French Revolution (1789-1815)

• French in 1780 (pre-revolution)
  • Politics and Religion
    • Absolutism
      • King has control of national affairs
      • Censorship!
        • Blocks anything with relevance to offending the government (blocks freedom of speech and printing)
      • Not a democracy!
    • Feudal nobles
      • Pretty nice if you're an upper-class
    • Catholicism
      • Official religion
      • "Heretics" are still exiled or persecuted
  • Estates - General
    • Every class belongs to a single estate (out of the 3)
    • 1st Estate
      • Catholic Church Officials
      • ONE total vote in estates general
      • Church leaders come from noble families (so they're the higher class ofc), which wants more power from the central government
    • 2nd Estate
      • Nobility
        • Exempt from most taxes
        • Want more power from the central government. They want their power back and reduce the amount of power that the central government took away from them
    • 3rd Estate
      • Everybody else!
      • Bourgeoisie
        • "Middle class"
        • Reasonably wealthy, but they haven't earned their way into nobility
        • Want political power too!
        • Familiar with Enlightenment ideals!
        • Dominates peasants and urban poor in voting situations
      • Peasants
        • Poor farmers in countryside
      • Urban Poor (Sans Culottes)
        • Poor people in the city
        • Workers, craftsmen, shop owners
        • "Shitty shitty shitty" living conditions
• Phases of the French Revolution
  • The Radical Phase (1789-1794)
    • Feudal nobility is abolished!
      • 2nd estate partners up with 3rd estate because of similar hatred for nobility
      • All legal differences between social classes are eliminated
    • Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen
      • Basic human rights are established for everyone (aka men lmao) in France
    • Universal Manhood Suffrage
      • Every man can vote (in theory)!!
    • Louis XVI
      • THE FRENCH KING WAS EXECUTED!
      • France becomes a republic
    • Religious and Cultural Policies
      • Catholicism outlawed!
      • "Cult of Reason"
        • Deism becomes the state religion
      • Metric system introduced!
        • They invented a metric calendar!
    • How'd it end?
      • Reign of Terror
        • Radical leaders alienate everyone else!
  • The Reaction - The Moderate Phase (1794-1799)
    • Political power (mostly) controlled by wealthy men... gave it back so the lower classes didn't have all the power...
    • Property ownership required to vote or take part in the government
    • Wacky cultural changes are reversed
  • The Napoleonic Phase (1799-1815)
    • Napoleon
      • Attempts to conquer Europe
      • Spreads revolutionary ideals! (the metric system, legal system, secularism)
      • Defeated in 1815
      • He was a middle class man from Corsecov but sympathized with the lower class's hatred for the nobility because he was an outsider.
    • France has been at war by 1791
    • Other governments don't want the revolution to spread!
    • France run by its most successful General, Napolean Bonaparte
    • Napoleon