Highlights of material covered in lecture.

1. History of Europe:
Renaissance to 1815

2. 1st. What is the third estate?
Everything.
2nd. What has it been
heretofore in the political
order?
Nothing.
3rd. What does it demand?
To become something
therein.
∼ Abbé Sieyès,(1789)

3. French Revolution
5 May: Calling Estates-General
20 June: Tennis Court Oath
14 July: Storming the Bastille
5-6 October: March on Versailles
10 August: Overthrow of the Monarchy
27 July: Execution of Robespierre
28 July: End of Reign of Terror
9-10 November: Coup de 18 Brumaire
20 June: Royal Family attempts to flee
17 July: Champs de mars massacre
21 January: Execution of the King
5 September: Reign of Terror Begins
16 October: Execution of the Queen
22 August: Constitution of Year III
31 October: 1st Directory formed
1789
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1799

4. The Ancien Régime
Prelude to the Revolution

5. Ancien Régime
• France during the Ancien Régime
• Paris in the 18th c.
• 2nd largest city in Europe
• 600,000 people
• Construction of major buildings
• Center of Enlightenment
• Center of French Revolution
• But also site of desperate poverty
View of Paris from the Pont Neuf (1763)

6. Place Royale, oldest planned square in France, 1709
Ancien Régime
• Paris under Louis XIV
• Moved palace to Versailles in 1671
• Court moved in 1682
• Continued the building projects
• Wanted Paris to be “the new
Rome”
• Decorated Paris with
• New squares
• Monuments
• Large buildings
• Churches

7. Ancien Régime • Paris under Louis XIV
• Demolished city walls, built celebratory gates
Porte Saint-Denis

8. Ancien Régime
• Paris under Louis XIV
• Monumental Squares to commemorate
military victories

9. Ancien Régime
• Paris under Louis XIV
• Built Hôtel des Invalides for wounded
soldiers – a residence & hospital
Louis XIV makes his last visit to Paris to see the new dome of Les Invalides (1706)

10. Ancien
Régime
• Paris under Louis XIV
• Despite the grandeur of new buildings & monuments
• Center of city was dark, overcrowded, unhealthy
• Little light, air, or drinking water
• Dangerous, despite precautions
• Hanging street lanterns & enlarged police night
watch to 400
"We blush with shame to see the public markets, set up
in narrow streets, displaying their filth, spreading
infection, and causing continual disorders… Immense
neighborhoods need public places. The center of the city
is dark, cramped, hideous, something from the time of
the most shameful barbarism.”
Voltaire, 1749

11. Ancien Régime
• Paris under Louis XIV
• In 1692-93, bad harvest & famines
• Building of large ovens to bake bread for the
poor – bad distribution
• In 1708-09, another bad harvest, severe winter
• -4℉ in Paris, causing Seine to freeze for weeks
• Government announced creation of workshops
for the poor
• 3 times as many applicants as jobs
• Riots spread throughout Europe
• Placards criticizing King appeared for 1st time
• On city gates, churches, & main squares

12. Ancien Régime
• Paris under Louis XV
• Came to the throne at age of 5
• Moved court from Paris to Versailles – 1722
• Built monuments in Paris, including:
• École Militaire – a military school
• Hôtel des Monnaies, Paris – a mint
• Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe – a theater
• Constructed for Comédie-Française
• Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons – a public
fountain

13. Ancien Régime
• Place Louis XV
• Today: Place de la Concorde
• Commissioned by Academy of Arts

14. Ancien Régime
• Paris under Louis XV
• Fontaine des Quatre-Saisons
• Huge, richly decorated fountain
• With only two waterspouts
• Purpose:
• Provide water to Parisians
• Advertise benevolence of Louis XV to the
people of Paris
• Critique by Voltaire:
• … what kind of fountain has only two faucets
where the water porters will come to fill their
buckets?
• Paris is … partly made of gold and partly
made of muck.

15. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Nobility
• Strict class structure
"There are in Paris eight distinct
classes; the princes and great
nobles (these are the least
numerous); the Nobles of the
Robe; the financiers; the traders
and merchants; the artists; the
craftsmen; the manual workers;
the servants; and the bas peuple
(lower class).”
- Louis-Sébastien Mercier in the Le
Tableau de Paris, 1783 Hotel de Brunoy, town house of the Duke de Brunoy,
seen from the Champs-Élysées (1779)

16. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Nobility
• 3-4% of the population
• Greatly expanded under Louis XIV
• Noblesse d’epee (nobles of the sword)
• Hereditary gentry & nobility
• Noblesse de robe (nobles of the robe)
• Appointed by the King for money or as
reward for service to the crown

17. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Nobility
• Lived in “fashionable” neighborhoods
• Often compelled to live at Versailles
• What exactly did they do?
• Often depicted as wealthy, non-productive
• Leisure-loving, disconnected from realities
of French society
• Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)
• Aristocratic elite obsessed with intrigues,
manipulation, sexual conquest
• Often decadent behavior to relieve
boredom

18. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Nobility
• Industrious Nobles
• Before 1700, considered demeaning
to work
• Any form of trade or commerce
• Could even lose the title
• By mid-1700s, many nobles engaged
in business
• Others struggled to survive:
• Hobereaux – “old birds”
• Frustrated: arrogance with privilege
• Lacked wealth to live as they felt
entitled
• Same fundamental privileges

19. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Wealthy & Middle Class
• The Bourgeoisie
• Financiers, merchants, shopkeepers, artisans
• Professionals: lawyers, doctors, accountants,
teachers, government officials
• Specifically defined by law as
• Persons who’d lived in city for a year
• In their own residence
• Earned enough money to pay taxes
• About 14% of Paris households
Pastel of François de Jullienne and His Wife, 1743

20. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Wealthy & Middle Class
• The Bourgeoisie
• Played active role in each neighborhood
• Organized charitable & religious activities
• Ran corporations running local businesses
• Managed finances of parish churches
• 73% of middle class owned Paris property
• This group lived in Paris, other urban centers
• But not compelled to live at Versailles

21. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Workers, Servants, & the Poor
• Most Parisians were in this class
• 40,000 domestic servants working
largely for middle class
• Most migrated from the provinces to
Paris
• Low wages, long hours, competitive job
market
• Many worked at home, sewing, making
lace, embroidering, dolls, toys, other
products for the shops
A woman selling firewood, 1737

24. Ancien Régime
• The Parisians: Workers, Servants, & the Poor
• Indigents - unable to support themselves
• Elderly, widows with children, sick, handicapped &
injured
• Relied on religious charity or public assistance, if
available
• At least 1/3 of Paris, more in times of hardship
• Working class & poor lived in overcrowded regions
• Narrow, winding streets of central Paris
• Close to central market of Les Halles
• Or around the workshops, businesses
• When conditions worsened, the desperate flooded
these areas from poorer regions of France

26. Ancien Régime
• Peasants
• 82-88% of France’s population
• Poorest social class
• Vast majority tenant
sharecroppers or dayworkers
• Heavily taxed by the state
• Owed an annual tithe to the
Church
• These charges never waived or
reduced during hard times
• Lived outside Paris

27. It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times
The Three Estates:
Understanding the French Revolution

28. French
Revolution
• Prelude to Revolution:
• 1750s-1780s: Two state crises emerged
• Constitutional
• Financial
• Also growth of the bourgeoisie
• New wealth, new opinions, new demands
for share in power
• Undermining the older feudal social system
in France

29. French
Revolution
• Ancien Régime: The Old Order in France
• Social & political system
• Out of date given 18th c. realities
• Archaic patchwork of administration
• Created over years, through wars &
legislation & state-building
• But not an effective centralized state
• Frequent overlap of
• Administrative (including taxation)
• Legal, judicial & ecclesiastical divisions &
prerogatives

