French Revolution

The French Revolution, which ran from 1789 to 1799, was a decade of upheaval that overthrew the French monarchy, dismantled the privileges of the old aristocratic order, and tried to rebuild the country on the principles of citizenship and popular sovereignty. Its ideas about rights, equality, and the nation spread across Europe and beyond, and it remains a reference point for modern debates about democracy, revolution, and state power.

The roots of the crisis lay in the late eighteenth century. France's society was divided into three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and everyone else, with the last group bearing most of the tax burden. The monarchy was deeply in debt, partly because of costly wars, including support for the American Revolution. Poor harvests and high bread prices added hardship, while Enlightenment writers had spread new ideas about reason, liberty, and government. In 1789 Louis XVI summoned the Estates-General, which had not met since 1614, to address the financial emergency.

Disputes over voting quickly broke the assembly apart. Representatives of the Third Estate declared themselves a National Assembly in June 1789, and in July crowds in Paris stormed the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison that symbolized royal authority. In August the Assembly abolished feudal privileges and issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. A constitutional monarchy was established, but trust between king and revolutionaries eroded, especially after the royal family's failed attempt to flee in 1791.

War with Austria and Prussia, beginning in 1792, radicalized events. The monarchy was abolished, a republic was proclaimed, and Louis XVI was executed in January 1793. Under the Committee of Public Safety, led most prominently by Maximilien Robespierre, the government waged war, suppressed internal revolt, and carried out the Terror, in which many thousands were executed and far more imprisoned. Historians debate how much the Terror was a response to emergency and how much it grew from revolutionary ideology. After Robespierre's fall in 1794, a more moderate Directory governed, but it was unstable and relied on the army.

In November 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in a coup, which is conventionally taken as the end of the Revolution. Yet many of its changes endured: legal equality, the end of feudal dues, a more centralized state, and the idea that legitimate power derives from the nation. The Revolution also inspired both liberal reformers and fierce conservative reaction, shaping European politics throughout the nineteenth century.