Many Americans and other observers saw the French Revolution as an extension of the American Revolution.  Participation in the American Revolution (French King Louis XVI committed French troops in the support of a foundering United States) left France in heavy debt.

The direct cause for the French Revolution was the financial chaos of the French treasury, and an unjust system of taxation that favored the nobility and other elites.  Unlike Thomas Jefferson, the conservative American Federalists saw the French Revolution itself as complete anarchy, and condemned the violation of private property rights that characterized the movement.  The Federalists viewed England as the classic defender of the rights to property, and promoted a spirit of English capitalism to that end in the United States.

In 1789, the social and political explosion of the French Revolution affected the entire western world.  This event was brought about by the confused circumstances of the financial affairs of the government, hunger among the ranks of laborers and the poor, economic depression, and the great disparity between the classes.

The upper class nobility (the “First Estate”) and the clergy (the “Second Estate”) were relatively free from the burden of heavy taxation, while the middle and lower, working and producing classes (the “Third Estate”) were heavily taxed to pay for French foreign military debts, royal opulence, and a rising national debt overall.

The outdated feudal system of France and its absolutist monarchical political system (the ancien régime) thus could not keep up with the social and intellectual changes brought about by the Enlightenment.  In a series of reforms King Louis XVI changed the structure of the feudal system through the consolidation of his power, but feudalism still remained intact, as the privileged classes (First and Second Estates) still shared the reigns of power.  The French peasantry was still tied to the nobility through a system of dues, taxes (the included forced labor), and tithes to the great landlords.

To this social and political situation were added the leveling ideals of the Enlightenment, which stressed the natural rights of all people, regardless of class; Voltaire, for example, attacked outmoded notions of absolutism held by clerics and the nobility in support of the monarchy.  The French bourgeoisie had new intellectual tools to draw upon, but they still remained outside the political system.

Compounding the social ills of France, were rises in the populations of rural regions and repeated food shortages.  All the while, market speculators took advantage of these events, amassing fortunes – grain speculation, for example, led to dramatic increases in the price of bread, resulting in “bread riots.”  Moreover, the prices that these speculators enjoyed were protected by “internal tariffs” that compounded problems for the Third Estate by resulting in food (especially grain) shortages.

To remedy the situation, Jacques Necker, the Swiss-born director general of finances attempted to persuade the privileged groups and classes to take part in the financial responsibilities of the crisis, and King Louis XVI was forced convoke a meeting (May 5, 1789) of the Estates-General to vote on this and other matters.  This was the first meeting of the French Estates-General since 1614.

The upper noble classes and the clergy refused to any plan that called for their sharing of the financial responsibilities of the nation-state.  Meanwhile, Emanuel Joseph Sieyés issued a widely read pamphlet that asserted that the Third Estate and the nation were one.

The French populace, however, demanded sweeping social reforms, and as tensions mounted, French King Louis XVI failed to meet their demands.  When King Louis XVI hesitated to allow the Third Estate to vote with the Estates-General (it would have held a majority if allowed); in defiance (joined by lower clergy and several nobles), the Third estate thus declared itself the National Assembly on June 17, 1789.  King Louis XVI then forced the closure of their meeting hall, whereby they reassembled on June 20 at an indoor tennis court, and swore an oath not to adjourn until they succeeded in drafting a new constitution.  The king finally agreed to the legitimacy of the new National Assembly on June 27, and took refuge in the fortified palace at Versailles.  When the king (influenced by his wife – Queen Marie Antoinette) fired Jacques Necker, the chief finance minister, Parisians revolted.  By July 13, Parisians began arming themselves, as unrest became widespread.

On July 14, middle class Parisians and shopkeepers stormed the “most imposing symbol of royal power” (Hunt, 1996) the Bastille prison/ fortress, hoping to obtain ammunitions, thus touching off the French Revolution.  The king immediately recalled Necker and publicly acknowledged the legitimacy of the municipal government of the Commune of Paris by accepting its symbol – the tricolor cockade (a rosette of ribbon).  The Marquis de Lafayette became the chief of the French national guard.

Acting out of fear, French nobles and the clergy assembled to reform the laws (done in one evening!), relinquishing their privileges and abolishing the outdated feudal social system of France.

The National Assembly approved Sieyés’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (August 1789) that became the preamble of the French Constitution in 1791, limiting monarchical powers, nationalizing Church properties, and restricting the power of the clergy.

