the family, or friends from the nobility who hadn’t left the city in fear. Knowing this, a secret plan was formed to let the royals escape the Paris Guard and flee the country.

Contemporary rumors suggest this plan was largely devised by Queen Marie Antoinette and her lover, Axel von Fersen the Younger. Certainly, von Fersen did write love letters to the queen, and he was a primary character in what has been dubbed the “Flight to Varenne.” Some historical researchers believe that King Louis XVI was a reluctant participant in the ultimately thwarted attempt to leave France, but it seems much more likely he realized the importance of the trip.

By that time, Louis’ authority was so extremely restricted that he couldn’t recoup his position without assistance. Since the king’s brother-in-law was the Holy Roman Emperor, it makes sense that the royal family would convene with Marie Antoinette’s family outside of France and put together an army. With the National Assembly already largely in power and the Paris Guard closing in more and more every week, it was high time for the royal family to consider that perhaps waiting for everything to return to normal wasn’t going to work out. Louis knew full well that he was in danger of losing the crown by this time, but it was difficult to know what exactly that meant for his family. Fearing for his future, Louis agreed to formulate a careful exit strategy from the Tuileries. Unfortunately, they’d never make it to the French border.

At midnight on the 21st of June, 1791, the king and queen left the Tuileries with their son and two daughters, the king’s sister Madame Elisabeth, and the dauphin’s governess. The governess was costumed to lead the group, dressed as a Russian baroness. Marie Antoinette dressed as the governess to the children, while Madame Elisabeth dressed as the children’s nurse. The king was costumed as a valet.

They made it out of the palace in separate groups but were seriously put behind schedule when the queen got lost in the streets surrounding the estate and couldn’t find her way to the waiting coaches. They were again put in peril when Marie Antoinette refused to put her family in two lightweight buggies, insisting instead on one very large and heavy carriage. Already, by the time they set off from Paris, the royals were late and traveling far more slowly than von Fersen had planned.

The king and queen both made the mistake of becoming quite comfortable once they’d escaped Paris proper. Both were jovial and insisted on speaking with kindly commoners along the route while von Fersen had the horses changed and parts of the carriage repaired. Marie Antoinette had packed a great deal of luxury items in the family luggage and took the opportunity to give plates and trinkets out to peasants as gifts, happily confessing to be the queen. The king acted similarly, speaking pleasantly to a number of commoners who approached him. Neither seemed to think better of speaking to anyone, let alone leaving the carriage at all.

Hours later, the carriage rolled through a town called Saint-Menehould, in which it was subject to the inspection of the local postmaster. Jean-Baptiste Drouet let the carriage pass through, but was puzzled by the familiar appearance of the apparent Russian valet. He inspected a piece of currency with the king’s face on it to be sure and was certain that he’d just let Louis XVI escape. Drouet immediately sent guards after the escapees and helped the Parisian troops recapture the family when they reached the nearby town of Varenne.

In custody of the Paris Guard, the royal family, their children had no choice but to return to the capital city. Though not officially under arrest, they were at the mercy of the troops, and those troops’ loyalty was with the National Assembly. There was no violence, only the calm insistence that the carriage turn around and take the family back to the Tuileries Palace. They did so, the mood glum and anxious. Instantly, the near-freedom that was felt by the king and queen during the quick trip was ruined.

The return trip began in the early hours of the next morning, everyone in the same carriage. The journey was slow, quiet, and disheartening. For Marie and Louis, this was the last chance they had to free themselves of the ever-constricting rule of the people over the monarchy. They would not get the chance to try again.

Fortunately for the queen’s favorite, Count Axel von Fersen, he was not charged for having been a part of the planned escape to Austria. On the king’s order, von Fersen had already quit the party earlier in the journey. With amazing foresight, King Louis XVI had feared for the consequences facing his friend if they were caught and urged the count to abandon the carriages. For his part, von Fersen soon left the country, presumably for his own safety. He continued to write letters to the queen and beg foreign powers to help the French royals, and at least one more plan was hatched, unsuccessfully .

King Louis XVI took full responsibility for the attempt to flee, and when they made it back to the Tuileries, there was no more freedom for his family. None of the servants at the palace so much as mentioned what had taken place the day before, but went about their work while the Paris Guards moved in.

It has been rumored that when King Louis fully realized that he was a prisoner of the state, he called for a servant to find him a book about the deposed British King Charles II. King Charles II had been stripped of his crown nearly a century and a half earlier; he’d lived in exile until the Restoration in 1660.

Evidently, Louis XVI thought his own deposition may play out in a similar fashion.

Chapter 14 – Storming the Tuileries

Until the Bourbons’ attempted escape from the unofficial custody of the Legislative Assembly, that self-proclaimed ruling body within Paris had hoped to subdue the monarchy and design a cooperative constitutional monarchy within France. However, it was undeniably clear that Louis XVI still had his own ideas about the future of the royalty, and he was ultimately unwilling to become nothing more than a figurehead. The royal family’s escape from Paris infuriated the people of the capital city and seemed to confirm earlier suspicions that King Louis did not have his people’s wellbeing at heart.

The relative freedom the royals had experienced previously while housed in the Tuileries Palace was completely gone after they returned under arrest. Every hour of the day, the whereabouts of each royal member of the Bourbon family was accounted for. The family lived in fear from that point on, worried that every conversation was being monitored and every letter opened—which they almost certainly were.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

During their time in the Tuileries, Louis XVI was constantly approached by representatives of the Legislative Assembly (borne of the National Assembly) who wanted him to sign various articles of legislation. Two particular pieces of legislation brought to the king were promptly vetoed by the monarch, which was yet another sign to the Assembly that Louis did not intend to let them do as they wished under his authority.

