The French Revolution and Napoleonic Era

1. The
French
Revolution
and
Napoleonic
Era,
1789-1815

2. Long-term Causes:
• peasants resented heavy taxes

3. Long-term Causes:
• Popular disgust the Ancien Regime (Catholic clergy & nobles), especially at
Versailles

4. Long-term Casues:
• The Enlightenment: philosophes
argued people had natural rights

5. Short-term Causes:
• Cost of French loss in Seven Years’
War (1756-63)
• French aid to American Revolution
(1775-81)

6. 50%
Interest payments of
national debt
25%
Military expenditures
6%
Court life atVersailles
19%
Running the country
FRENCH ANNUAL BUDGET IN
THE 1780s
Short-term Causes:
• budget deficits

7. Short-term Causes:
• 1788-1789 –
bad winters
 crop failures
 starvation
 Great Fear

8. Phase 1:
From Absolute Monarchy
to Constitutional Monarchy

9. 1789
May 1 –King Louis XVI called first meeting
of Estates-General in 175 years

10. 1789
First Estate:
Clergy
Second Estate:
Nobles
Third Estate:
Everyone else

11. 1789
June 17 –Third
Estate declared
itself a National
Assembly

12. 1789
June 20 - National Assembly swore the Tennis Court Oath

13. 1789
July 14 - Mob in Paris
stormed the Bastille

14. 1789
National Guard led by American Revolutionary
War veteran Marquis de Lafayette.

15. 1789
August 4: Feudalism abolished.
Aristocratic émigrés fled.

16. 1789
Aug. 26 - The Declaration of the Rights of
Man and Citizen recognized popular
sovereignty. Nation was a society of equal
citizens.

17. The Tricolor (1789)
The WHITE of the Bourbons + the RED & BLUE of Paris.

18. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen posed new
dilemmas.
• Did women have equal rights with men?
• What about free blacks in the colonies?
• How could slavery be justified if all men were born free?
• Did religious toleration of Protestants and Jews include equal
political rights?

19. Role of Women
• Pre-1789: Women were “passive citizens” with no political rights.
• Olympe de Gouges wrote Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791).

20. Role of Women
• Many female
activists were
executed during the
Reign of Terror for
“conspiring against
the unity and
indivisibility of the
Republic.”
• The Napoleonic
Code confirmed
women’s legal
second-class status.

21. The Haitian Revolution
1789: St. Domingue was world’s largest sugar producer.
32,000 whites and 452,000 slaves (2/3 African-born)

22. The Haitian Revolution
1791: Toussaint L’Ouverture led a
revolt of 100,000 slaves.

23. The Haitian
Revolution
1804: Jean-
Jacques Dessaline
named emperor of
Haiti.
Haitian Revolution
was the most
successful slave
revolt in history.

24. The Haitian
Revolution
1803: Prompted
Napoleon’s sale of the
Louisiana Territory to
US

25. 1789
Oct. 5 - Women
conducted March on
Versailles and
captured royal family

26. 1789
National Assembly
turned to writing a new
constitution modeled
after Britain

27. Phase 2:
From Constitutional Monarchy
to the First Republic

28. 1791
June 20 – Royal family attempted to escape to Austrian Netherlands

29. 1791
Oct. 1 - National Assembly became the National Convention.
Louis XVI “accepts” the Constitution and the National Convention

30. The Political Spectrum
Jacobins
Montagnards
(“The Mountain”) Girondists
Monarchíen
(Royalists)
1790s:
The Plain
(swing votes)
TODAY:
Seating represented the left-right political divide.

31. 1792
April 20 - Austrian emperor and
Prussian king were willing to
intervene for French monarchy
National Convention declared war
against Austria and Prussia first.