Unlike the United States, that formed its Bill of Rights after the ratification of its Constitution, the French Bill of Rights was the basis for government itself and came into being before the French Constitution was written.  Even though women’s rights were a subject of discussion in during the French Revolution, the French – like the Americans a decade earlier, refused to extend the same rights to women that were given to men.  Nevertheless, the 19th –  and 20th – century women’s rights movements can be traced to the French Revolution more than any other movement (since many of the arguments were formed during the French movement).

By 1792, after the creation of the French Republic (September 21, 1792), the first of the French Revolutionary Wars was under way – war was declared by the moderate Girondists (who controlled the government) against Austria in March 1792; these wars ended in 1802).  French nobles and royalty fled the country.  Combined Prussian and Austrian forces easily swept across northeastern France and began a move on Paris.  Meanwhile their leader, the duke of Brunswick, issued a “manifesto” promising to level the city of Paris should the king or his family be harmed.  Europe’s royalist governments and the nobility of Europe felt that they needed to react strongly with force to crush the rebellious French lower classes, or a precedent would be set for future insurgencies throughout the Continent.

In the face of French governmental ineptitude and general chaos, Jean Baptiste, comte de Rochambeau and the marquis de Lafayette, the two principal leaders of the French support in the American Revolution, resigned.  Their successors led an able response, that in turn, led to French moves that violated international treaties that in turn resulted in Britain, Holland, and Spain to join the Austrian and Prussian in the creation of the First Coalition against France.  Sardinia had already launched a war against France as well.

By the end of 1793 all of the foreign invaders had been driven from France and early in the following year, France took to offensive with invasions into Germany. Belgium, and Holland, that each sued for peace in 1795.  Germany’s settlement involved transferring its territory west of the Rhine River to France.  Italy and Sardinia all capitulated to French dominance and control to varying degrees.  By 1797 Britain was the only European nation still at war with France.  With the threats of foreign powers, rising food prices, and rumors of a counter-revolution caused angered Parisian Jacobins, who turned to violence.

The Jacobins took their name from the confiscated Dominican monastery where the met, and formed the Breton deputies to the Estates-General.  They organized themselves in October 1789 as the “Society of Friends of the Constitution” and were led by men like Maximilien Robespierre who depended on the political power of the Paris commune and the sans-culottes (poor or lower classes, who traditionally wore no knee breeches).

The radical Jacobins, with their slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” stormed the Tuileries palace and apprehended the Queen, Marie Antoinette, who, joined by the king after he attempted to flee France in an effort to seek foreign help, were held in custody.  Addressed at “the baker and the baker’s wife,” King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were publicly humiliated, tried for treason, and ultimately executed.  The king was killed in January 1793, and Marie Antoinette, contemptuously named the “Widow Capet,” was publicly beheaded by guillotine in October of the same year.  Thousands of people affiliated with the monarchy and the nobility, monarchy-sympathizers, and other “enemies of the state,” were executed by guillotine or in mass drownings during this period (1793 – 4), known as the “reign of terror.”

This period of executions was led by the anti-Girondist Maximilien Robespierre (who had been elected to the Committee of Public Safety in July 1793) and the Jacobins.  Meanwhile, a new government was established.  As part of the new government and revolutionary culture of France, Jacques Hébert, a leader of the Commune of Paris and a devout atheist, began the national worship of the “goddess of Reason.”

In addition to the “worship of Reason” a new calendar was created, made up 12-months of 30 days each.  Each month was made up of three 10-day weeks (decades); every tenth day was designated a day off/ day of rest.

French Revolutionary Calendar (calculated to begin on the Fall Equinox – September 22, 1792, the day after the proclamation of the revolutionary republic of France) – day one on this calendar was 1 Vendémiaire = September 22, 23 or 24:

Month 1 (September): Vendémiaire (vintage month)
Month 2 (October): Brumaire (fog)
Month 3 (November): Frimaire (sleet)
Month 4 (December): Nivôse (snow)
Month 5 (January): Pluviôse (rain)
Month 6 (February): Ventôse (wind)
Month 7 (March): Germinal (seed)
Month 8 (April): Floréal (blossom)
Month 9 (May): Prairial (pasture)
Month 10 (June): Messidor (harvest)
Month 11 (July): Thermidor (heat)
Month 12 (August): Fructidor (fruit)

Robespierre, the leader of the Committee of Public Safety, who led the “reign of terror” in an attempt to force public order in the face of threats of foreign invasion, began a series of purges that resulted in the deaths of his political opponents.  When Robespierre threateningly opposed attempts by moderates to end the carnage of widespread executions, the extreme radicals (“the Mountain” – upper benches of the National Assembly) and the members of “the Plain” (those occupying the lower benches) joined forces against Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794).  Robespierre also angered his opponents when he tried to bring about a new civic religion, “The Cult of the Supreme Being” (in opposition to the atheism of Jacques Hébert.  He was arrested on 9 Thermidor and summarily tried, convicted, and executed by guillotine the following day, on 10 Thermidor (July 28, 1794).