First, the Assembly asked the king to sign a proclamation that all those members of the aristocracy who had left France to gather armies and weapons abroad were to be arrested and executed. Knowing full well that members of his own family were included in such an edict, the king denied this request. Second, he was asked to demand that members of the Catholic Church take the same civic oath as had all members of the Assembly itself. Again, he denied the government its signature, determined to preserve the last vestige of the Ancien Regime.

On the 10th of August, 1792, the Tuileries Palace was invaded by the Jacobins. By that time, King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and their children had lived in Paris since October of 1789, when a mob had forced them to leave the Palace of Versailles and live within the city limits of Paris. The family did attempt to move back into Versailles in April of 1791; however, they were blocked by another angry mob of Parisians. The logic behind this was essentially simple: Parisians wanted their king to live amongst them and witness firsthand the difficulties of the food shortage.

Ironically, when Paris Guard troops amassed outsides the Tuileries Palace on the morning of August 10th , it was within the Legislative Assembly building that King Louis took shelter. During the riots, Louis’ family was protected by the Swiss Guard, royalist troops, National Guards, and other specialist soldiers who counted about 4,000. These all engaged passionately with the revolutionary forces unsuccessfully over the course of the next several hours. They faced down 20,000 rioting Parisians who had more than ten cannons among them .

At the outbreak of the siege, Louis was plaintively advised by his remaining ministers to abdicate the throne and save himself. He refused outright, having already planned for such an attack and believing that his family was safe inside the Tuileries and connected Assembly building The palace was considered impenetrable with an armed guard of 5,000 soldiers. The king had enough men, but for some reason, they weren’t properly prepared with sufficient ammunition. They fought back as well as they could.

During the violence, the mayor of Paris, Villeneuve, tried to find a diplomatic solution but was pushed back by the Royal Guard. He informed the Legislative Assembly of the breakdown of communication, who sent another representative to speak with King Louis. They wanted Louis to surrender to their custody, but the messenger was murdered before he even came near the king. Eventually, under heavy guard, another member of the Legislative Assembly was sent to reason with the monarch. This time he and his message were heeded, and early in the morning of the 11th of August, King Louis XVI gave himself and his family up into the hands of the Assembly. The royals were quickly transferred to the relative safety of the Assembly building with the palace and rioting slowly fell away.

Immediately, the Assembly members gathered to discuss what to do with their royal prisoners; however, they were legally bound to have such debates only outside of the presence of the king. Louis, Marie Antoinette, and their two children were politely situated in an outer room of the building while the members spoke bluntly about their uncertain futures. By that time, the royal adopted daughter had been left in the care of family friends. The remaining family remained quiet, calm, and respectful, aware there was no other hope but that the Legislative Assembly would have mercy on them.

Only about half of the Assembly had gathered due to the nearby violence, which meant that it was difficult to come to any strong conclusions about what should be done with the king and his family. Many of those assembled wanted to put them in the Luxembourg Palace and kept under guard, but it was decided this was a location too difficult to properly secure. They tried to find a more effective location that involved little travel and little fortification. According to the most divisive revolutionary faction of the Legislative Assembly, the most appropriate place in which to house the royal family was prison. When the violence had ceased and the Assembly had come to a temporary solution, the king and his family were once again moved by Paris Guards into the ancient and foreboding Temple Prison.

The Swiss Guard lost an estimated 600 people in the clash, while the remaining 200 were taken hostage. About 1,000 people were killed during the siege, while hundreds more were wounded.

The Tuileries Palace itself was destroyed by fire in 1871. It was part of a national purging of anything that related to the abolished monarchy and the Bourbon legacy. Today, visitors can find the public park, the Tuileries Garden, in place of the final royal residence of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. An information board for tourists at the garden makes no mention of any of the events of the French Revolution, merely explaining that the palace was once a royal residence before being lost in a fire.

Chapter 15 – The Monarchy is Outlawed

As the luxury and power held by the royal family of France was stripped away piece by piece, the noble families who surrounded the throne abandoned their country. The nobility were not only afraid of losing their privilege and being required to pay taxes to the state, but also of falling victim to violence on the part of the revolutionaries. These fleeing members of the French aristocracy didn’t just run and hide, however—they had a plan. They were emigres, connecting abroad with one another and their powerful friends, with the intention of raising armies and flushing the rioters out of Paris.

These thousands of emigres included people like Count Axel von Fersen, close companion and possible lover of Queen Marie Antoinette. He personally reached out to the king of Sweden and was hatching a plot to free the queen and her family, but his was just one of many plans in the works by his colleagues.

The National Assembly was not unaware of the movements of the upper classes, and it went so far as to demand that King Louis XVI do something about them. The Assembly demanded that the king issue a warrant for the immediate return to France of all those who had fled the country to seek arms against the government.

The king’s own brother was among those temporarily hidden away in another part of Europe, piecing together an army of supporters, and Louis could hardly bend to the will of the National Assembly to such an extent as to call for the murder of his own family. Instead, he agreed to sign an edict that called for all emigres—at least those who were known to be gathering an army or foreign support against France—to cease and desist according to a deadline.

On September 21, 1792, the National Assembly reconvened with a new name: the National Convention. En masse, they voted to create France a free republic, thereby stripping the king and his family of their right to rule and furthermore making the monarchal system itself illegal in the new nation. King Louis XVI lost his title and became the infamous “Citizen Capet.” It was the ultimate insult, likening the once-king to a mere commoner. Since “Bourbon” was not actually a surname but a land title, Louis was given the surname of the last of his ancestors to have one: 10th-century king Hugh Capet.