30. French
Revolution
• Estates of the Realm
• Systems for dividing society into separate groups
• Existing across Europe from medieval period to
early modern era
• In France, three “estates” or orders determined:
• Status & authority
• Whether & how much taxation
• Based on massive social injustices
• One of the key factors leading to revolution

31. French
Revolution
• Three “Estates” or Orders
• The Church, the Nobility, Everyone Else
Since the people is a body with several
heads, it is divided by orders, Estates, or
particular occupations. Some are dedicated
particularly to the service of God, others to
protecting the state by their arms, others to
nourishing and maintaining it through
peaceful occupations. These are our three
orders or Estates General of France: the
clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate
Charles Loyseau, “Treatise on Orders and Plain
Dignities” (1610)

32. The Three Estates
1st: the Clergy
2nd: the Nobility
3rd: Everyone else

33. French Revolution
• The Three Estates in Pre-
Revolutionary France
• Unjust Situation
• 27 million people
• Owned 2/3 of land
• But paid all the taxes

34. French Revolution
• The First Estate
• All clergy, divided into “high” and “low” clergy
• Upper: effectively the nobility of the clergy, from
families of the Second Estate
• 10% of First Estate
• Lower: divided among priests, monks, & nuns –
commoner class
• 90% of First Estate
• Paid no taxes

35. French Revolution
• The Second Estate
• The French nobility, divided into two groups
• Nobility of the Sword: oldest noble class in France
• Traditionally had more power, inherited through
generations
• Held official positions at court, & in provincial &
national govt.
• Nobility of the Robe:
• Originally given as rewards by King, then sold
• Less prestige, couldn’t carry a sword

36. French Revolution
• The Third Estate
• Considerable diversity – literally everyone
outside clergy, nobility
• Ranged from beggars & struggling peasants
• To urban artisans & laborers
• And shopkeepers, middle class, & prosperous
merchants & capitalists
• Played no role in government or decision-making
• Leading to building frustration among huge % of
population

37. French Revolution
• Social Injustice in the Ancien Régime
• Population of France in 1780s – approx. 26 million
• Of which 21 million lived in agriculture
• Few owned enough land to support a family
• Most forced to take on extra work on larger
farms
• Hunger a daily problem – poor conditions for
peasants

38. French
Revolution
• Social Injustice in the Ancien Régime
• Big part of the problem: taxation
• Ancien Régime’s taxation regime was excessive,
inefficient, unfair
• Excessive: among highest taxes in Europe
• Inefficient: “tax farmers”
• Unfair: bulk of taxes paid by 3rd Estate

39. French
Revolution
• Taxes in the Ancien Régime included
• Taille: direct land tax on the peasantry
• Based on amount of land they held, set by the King
on a yearly basis
• Major source of royal income
• Exempted: city of Paris, clergy, nobility, magistrates,
university professors & students
• Assessment & collection varied

40. French Revolution
• Other taxes in the Ancien Régime included
• Taillion: military tax
• Gabelle: national salt tax, unequal, hated
• Amount imposed varied from province to
province
• Capitation: tax on number of people in a
household
• Maltôte: used to raise needed money by
taxing consumer goods
• Dîme: Mandatory tithe with collected
money going to the Church

41. French Revolution
• Parlements
• Provincial appellate courts with 12 or
more members
• NOT legislative bodies
• Court of final appeal in the judicial system
• Power over range of subject matter,
especially taxes
• Crown’s laws, edicts not effective in a
province until published by the
province’s parlement
• Members – aristocrats inheriting or
buying the position

42. French Revolution
• Parlements
• 1789 – France had 13 parlements
• Most important in Paris
• Worked primarily to benefit their class
• In resisting reform, ultimately contributed
to revolution
• Civil trials – parties paid for “advice” of judges
• Out of reach for most French
Palace of Parlement of Brittany

43. French
Revolution
• Parlements
• Frequently blocked government’s attempts at
reform
• Including taxes on nobility
• Conflict often with Louis XV; worse under Louis XVI
• 1788 – attempt to centralize the government
• Abolished the parlements
• Which had refused to raise taxes requested by the
monarchy