The constitution was ratified in October 1795 after a royalist insurrection was crushed.  The constitutional convention created a bicameral legislature, the “Council of Five Hundred” and the “Council of the Ancients.”  The legislature elected its executive (the Directory) comprised of five “Directors” but despite its reforms, this governmental body soon became rife with corruption and inefficiency as it mitigated the conflicts between the Jacobins and the royalists.

After 1797 the Directory’s powers to negotiate foreign policy were turned over to generals and other military leaders, especially Napoleon Bonaparte.  In 1798–99 France again aroused the anger of the European monarchies by creating the Cisalpine Republic, the Roman Republic, and the Helvetian Republic.  The Second Coalition against France was composed of the nations of Austria, Britain, Naples, Portugal, Russia, and Turkey.  By January, a French-defeated Naples became transformed into the Parthenopean Republic.  After initial victories of the Coalition in northern Italy and Switzerland, factionalism broke their unity, laying them open to Napoleon later advance.

As factional differences caused the Revolution to turn on itself in the face of foreign wars, the way was paved for the emergence of a new dominant strongman, Napoleon “the Little Corporal” Bonaparte, who, through the political machinations of Director Sieyés, gained control of France in the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799).  By 1802, Napoleon reversed French gains related to human rights and reinstated slavery.  These development were especially related to Haiti.

Haiti:

The Haitian Revolution was an extension of the French revolution.  The language of each movement and the characteristics of each were the same, having drawn from the well-spring of the Enlightenment.

Background:

Because the western end of the Island of Hispañola was largely ignored by Spain, French pirates established bases there.  Hence, the French sugar colony of San Domingue formed (primarily on the north shore), and in 1697 Spain ceded the portion of the island claimed by France.  Coffee was also an important product of what became the most prosperous French colony in the Americas.

As was the case in the Spanish colonies, San Domingue was a stratified society that included French-born French, creole French, mulattos, black freedmen, and black slaves.  In the face of increased demands from Enlightenment-influenced creole mulattos for representation in the colonial legislature and the National Assembly during the French Revolution, white French leaders refused, leading to the Haitian Revolution.

Toussaint L’Ouverture, a former slave who became a French officer in the military, led successful bands of guerilla fighter against French colonists.  He acquired the name L’Ouverture (meaning “the opening”) during his spectacular service for Spain in the neighboring colony of Santo Domingo.  L’Ouverture successfully defended Haiti against a British invasion in 1793 during the French Revolutionary wars, and after Spain ceded its colony of Santo Domingo to France in 1795, L’Ouverture conquered the entire island (in 1801).  As governor general of an independent Haiti, L’Overture abolished slavery.

With Napoleon’s rise to power in, he sent his brother-in-law, the General Charles Leclerc in 1802 in a failed attempt to reconquer the island and reestablish it as a sugar colony (the recently reacquired province of Louisiana was to be the bread basket of that venture).  This attempt to recapture the island failed, but L’Overture was tricked into appearing for a treaty signing with France (Napoleon designed this plan himself), whereby he was captured, and eventually died in French captivity (in a dungeon in France).  Meanwhile the revolution continued as fever-ridden French troops (including General Leclerc who died of yellow fever) withdrew from the island by 1809 as Santo Domingo was restored to Spanish control.  Having failed in Haiti, Napoleon then decided to sell Louisiana to the United States while the Jefferson administration recognized the independence of Haiti, the second independent American nation in history.

The assassination of self-proclaimed emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines led to the partitioning of Haiti between two leaders.  In the black-dominated north was the Emperor Henri Christophe, who ruled as the tyrant Henri I.  Henri I patterned his government after the monarchies of Europe, and enriched himself on slave-produced sugar.  Henri I built lavish palaces at the mountaintop citadel of La Ferrière and at his capital city of Cap Haïtien, he constructed the opulent palace of Sans Souci.  In the mulatto-controlled southern portion of the island, President Alexandre Pétion ruled.

When these two leaders died, the north and south partitions of Haiti were reunited under the rule of Jean Pierre Boyer after 1822 who also controlled Santo Domingo (it was freed of Haitian dominance in 1844).