Jean-Baptiste Drouet, the postmaster who had helped capture the royal family when they attempted to flee France, was present as a member of the Convention when the vote was taken. He voted to have the king executed without a trial. The consensus of the assembly was that Louis should be given a trial, so the deposed king was scheduled to appear in court to defend himself against the charge of treason against France.

Louis “Capet” awaited the trial and decision of the court in Temple Prison alongside his wife and two remaining children. Notified of the impending trial only two weeks prior, the former king managed to hire a very prominent lawyer named Raymond Deseze. Deseze put together an articulate and moving defense, which Louis vetoed for being too emotional. He wanted only to present facts, which is what his legal team did when the time came .

In truth, the Convention, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, had already decided how to deal with the imprisoned king. Robespierre believed the only way to prevent France from crumbling back into the dynastical rule of the Bourbons was to have Louis XVI executed. The Convention held a vote and it was agreed: Citizen Capet, formerly King Louis XVI of France, would be killed by beheading.

First, however, they did bow to propriety and agree to put on a trial, if for little more than show. It was largely a ceremonial event in which there was no real hope for Louis’ defense, since the outcome had already been decided. During the trial, the king was accused of conspiracy against the liberty of France—a rather vague charge that referred to his collusion with Austria and Prussia to preserve the monarchy and his own family. The court found Citizen Capet guilty of treason, and on January 21, 1793, Louis was beheaded at the Place de la Concorde. And on October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette also met her fate at the guillotine.

The deaths of the king and queen shocked France, even many of those who had been calling for their execution. It was an unprecedented event in French history that left most of the adopted children of the royal couple cast out from their educational or religious institutions for lack of tuition. The natural royal children, Louis Charles and Marie Therese, were kept imprisoned during the following Reign of Terror. One adopted daughter, Ernestine Lambriquet, followed the family to the Tuileries but was sent to safety with a relative after rioting. She survived the revolution under a new name but died young in 1813.

Chapter 16 – The Fate of the Colonies

The less the king was allowed to do by the revolutionaries who surrounded him, the more the self-appointed Assembly had to organize itself. Soon, the administrators of the rogue state learned that there was more to ruling France than creating police forces and rearranging the grain and bread markets—such as dealing with issues like foreign policy.

Having assisted the United States of America in gaining its independence from the British Monarchy, the French people prided themselves on freeing two nations simultaneously from the yoke of royal oppression. America was a burgeoning world power and the resources it could provide in exchange for French goods were diverse and plentiful. So, it fell to the revolutionaries to try to keep up a good relationship with America, as well as to decide what role France could play in the affairs of its own colonies in the future.

Though America and France remained friendly with one another, the violence and chaos of the French Revolution brought backlash from surrounding European monarchies that caused the United States to somewhat cool its support of the French Republic. Still, the empire had its many colonies to turn to when in need of goods and human resources.

By 1790, France had established an empire only second to that of Great Britain. French colonies were spread over the globe, from an immense section of West Africa to Haiti to French Guiana. In its role as the leader over these nations, France enjoyed exotic produce and manufactured goods that could be resold in Europe for high prices. In particular, France was a prime member of the international sugar industry thanks to its holdings in Haiti and the Caribbean Sea.

Though heavily burdened with domestic issues, the National Constituent Assembly recognized the benefits of continuing its foreign enterprises. The Assembly held an official debate upon the matter which has been partially recorded.

The interest of the French nation in supporting its commerce, preserving its colonies, and favoring their prosperity by every means compatible with the interests of the metropole [metropolitan center] has appeared to us, from every angle of vision, to be an incontestable truth.…

Abandon the colonies, and these sources of prosperity will disappear or diminish.

Abandon the colonies, and you will import, at great price, from foreigners what they buy today from you.

In essence, it was agreed among the delegates of the assembly that, for the time being, nothing should change with concern to the colonies. France would continue to offer them its protection so long as they continued on as loyal French subjects. For many of the French colonies, there was little recourse to any other plan, since the local political scene was too muddled and disagreeable to have been a feasible alternative. In the New World, French colonization had inextricably changed the social and economic fabric of many areas, making it incredibly difficult to turn things around. Revolt, which would be necessary to get the French out of the colonies, was expensive, labor-intensive, and out of the question. Furthermore, the colony of Saint-Domingue was integral to the very survival of France.              

The Caribbean nation of Saint-Domingue, located on the western part of the island of Hispaniola, was colonized by France in 1659, and by the time of the French Revolution, it had become probably the most important part of France’s economy. At the end of the 18th century, Saint-Domingue had been developed into a plantation economy by a succession of French kings thanks to its most profitable natural resource: sugar.

Because the sugar industry was so labor-intensive, France had to send millions of field workers into the Caribbean to properly take advantage of the booming sugar market. At first, the island was populated by a combination of indigenous Taino and Arawakan people, plus all the indentured servants the colonizing country could spare. Thanks to the traditional feudal organization of France, agricultural workers owed their loyalty to the aristocratic lords of the land—therefore they were bound to follow the orders of the nobility. When the balance shifted toward more labor in the Caribbean and less in France, French commoners found themselves shipped off to Saint-Domingue to learn a drastically different way of life.

It wasn’t long before the sugar market surpassed Saint-Domingue’s production, however, and France simply didn’t have enough feudal workers to spare. From the early 17th century, the solution was presented in the form of the West African slave trade. Nearly a million captured Africans were shipped to Saint-Domingue to work in the sugar fields, as well as in the processing areas, kitchens, nurseries, and homes of the French elites. As many as 95 percent of the country’s total population was comprised of displaced black slave workers, while white French colonists ruled with an iron fist.