33. 1792
Aug. 10 – National
Convention lost influence
due to the chaos of war.
Power shifted to Paris
Commune led by sans-
culottes dedicated universal
male suffrage

34. 1792
Sept. 2-6 - September Massacre of prisoners

35. The sans-
culottes
depicted as
savages by a
British
cartoonist.

36. 1792
Sept. 20 – Battle of
Valmy  turned
tide of war against
Austria & Prussia

37. Phase 3:
The First Republic,
radical Jacobin dictatorship

38. 1792
Sept. 22 - Abolition of monarchy  birth of First French Republic

39. 1793
Jan. 21 - Louis
XVI found guilty
of treason and
executed via
guillotine

40. The Jacobins were a political club of bourgeois revolutionaries.

41. 1793
July 27 - Jacobins seized power and
created a 12 man dictatorship led by
Maximilien Robespierre. The Committee
for Public Safety used a Reign of Terror to
save the Revolution.

42. Oct. 1793 – June 1794 –
Reign of Terror  500,000 people
imprisoned; 40,000 executed

43. Around 150,000 were killed pacifying royalist counter-revolution in Vendée.

44. Oct. 1793 – June 1794 – Methods used during Reign of Terror later adopted by
Communists and Fascists

45. 1793
Aug. 23 - Mass conscription
drafted 800,000 soldiers,
outnumbering French enemies 4:1.
By 1794, France repelled Austrian,
Prussian, British, and Spanish
invasions.

46. 1793
Oct. 5 – A non-Christian Revolutionary calendar based on 10-day weeks was
adopted.
Vendemaire Vintage September 22 – October 21
Brumaire Fog October 22 – November 20
Frimaire Frost November 21 – December 20
Nivose Snow December 21 – January 19
Pluviose Rain January 20 – February 18
Ventose Wind February 19 – March 20
Germinal Budding March 21 – April 19
Floreal Flowers April 20 – May 19
Prairial Meadow May 20 – June 18
Messidor Harvest June 19 – July 18
Thermidor Heat July 19 – August 17
Fructidor Fruit August 18 – September 21

47. 1793
Oct. 16 - Execution of Marie Antoinette

48. 1794
July 27 - Thermodorian Reaction: Execution of Robespierre, Terror ended

49. Phase 4:
The First Republic,
moderate Directory Era

50. 1795
Oct. 26 - End of the National
Convention  new constitution 
the Directory based on limited
democracy – only 30,000
wealthiest men in France could
vote

51. 1795: Netherlands captured; Spain and Prussia sued for peace

52. 1796-97: Napoleon Bonaparte drove Austria out of Italy.

53. 1799
Nov. 9-10 - Coup d’etat by
Napoleon  the Consulate

54. Phase 5:
The Consulate

55. 1799:
Napoleon named first consul, a
conservative, authoritarian dictator.
“The Revolution is over. I am the
Revolution.”

56. A British Cartoon about Napoleon’s Coup in 1799

57. Phase 6:
The First French Empire

58. 1804: Napoleon crowned emperor.
Napoleonic Code cemented legal equality, abolition
of feudalism, religious freedom, and meritocracy.

59. 1805:
• Grande Armée defeated Austrians and
Russians at Austerlitz.
• British won naval battle at Trafalgar.

60. 1806: Continental System to blockade Britain.

61. 1808
Peninsular War to
place Joseph Bonaparte
on Spanish throne.
British supported
Spanish guerrilla
resistance.
TheThird of May 1808, Francisco Goya

62. Spanish American Revolutions
Libertadores:
• Miguel Hidalgo  Mexico
• Jose de San Martin  Argentina,
Peru, Chile
• Simon Bolivar  Venezuela, Bolivia,
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama

63. 1810:
Napoleon governed 70 million
in largest empire since Rome.
He maintained power by
crowning brothers and
marrying sisters to European
thrones.

64. 1812–1813: Failed invasion of Russia. Russians used scorched earth tactics.

65. 1814: Allies captured Paris. Napoleon exiled to
Elba and Bourbon dynasty restored under
Louis XVIII.

66. 1815: Napoleon escaped Elba and returned to power for 100 days. British Duke
of Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

67. 1821
Napoleon died imprisoned at St. Helena.

68. Revolutionary Reforms
• Feudalism abolished.
• Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen issued.
• Protestants and Jews given legal equality.
• Church and state separated.
• Slavery abolished in colonies.
• Christian calendar replaced by Revolutionary calendar.
• Metric system adopted.
• La Marseilles French national anthem and tricolor flag introduced.
• Free primary school education for all.
• Napoleonic French civil law code was adopted.