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Section 1: The Origins of the Revolution (The ideas of the Englightenment,…
Section 1: The Origins of the Revolution
Absolutism and the structure of the Ancien Regime
Absolutism
: The doctrine that a monarch is all powerful Belief that the rule of the King is only second to God
Debatable as to whether the Ancien Regime undermined this in France to a certain extent - Louis would be accused of tyranny if he used the lit de justice for example
Limited as: he had been taught to take advice on important decisions, his advisers/ministers came from a pool of career administrators and courtiers, he was bound by customs of France and he needed the consent of noble elite
Lettres de Cachet
- royal decree ordering someone to go to prison without trial
Lit de Justice
- royal legislation passed without the agreement of Parlements
System of Government
Parlement
- 13 Parlements in France. Paris was the biggest and most influential. All royal edicts had to be formally recognised in each parlement before they can be passed as laws.
Intendent
- there was 1 intendent for each of the 36 generalities of France. Royal official who administered royal edicts and tax collection. Responsible for carrying out government policy but were hindered by local law courts and parlements and seen as overly authoritarian. They were often mistrustful - reminder of King's need to be authoritative
Pays d'Etat
- provinces of margin of France, allowed to keep their own laws, e.g. Brittany. King had to negotiate taxes with them
The Three Estates
First Estate
- 139 bishops, 2500 monks. Pluralism - often Bishops held more than one post. Absenteeism - many never visited their diocese - made the Church very unpopular with many ordinary people who thought that bishops were more interested in wealth than religion. Parish priests earned as much as 3rd estate, but the Bishops were mainly nobles. Archbishops earn 500 times what a parish priest earns. Did not pay tax - rather paid a yearly don gratuit to King
Second Estate
- Between 110,000 to 350,000 in 1789. Nobility. The most powerful Estate, although great variations in wealth and status. Most powerful were 4000 court nobility - those who could afford the high cost of living at Versailles. Main source of income was land - owned between a third and quarter of France. Main positions in State held by nobles
Various ways of becoming a noble beside inheritance. Venal offices - buying certain offices that carried hereditary titles.
Third Estate
- 2.3 million. Bourgeoisie (merchants, artisans, intellectuals and urban workers) and peasantry (farmers, rural workers). Sans culottes - urban workers in Paris. Rural peasants worked long hours with little pay and were left poor after tax
Louis XVI as King
Marie Antoinette
known as 'Madame Deficit' or 'Autrichienne' - play on words as Austrian/Bitch
She was hated and their were scandals surrounding their marriage - they married in 1770, she was just 17. They only consummated the marriage 7 years later
Diamond Necklace Affair 1784 - Queen was though to have bought a 1.6 million livre necklace, but it was proven to be a scam orchestraed by Jeanne de la Motte and Cardinal de Rohan
She did spend 100,000 livres on a garden!
Louis XVI
- described as "weak willed" by the Abbe de Veri and "simple minded". He had little interest in politics and often "failed to grasp the significance of what is going on around him" - thus why he mismanaged the economy, nobility and aggravated France's problems. He was not suited to ruiling.
Social Divisions
Priveliges and Burdens
First Estate
- the wealth of the Church came from the land it owned and the
tithes
paid to it. Church = largest single landowner in France, owning about 10% of the land.
Tithe was a charge paid to the Church each year by landowners and was based on a proportion of the crops they produced.
Income produced by the tithe provided the Church with 50 million livres each year
Much of it went into the pockets of bishops and abbots - resented by both peasantry and ordinary clergy, one of most common grievances in their cahiers in 1788
First Estate
- exemption from taxes - added to unpopularity. Instead of paying tax, church made an annual payment - don gratuit. Under 5% of Church income and much less than it could afford to pay
Second Estate
- Privileges included:
they were tried in their own courts
exempt from military service
exempt from gabelle (salt tax)
exempt from corvee (forced labour on roads)
received a variety of feudal dues
exclusive rights to hunting and fishing
exemption from tax - exempt from the taille, paid capitation but managed to pay less than they could have done
these were RESENTED!!!!
Third Estate
- BURDENS. As the largest group in society, the peasants bore the burden of taxation and this made them extremely resentful.