Sugar was being exported not only to France itself but to the rest of Europe, meaning that the nobility and, most importantly, French merchants, were building up wealth they’d never known before. If the massive population of slaves were to revolt, France stood to lose its main income, not to mention the land from which the product itself was produced. To keep the workers subjugated, the lords of the land publicly punished, tortured, killed, and berated them in very violent ways.

Saint-Domingue and its slaves were not, however, too far away from the free-thinkers of the Enlightenment Age to learn of the philosophies that were running rampant through France and Europe in the 1790s. Ships arrived from Europe regularly, bringing news to the residents of the French colonies about the faltering power of King Louis XVI and the idea of equality among the estates.

In 1791, a series of small-scale revolts began in Saint-Domingue that would last for more than a decade. Field workers set fire to the sugar crops, and the flames raged throughout the country as revolutionary debate moved from community to community. Landowners who lost control fled to the larger cities of the island in search of solidarity with other French aristocrats. As the colony destabilized politically, Spain and Great Britain moved in to take advantage.

Spain, already in place on the eastern side of Hispaniola, attempted to form an alliance with the slaves of Saint-Domingue. Simultaneously, British envoys fanned the flames of the revolution by touting an anti-slavery movement. Free black citizens of the colony, as well as white servants and low-income workers, started to band together with the black activists and fight—generally with rudimentary weapons such as clubs—for their liberty from the landowners.

By 1793, France’s government itself sided with those in search of their personal freedom and proclaimed slavery illegal. Certainly, equality was a founding part of the Enlightenment that had largely sparked the French Revolution itself, but the former monarchical, colonial power had another motive for freeing its Saint-Domingue citizens: war. In the years immediately following the execution of the French king, the collection of men who had seized control of Paris and France declared war on Austria, whom it feared would try to seize the country for itself. To make the campaign a success, the French Republic needed a massive army—the Caribbean was full of able men already fighting for their freedom. France offered equality sincerely, but also asked those men to join the fight in Europe The anti-French coalition wars lasted until 1802, at which point the Caribbean colony was approaching a new phase of its development.

By the beginning of the 19th century, a former black slave called Toussaint Leverture had become the informal leader of Saint-Domingue. His people largely wanted to own their own land and provide for their own households, but Leverture believed in the necessity of restarting the sugar plantations. He thought this was the best way to boost the local prosperity of his own nation, as well as to remain tightly politically allied with France. As a world superpower and an apparent emerging democracy, France had much to offer its colony of free people; of course, the opposite also remained true.

Under the leadership of Leverture, the communities of Saint-Domingue became unified enough to frighten France’s contemporary emperor, the military hero Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte was not satisfied to leave Saint-Domingue to its own devices, so he sent 20,000 French troops there in 1802 to take back the colony. He wanted to wrest back control of the French Caribbean islands and Louisiana and reinstate the sugar plantations to fund the national coffers of France itself. Further, he fortified the slave economies of his other Caribbean holdings of Tobago, Martinique, and Saint Lucia.

A bloody war between France and its former sugar giant ensued over the course of the next two years, during which time Leverture was captured and imprisoned in France. He died there of pneumonia in early 1803. In his absence, Leverture’s friends and allies rose up to defend Saint-Domingue from the return to forced labor. In November of 1803, the revolutionary army brutally defeated the undersupplied French army at the Battle of Vertieres and effectively ended Napoleon’s military campaign in the Caribbean.

On January 1, 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines—former collaborator with Toussaint Leverture—declared the colony an independent nation. It was called Haiti, named by the indigenous Taino tribe, meaning “Land of the High Mountains.” The loss of this integral piece of the French Empire was a devastating loss for Napoleon and France, who struggled considerably to replace that source of manpower and money.

Chapter 17 – The Louisiana Purchase

After the Caribbean islands, France’s largest colony in the New World during Napoleon’s reign was Louisiana. Called New France, or French Louisiana, it was originally named for King Louis XIV. It was a massive territory that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico up to the Great Lakes. Colonized by France in the late 16th century, there were originally just a few hundred French soldiers occupying the territory alongside the indigenous population.  By the 19th century, there were thousands of French settlers concentrated within Louisiana.

In 1803, France reclaimed Louisiana from Spain, but at the same time, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson was adamant that the United States claim it for themselves. At the time, Louisiana was still so massive, it cut America off from the mouth of the Mississippi River and other integral trading routes. Eager to make a deal, Jefferson sent emissaries to France to speak with Napoleon and make an offer for New Orleans. Up front, America offered between 2 and 10 million dollars .

The French government counteroffered. Understanding that without New Orleans, the whole of Louisiana was of very little value, Napoleon decided to see if the Americans were willing to offer up a lot more money. His thinking was borne of pure logic; following years of warfare and the original indebtedness of the French kings meant that France was struggling financially. If President Jefferson truly wanted to connect his nation to the Pacific Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico, he would probably be even more interested in fusing the western half of the country to the eastern half.

Napoleon’s representatives asked the Americans if they might consider buying Louisiana from them outright for $15 million. Without so much as corresponding with their president or traveling home for instructions, the emissaries made the deal. When they returned home with the news, the American president was overjoyed. He searched the Constitution ceaselessly, looking for the permission of America’s founding fathers to purchase land for his country. Eventually, he found what he was looking for.