44. French Revolution
• Day of the Tiles – June, 1788
• In Grenoble, Parlement of Dauphiné
• Declared laws abolishing parlements illegal
• Regiments sent to banish magistrates from
Grenoble
• Townsfolk supported Parlement magistrates
• Gathered to protest, many hurling tiles from
rooftop at soldiers
• Up to 10,000 rioters by end of day

45. French Revolution
• Day of the Tiles
• Mob seized control of city
• Magistrates asked to host special
session of the parlement
• Magistrates also disturbed by the
chaos
• As order restored, some older
magistrates left the city
• But younger ones used the event to
pressure for an assembly –
• First locally, then nationally

46. French Revolution
• Day of the Tiles
• Importance of the day
• First major breakdown of royal authority in
France
• First incident of mob violence & military
failure to contain it
• In many respects, “cradle of the revolution”
• Spelling trouble for the government in the
months ahead

47. The French Revolution
The Royal Treasury is Empty

48. French Revolution
• Louis XIV
• During 72-year reign, transformed
monarchy
• Golden age of art and literature
• Dazzling royal court at Versailles
• France established as a dominant
European power
• But wars and extravagance drained
its resources

49. French Revolution
• France’s involvement in imperial wars placed strain on Treasury
• By 1600, an imperial and European power
• 2nd largest imperial power
• Imperial rivalry meant bigger military
• Borrowed money, raised taxes
• To expand military
• And launch numerous wars
• By 1714, when Louis XIV died
• National debt = 2 billion livres
• Annual interest more than raised by taxes

50. French Revolution
• Louis XV and fiscal reform
• Cardinal Fleury: chief minister 1726-1743
• Period of recovery
• Fleury stabilized French currency
• Balanced the budget in 1738
• Focused on infrastructure
• Communication, transportation
• Most modern, extensive road network in world
• After Fleury’s death, Louis XV failed to continue
the policies

51. French Revolution
• After Fleury’s death, change in policies
• Tried to impose taxes on privileged classes
• Advice of Madame de Pompadour
• Met with fierce resistance from nobility, and
Louis XV backed off
• At his death in 1774, suffering of the Third
Estate growing worse

52. French Revolution
• Louis XV
• Ruled for 59 years
• Loved at first, contempt toward end
• Stubborn personality
• Mistaken foreign policy decisions
• Continued over-spending
• Considered to be dominated by his mistresses
• Especially Madame de Pompadour and
Madame du Barry

53. French Revolution
Deteriorating conditions
1770s & 1780s
Poor harvests, drought,
cattle disease,
skyrocketing bread
prices
Financial troubles
caused the
Awakened by Enlightenment
to demand more say in
government
Refused to solve those
financial issues without a say
And the popular
of the monarchy
Concerned with
parties, hunting,
luxury for themselves

54. French
Revolution
• Problem with the Monarchy
• In face of severe suffering by French
people
• French monarchy increasingly devoted
more time to personal interests
• At the expense of the ceremonial feature
of their position
• The rituals that embodied their power
• Little contact with subjects, and Versailles
less the center of intellectual life

55. French Revolution
• Louis XVI
• In 1774, inherited a throne with serious problems
• Just 20 years old – educated, not too bright
• Interested in mechanics & the applied sciences
• Ill-prepared to be king – and he knew it
• Lacked firmness or decisiveness
• Appointed officials to address financial problems

56. French
Revolution
• Louis XVI
• As King, focused on religious freedom &
foreign policy
• Edict of Tolerance in 1787 (aka Edict of
Versailles)
• Non-Catholics granted legal right to practice
their faiths
• Granted civil and legal status
• Radical financial reforms angered aristocracy
• Parlements declared monarchy had no right
to levy taxes

57. French Revolution
• Louis XVI
• Budget continued to suffer
• Supported American colonists during Revolution against Britain
• Expensive maintaining court at Versailles