All peasants had to pay a tithe to the Church, feudal dues to their lord and taxes to the state
Nearly all land was subject to feudal dues
could be conscripted and tried in seigneurial court - lord acted as both judge and jury
Taille, capitation and gabelle - all these increased enormously between 1749 and 1783 to pay for wars
Taxes took between 5 and 10 percent of the peasant's income
rent to landlords - increased significantly as a result of the increase in population - increased the demand for farms, so rents raised
increasing financial burden placed on the peasantry was an important long term cause of the revolution
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Ancien Regime
Regional variations
- different cultures meant different ways of applying laws, so there were regional differences in taxation, for example Brittany did not pay salt tax
In 1783, France was arguably the most powerful European country and had just defeated Britain. Although the structure of the Ancien Regime was inefficient and unfair, it worked. However, the King could not make radical changes so its key weaknesses, the problems of government and of taxation, could not be reformed and tensions in society grew
The ideas of the Englightenment
Philsophes
Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau
All influential thinkers of the French Enlightenment, who called for SEPARATION OF POWERS
'Candide' - Voltaire's most famous satirical play, 1759, banned for mockery of religious and blasphemy
Voltaire - Christianity was "the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this world"
Rousseau - wrote about societal corruption and inequality, stating that democracy was the only way for "individual and rights"
Salons
Run by prominent women, made up mainly of nobles, more of a 'club'/society, casual atmosphere.
Had distinguished guests such as Thomas Jefferson
Suzanne Churchod, wife of Necker, held a popular salon in the 1770s in Paris
"Strong women remade the salons... women used the salon to learn, be entertained and to escape the boredom that characterised many of their lives" (Herbst, historian)
Impact of the American Revolution and the War of Independence
American Declaration of Independence and Virginia Declaration of Rights inspired progressive views and were discussed in Salons, with guests such as Jefferson and Franklin
Soldiers returned from fighting American independence war with revolutionary ideas of liberty and democracy
Ides - seperation of Church and state, scientific reason, legal despotism (a monarchy bound by law)
Influence in France
Male literacy rate rose from 30% in 1650 to 50% in 1780. But the 50% who could not read were from the 3rd estate - limited scope
Enlightenment of the 3rd Estate - 'hack writers' were resentful of their inability to join the literary/educational elite, so they wrote scandalous, perhaps even gossipy, stories about the monarchy and nobility
Literary Societies = held important essays/books/journals and held lectures and essay competitions - exclusive
High cost of journals eased by subscription libraries and reading rooms, first recorded in Nantes in 1759, by 1789 reading rooms housed more than 3000 journals
Freemasonry - there were 800-900 masonic lodges between 1732-93. They were less exclusive, and elected members based on merit and not class, thus they called themselves "equals" and "brothers"
Censorship
Gazette de Leyde published 4200 copies by 1785, was published in Holland and smuggled into France
Nouvelles Eccesiastiques regularly criticised the Church, most controversial journal
Weekly newspapers published in Lyon by 1784. All towns had journals by the 80s
The daily Journal de Paris came out daily from 1777. Its readership went up to 70,000 by 1787, selling nearly half a million papers
Cult of Reason = created in 1792 which rejected ideologies of the Church and adopted Enlightened beliefs
Economic Problems and Royal Finance
Tax Collection
Indirect tax made up 55% of the Crown's revenue in 1780
Tax farmers kept more than their share of money, so the full amount of tax never reached the government
Types of tax: taille (direct land tax), octrois (tax on goods entering or leaving a city), aides (tax on drink), gabelle (salt tax), tithe (paid to church, approx 8% of income), corvee royale (forced labour on roads by 3rd estate), capitation (tax on people/poll tax)
Royal income was 503 million livres but yearly expenditure was 629 livres
Taxation made up 96% of all income - if it was failing then the economy would too. Not enough income from tax thus led to more borrowing, especially in times of war
Deficit of 126 million livres in 1788
Ministers such as Turgot who tried to reform were kicked out, reform interfered with noble interests
War and Foreign Policy
Expenditure on war by 1788 was 107.1 million livres. A huge increase from 1751's figure of 76.9 million livres
Numerous wars in the 1700s: Spanish (1701-3), Polish (1733), Austrian (1740-8), Seven Years (1756-63), American Independence (1778-83)
Since 1776, 1250 million livres had been borrowed, and by 1788 it had a deficit of 126 million livres
France lost many of these battles - lost Martinique and Guadeloupe to the the Austrians, meant less money from trading and more debt
Attempts to Improve Royal Finance under Turgot, Necker and Calonne
The Assembly of Notables and Political Developments February 1787-May 1789
The State of France up until the meeting of the Estates-General
Politically
Socially
Economically
Causes of the Estates-General