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent to Make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur…

It was perhaps a slightly vague connection, but Jefferson followed through with his agreement and purchased Louisiana for what equated to $.03 per acre. The immense addition to the United States meant a huge addition of farmland where settlers were already growing corn, wheat, tobacco, hemp, and flax, along with raising sheep. Explorers Lewis and Clark were sent to map the new territory and report on their findings. Back in France, Napoleon’s coffers were fuller than they’d ever been.

One thing Napoleon had going for him as a leader was the knowledge that the population of France was loath to turn revolutionary again so long as they were fed and clothed. He addressed the basic needs of the workers and farmers of France, and in turn they gave him free reign to wage war as long and as far as he liked. With the money from the sale of Louisiana, the de facto ruler of the so-called French Republic was able to fund his greatest military campaign yet: the invasion of Great Britain.

Napoleon had achieved a great deal at the head of the French Army, but following the defeat by the British in the Mediterranean Sea, he’d been plotting his revenge. The monarchies of France and England had been bitter rivals for centuries, but even as a constitutional monarchy and a republic under de facto dictatorship, the relationship had changed little.

France spent several years preparing for the invasion. A fresh army of 200,000 men was gathered, and a large flotilla of barges, gunboats, and brigs were built to match the British Navy. Napoleon was so confident in his plan that a commemorative column was placed at Bologne before so much as a ship was launched. He stretched his imagination to come up with new and innovative ideas to put his French soldiers on the notoriously hard-to-reach British shores, including military balloons designed to carry soldiers over the English Channel.

Before the invasion, Napoleon wanted to test his flotilla in choppy waters and poor weather. His advisors told him it was a bad idea; he went ahead with it all the same and was horrified to find that the ships weren’t in nearly good enough condition for the journey. He put his builders back on the task, but Britain knew they were in danger and began to develop countermeasures.

With the world-famous British Navy patrolling the English Channel, Napoleon knew that his invasion relied entirely on the ability of his flotilla to maneuver past the enemy ships or overcome them on the way to shore. He chose a third option: luring them out into the West Indies. Napoleon was always a shrewd military commander, and his plan to overcome the United Kingdom was no less clever than his European campaigns. He decided to sail toward Britain’s island holdings and draw out the British Navy to defend its colonies. Once they were away from home, French ships would double back, meet their Spanish allies, and hit land in Ireland. From there, the combined forces would cross over the Irish Sea and enter the United Kingdom.

The plan was never properly put into action. Though France did sail west, it was unable to execute the quick rendezvous, and lacking the second fleet because of poor sailing conditions, the main party returned to Europe. There, it was met with British forces who forced the French Army into the Battle of Trafalgar. Led by Admiral Lord Nelson, the British Navy defeated France at sea and continued to pursue them on the continent.

Every dollar of President Jefferson’s money for the purchase of Louisiana —ironically some financed by Great Britain—went into Napoleon’s anti-British war effort. Ultimately, he failed to conquer Britain or push back his constant enemy.

Chapter 18 – The Reign of Terror

The chaotic period between 1793 and 1794 became famously known as The Terror. Robespierre had gone far off message and became what many of his former supporters deemed fascist. Under the guise of a republic, Robespierre took control of the population, set up a Revolutionary Tribunal, and started an endless series of trials and bloody executions, despite having once been firmly against the death penalty. The victims not only included members of the nobility and clergy who had fought against the revolutionaries and Jacobins, but faction members of his own club. No one seemed safe, no concrete set of rules seemed to apply, and the citizens of Paris were in constant terror for their lives.

The guillotine was brand new on the scene, and it made the prospect of death even more frightening for those who already lived in fear. It was a member of the National Assembly, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who proposed using a new method for criminal execution. Up until that point in 1789, criminals were killed in a number of ways which were generally contrived to make the victim suffer for his or her crime. People were hung just an inch or so short of their feet touching the ground comfortably, thereby strangling to death slowly. Some were burned, and still others were stabbed with hot pokers until they succumbed to injury and pain.

Members of the aristocracy, on the other hand, were executed as swiftly and painlessly as possible by decapitation. It was Guillotin’s opinion that all mankind deserved the same treatment, and he convinced enough members of the National Assembly of this point that a law was passed that required executions to be carried out via “machine.” The machine in question had already been developed by Guillotin and a German colleague called Tobias Schmidt. Guillotin, a medical doctor by profession, hoped that the machine would prove quick in its work and also more reliable than an axe in the hand of a human executioner. Though beheadings were intended to be quick, even experienced axemen could miss their target from time to time. The guillotine, however, was a stable wooden frame upon which a giant sharp blade would fall, catching the neck of the victim precisely. After a few tests on corpses, the guillotine—contemporarily known as the “widow”—was put to work.

The people watched their king, a man they’d been taught to respect as God’s representative on Earth, fall victim to the gruesome machine, followed by the queen and a long succession of apparent war criminals. Die-hard royalists called for the installment of King Louis’ remaining son, Louis-Charles, back onto the throne, while yet others believed the royal children should be brought to the same justice as their parents. While Robespierre went mad with power, he turned himself into yet another target.

Aside from the trials and executions, the leader of the republic also tried to handle the food shortage and economic emergency that affected the whole country. First, he set a maximum price on goods and wages. Meat and bread were rationed carefully, while luxurious white flour was banned for use in bread. It was the birth of “equality bread,” made of robust whole wheat flour that created a heavier, more nutritious brown bread .

The idea of equality was integral to Robespierre’s administration, and he made sure to remind the people of that as often as possible. Instead of calling one another by “Monsieur,” “Madame,” and other formal titles, the French were told to greet one another as “Citizen.” Churches, once the free domain of the privileged clergy, were disbanded and turned into places of commerce and military barracks.

The Convention met on the 24th of July, 1794 and accused its leader of tyranny and dictatorship. Robespierre countered confidently, stating that there was a plot among some to destroy the republic they’d all fought so hard to achieve. The following days were filled with accusations toward those who may have been conspiring against the freedom of France to govern itself, but finally on the 27th , Robespierre himself was arrested and several of his closest allies killed themselves to avoid arrest and execution. The younger brother of the deposed tyrant threw himself out a window, while the dictator himself shot himself in the jaw while trying to commit suicide.

Before he pulled the trigger, Maximillian de Robespierre left an unsigned message to be sent to the public. The letter, in which the Republican leader tries to call for public support to overwhelm his detractors, was covered in splattered blood.

Courage, patriots of the Pike Section, liberty triumphs! Already those whose steadfastness rendered them formidable to traitors are at liberty- everywhere the people are shown themselves worthy of their reputation. The meeting place is at the commune where the brave Hanriot will carry out the orders of the Executive Committee which has been established to save the country.

In fact, Hanriot – a top Jacobin – had tried to kill himself by jumping down through an open sewer but was merely wounded and captured. The only meeting that took place with Robespierre after he wrote his panicked letter was with the guillotine. Robespierre was executed without a trial on July 28, 1784, at the immense Place de la Revolution, along with sixteen of his advisors. In preparing Robespierre’s neck for the massive blade of the guillotine, the executioner removed the bandage that held his broken jaw in place. The man screamed pitifully until his head was removed from his shoulders.

The bodies of those executed were placed in the common grave at Errancis Cemetery; however, they were later moved to the infamous Catacombs of Paris.

After the death of Robespierre and most of the primary members of the Jacobian government, the upper middle classes swept in to fill the political vacuum. By 1795, a new Constitution was written and enacted. Unlike the former administration, which had allowed all men over the age of 21 to vote, the new Directory government only gave that right to land-owning men. A complicated system of political appointments and elections was drawn up that kept most of the power within the central government, and the passing of laws was made slower to accommodate more debate and public safeguards. Ultimate executive power was given to a collective group of five individuals who had been handpicked by the Legislative Assembly—these were called the Directory. Members of the Directory were required to have had already served as members of the Legislative Assembly.

Though power was thought to be split throughout enough governmental bodies to prevent another dictatorship, even the five-membered Directory wasn’t immune to authoritarian entreaties. Again, one person pushed his way through the ranks of government and won over the assembled members to such a degree that he was able to perform a successful coup d’état. Born in Corsica, the man had proven himself a skilled and clever military general during France’s wars with Austria and Prussia and was popular throughout the nation before he turned his eye to government. When a faction of royalists rose up against the Directory government in 1795, it was this man whose military skill kept them from overthrowing the republic and throwing France back into the Ancien Regime .

That man was Napoleon Bonaparte, an ambitious member of the lower ranks of Corsican nobility who returned to mainland France after local political upheaval. He brought France into the next important phase of its evolution.

Chapter 19 – The New French Calendar

The monarchy abolished, the king murdered, and government in place, the National Convention sought to remove all remaining reminders of its dynastic past from France. Perhaps surprisingly, the traditional calendar was targeted alongside the Catholic Church, partly because of its religious symbolism and partly to embrace a more scientific method of timekeeping. At the same time as the Revolutionary Calendar, the metric system of measuring distance was invented. Both were put into practice in France during 1793.

Instead of twelve months named after Catholic saints, now each day of the week was named after a natural mineral, plant, animal, or agricultural tool. The year began at Autumn Equinox, in late September, and each month was named for a natural or seasonal event that generally took place during that part of the year. In French and English, the months were as follows:

Vendemi – Grape Harvest

Brumaire – Mist

Frimaire – Fros t

Nivose – Snow

Pluviose – Rain

Ventose – Wind

Germinal – Seed

Floreal – Blossom

Prairieal – Meadow

Messidor – Harvest

Thermidor – Heat

Fructidor - Fruits

Though a calendar of twelve months is simple enough, the days were much more complex. The logic behind the daily decimal system was, like the metric system, designed so that calculations were straightforward and each month consisted of the same number of equal parts. To this end, each month consisted of three ten-day weeks, plus a number of “complementary days” to complete the circuit of the Earth around the sun. Every four years, a leap day was scheduled so that the entire calendar year reached the precise length of the solar year.

The Republicans didn’t stop with the calendar. They also commissioned a new type of decimal clock that divided the day into ten hours, each containing 100 minutes that also contained 100 seconds. The clock was much more difficult to legislate; after all, France is surrounded by neighbors who all use a completely different system of telling time. The official clock was given up by most French cities by 1795, but the Revolutionary Calendar stayed in place until 1806.

With the new calendar, date system, and metric measurements systems in place, France was ready for a new leader to bring them into the future.

Chapter 20 – Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte

Throughout the Terror and the years following the execution of Maximilien Robespierre, France was still at war with several European countries. By 1795, peace had been agreed with both Spain and Prussia. The fighting continued, however, with Great Britain and Austria.

After squashing the royalist revolution of October 1795, Napoleon Bonaparte was promoted from captain to commander in chief of France’s soldiers in Italy. The five members of the Directory government realized two things after the near-fatal bombardment of the royalists: Napoleon was a valuable military leader, and he was also a threat to their own positions. The government decided to both reward Napoleon and simultaneously keep him far from Paris. The newly-promoted military leader left the next year, in 1796, to command his troops.

The Italian campaign went so well for France’s massive citizen army that in 1797 Austria signed a peace treaty after five years of fighting. French troops had overtaken enemies throughout Europe and forced the hand of peace with many rulers. Throughout his campaigning, Napoleon corresponded with his brother, Joseph, in order to organize the army at home and abroad, and arrange for supplies and fresh soldiers when necessary. The spread of news was slow but integral to the finely-tuned craft of international warfare.

After several years at war, only one major enemy remained: Great Britain. Though the United Kingdom had first gone to war with revolutionary France as a means to protect the power of the monarchical system, it persevered in that war to prevent France from becoming a stronger empirical power.

At that time, the United Kingdom of Great Britain had the most advanced navy in Europe. Even with the experience and prowess of Napoleon leading them, the French army simply couldn’t overcome Britain by sea. Nevertheless, the Directory still insisted that Napoleon, now general of the army, keep fighting. In 1798, the general made a very odd decision to ignore the British navy and invade a completely different country instead.

At the general’s orders, the French army sailed south into the Mediterranean Sea, capturing the island nation of Malta before arriving on the north shore of Egypt. There, Napoleon orchestrated a military strike that took the entire world by surprise. There was no political reason to do such a thing, and no perceptible advantage for France in its fight against Britain. It’s possible that this violent strike into the heart of an ancient superpower was simply Napoleon Bonaparte’s first act of pure egotism and empiricism. Not unlike a game of Risk, the French general wanted to advance his army further and further, incorporating more iconic and powerful nations into his own.

The French forces were immensely successful over an unsuspecting Egypt. Napoleon strutted throughout his conquered country and commissioned painting after painting of himself among spectacles like the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx. His outrageous plan didn’t pan out quite the way he expected, however. The British, aware that 20,000 French soldiers and their whole navy were parked in the southeast Mediterranean, made their way to Egypt themselves .

The British Navy was under the command of Horatio Nelson, who saw the opportunity to crush France in one fell swoop. The British moved in and decimated the French ships, stranding Napoleon and his soldiers nearly 2,000 miles from home. With literally nowhere to go, the army languished in Egypt until Napoleon himself secured passage home to France—for only himself. The great general of the French Army abandoned 20,000 soldiers in Egypt and returned to Paris in 1799.

Upon his return to France, Napoleon saw that the Directory government had become incredibly unpopular while he was away with the army. The reputation of the Directors had plummeted for the very same reason as had every authoritative body before them: The peasants were still starving . When three of the Directors of the country saw that their military hero was back, they wanted to do business with him. Almost immediately, Napoleon entered into a plot to take down the government.

The first step seemed innocent enough, but it was carefully planned to cause an uprising of a main house of the government. Napoleon stepped into the meeting place of the Legislative Assembly and gave a speech. Expecting to hear about the military exploits of their country’s general in Italy and Egypt, the Assembly welcomed Napoleon. They were shocked and angry when instead of treating them with respect, Bonaparte began to denounce the Assembly and tell them they were an unnecessary part of the government of France. He spurned the audience so badly that they threw him out—which was exactly what he wanted them to do.

Bonaparte and his two Director co-conspirators immediately complained to the military guards that Napoleon had been roughly handled. The Legislature was swarmed by Napoleon’s soldiers and formally shut down on the order of the army itself. Physically unable to perform their governmental role, the Legislative Assembly was at the mercy of the army. This left Napoleon and the Directors with whom he’d conspired effectively in control of the government. The coup d’état was a complete success, thanks to the unwavering loyalty of the military toward their general. It’s interesting to note that the entire coup was pulled off without a single death or shot fired, along with the assistance of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes, the author of the Third Estate.

At the fall of the Directory government, France found itself in the hands of the Consulate, which was comprised of Napoleon Bonaparte, Jean Jacques Regis de Cambaceres, and Charles-Francois Lebrun. In the years immediately after the establishment of the Consulate, Bonaparte became known as the first consul; he was considered the most important member of the government and France’s de facto leader.

Ten years after the deposition of King Louis XVI, absolute monarch of the French Ancien Regime, France had itself another self-governing, absolute ruler. In 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself emperor of France.

Chapter 21 – In the Days and Years Afterward

By the time France shook off the metaphorical chains of the monarchy and the Catholic Church, it was already one of the most powerful countries in the world. The French Empire stretched down the west coast of Africa, into North and South America, and into the Mediterranean Sea. Citizens of most countries within the empire were already predisposed toward French culture. They sought out the best fashions and literature from the continent, endeavoring to emulate and cherish what they believed to be one of the most noteworthy societies of all time. After the French Revolution, that pride of culture only increased.

French is spoken by citizens of at least 29 countries thanks to the extensive empire built by monarchs and military generals. When the National Convention came to power, and when Napoleon overturned the Directory, there were French subcultures all over the globe. Most of these nations kept their ties to France but eventually became republics in their own right, with a democratic voting system to allow citizens to choose their leaders in regular elections. A few overseas territories remain, however: Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, French Guiana in South America, and Mayotte and Reunion in the Indian Ocean. Citizens of these territories are considered just as French as the citizens of mainland France and the Mediterranean island of Corsica. They have French citizenship and the right to vote in regular federal elections.

In France itself, the political structure of the home nation has continued to change and shift constantly since the turn of the 19th century. The Coalition of Allies against the French Republic didn’t just go home and hide when Napoleon started taking over Europe. Great Britain kept up the constant defense of the British Isles while Prussia and Austria regrouped and made a new plan. Eventually, they returned to war against France at the side of Great Britain and were joined by Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Russia, and several German states. By 1815, the Allies defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, forcing him to return to Paris and abdicate the emperorship of France in favor of his son.

The British exiled Napoleon to the remote island of Elba. He escaped exile briefly to wage war again and reclaim the title of Emperor Napoleon I for 100 days. The Allies forcibly removed him once more, this time exiling him to St. Helena. He lived only another six years there, with the company of a few die-hard followers. Almost 20 years after his death, the body of Napoleon Bonaparte was transferred to Paris and interred with much reverence and ceremony under the dome of a former church, known as the Invalides.

Napoleon had hoped by resigning his position, his son could become Emperor. Instead, France declared in favor of the restoration of the royal Bourbons and placed Louis XVIII —brother to the late Louis XVI—on the throne of France. He was succeeded by Charles X, who was overthrown by yet another rebellion that resulted in a constitutional monarchy. Again, the monarchy was overthrown entirely in 1848, and the electorate placed Napoleon III into the presidency .

Like his uncle, Napoleon I, Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte operated within the democratic process only a short time before declaring himself the emperor of France in 1852. The reign of Napoleon III was characterized by harsh treatment of his political opponents, 6,000 of whom were sent to prison or even exiled in penal colonies. In later years, the dictator softened considerably, allowing his opponents to return to France and in many cases enter the National Assembly.

The Second Empire of Napoleon III was a powerful one. Napoleon began a furtive military campaign in Mexico, eager to claim the disputed and bounteous land for his own empire. The presence of the French Army in Puebla, Mexico, on May 5, 1862 caused a violent uprising of local soldiers that flushed the French out of the city. The Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla is celebrated each year as Cinco de Mayo.

Napoleon persevered in Mexico for several more years, installing Emperor Maximilian I as head of the Mexican Empire in 1864. Less than three years later, Mexico revolted and murdered its self-declared emperor just months after Napoleon III withdrew French troops. The French emperor’s military leaders in Mexico had seen the storm brewing around them and wrote repeatedly to Napoleon, asking for their soldiers to be allowed to go home.

New Orleans, 9 Dec 1866

To His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon at Paris.

Mexico, 3rd December.

Emperor Maximilian appears to wish to remain in Mexico, but we must not count on it. Since the evacuation is to be completed in March, it is urgent that the transports arrive. We think that the foreign regiment must also be embarked. As for the French officers and soldiers attached to the Mexican Corps, can they be allowed the option of returning?

The country is restless. The Campbell and Sherman mission, which arrived off Vera Cruz on November 29 and left December 3, seems disposed to a peaceful solution. Nevertheless it gives moral support to the Juarists through the statement of the Federal government .

Marshal Bazaine and General Castelnau

Ultimately, Napoleon’s enterprise in Mexico was a bloody and disastrous failure. He stayed in power in France until 1870, when he was overthrown by Prussia. At that point, the Third Republic was declared, an era that lasted until German occupation during World War II.

Today, France is in its Fifth Republic stage, in which it elects a ruling president at regular intervals. The current system has been in place since 1958. The French Parliament is comprised of a Senate along with that long-established group, the National Assembly. Within the meeting hall of the National Assembly, conservative members are seated to the right of center; liberal members are seated to the left. This arrangement has been in place since the Revolution and has been the foundation of the modern world’s model of a political spectrum. The Assembly meets, quite ironically, in the early 18th -century Palais Bourbon , a royal palace built for a daughter of Bourbon King Louis XIV.

As for the Palace of Versailles, the favorite home of the last Bourbon royal family in France, it was thoroughly ransacked during the early days of the French Revolution. The beautiful trinkets, furniture, mirrors, clothing, jewelry, and expensive objects throughout the infamous palace were violently broken, stolen, or cut up and sold piece by piece. Very little remained within the walls of Versailles after the tens of thousands of rioters finally left and the heads of the king and queen of France had rolled away from the guillotine. The buildings and estate were seized by the government of France, and anything of value left inside was sold to pay for the many years of war the new republic faced. When Napoleon Bonaparte came to power, he moved into Marie Antoinette’s former estate at Trianon, furnishing and decorating it for his own needs. From 1814, the property was mostly held by members of the restored French royal family, starting with Louis XVIII .

Today, the opulence has been lovingly and carefully restored to the Palace of Versailles. From the golden gates of the outer estate to the glittering Hall of Mirrors, the palace is every bit the beautiful, extravagant, and perhaps condescending abode it was while Queen Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI of France were still alive. Yet, it is no longer a home, but a stunning reminder of the garish innocence inherent in the young royal couple. Tourists from all over the world step over the black and white tiles of the outer courtyard every day to visit the last well-loved home of the last royals of the Ancien Regime. Millions of people from every class and every nation look with awe at the cramped little bed of Louis-Auguste, and march across acres and acres of gardens to cast a curious eye at the Hameau de la Reine at Trianon.

The lure of people’s own government has proven itself again and again in France, and yet still today, there are loyal royalists who refer to a man named Louis Alphonse de Bourbon as Louis XX, King of France. Indeed, according to male-line primogeniture that reaches back to Louis XVI, he is indeed the head of House Bourbon and officially the duke of Anjou. A fringe political party called the Royal Alliance currently flies the banner of the fleur-de-lis and actively calls for the fourth restoration of the French monarchy under Louis XX. They have no representation in the National Assembly, however.

As for the bread that started it all? France’s many working people and families happily have a plentiful supply of high-quality bread—white or whole grain—that is quite affordable. They also have a wide selection of world-famous cheeses, not to mention a national cuisine that is the envy of the world.

There is affordable cake, too.

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