58. French Revolution
• Marie Antoinette
• Daughter of Austria’s Maria Theresa
• Age 14 – married Louis XVI while still crown prince
• France and Austria long-time enemies
• Mixed reaction from the French people
• As Queen, became the face of an enemy to the people
• As an Austrian, as living in extravagance, for not giving France an heir
for 8 years

59. The French Revolution
The Libelles

60. French
Revolution
• Enlightenment & Challenging the Monarchy
• Weakened hold of traditional religion
• Particularly role of Catholic Church as a public
institution in France
• Moral code of ethics to guide behavior
• Separate from Church-taught morality
• And engaged with humanity, not focused on
next life

61. French
Revolution
• Enlightenment & Challenging the Monarchy
• Critical spirit of analysis, not just tradition
• Truths passed down for generations no longer enough
• Including routine hierarchies or religious “truths”
• Convinced that France had a role to play
• In leading Europe to progress & improvement

62. French
Revolution
• Enlightenment & Challenging the Monarchy
• Distinction between absolutism & despotism
• Once the belief sets in the monarchs are
despots
• Respect for the monarchy is lost
• Critical of unearned, unjustified privilege
• Disrespected monarchy, idle nobility
• Prepared the way for authority, transfer of
power to the people

63. French Revolution
• Enlightenment Ideas
• Had to be circulated
• To make an impact on broader
society
• Salons, academies, Masonic lodges
• Generally limited to targeted
audiences
• But offered alternative arenas for
learning, socializing French Masonic initiation ceremony

64. French
Revolution
• Lawyers’ Briefs, Scandal Sheets, & Pornographic
Novels
• Alternative channels for new ideas & criticisms
• People aspiring to be philosophes
• Or just wanting to make money off
Enlightenment ideas
• And lawyers making arguments in their
legal papers
• Arguing a new kind of sovereignty

65. French Revolution
• Grub Street Hacks
• Literary hacks or mediocre writers
• Who write for hire
• Term came out of London, but unique
significance in France
• Group of struggling writers
• Cobbled together a living via
• Underground journalism, pamphlet-writing,
education
• Spying on other intellectuals for the police
An English engraving depicting the gutter publishers of Grub Street

66. French
Revolution
• Grub Street Hacks
• Hatred of French social hierarchies
• Low social position meant exclusion from
prestigious institutions
• Difficult lives, alienation
• Bred an active hatred of the hierarchies of the
Ancien Régime
• Fueled the radicalism of the French Revolution
• Common French term for hack literature: libelle
• Hack writer: libelliste

67. French Revolution
• Grub Street Hacks – Libelles
• 1780s Paris – seedy short stories, plays,
pamphlets
• Contained vulgar & defamatory stories
• Usually targeted royalty, aristocrats, political
figures
• Many were pornographic in tone, content
• Use of crude humor, satire
• Focused on appearance, personal habits,
sexual proclivitiesThe King stumbles in on Marie Antoinette with his brother,
Count of Artois

68. French Revolution
• Libelles
• Range of literary forms
• Fliers or broadsheets
• Pamphlets, dramatic scripts, essays
• Collection of cartoons
• But all shared one trait:
• Slanderous & offensive subject matter
The frontispiece of
‘The Austrian Bitch and the Royal Orgy’, a 1789
opera

69. French
Revolution
• Libelles
• Essay collections as “true story”
• Compare to National Enquirer today
• Topics: the monarchy, nobles, goings-on at
Versailles
• Most simply repeated gossip, and made up
sources
• Filling a void – no press at Versailles, no
government reports
• Public told little about royal family
• These accounts went unchallenged

70. French Revolution
• Libelles
• State censorship in 18th c. France
• Lettres de cachet – signed by the King
• Could be used to imprison without a trial, not
appealable
• Ripe for abuse
• Used for criminal activity, but also to suppress
dissent
• As in case of libellistes
• Symbol of abuses of Ancien Régime monarchy
1759 Lettre de cachet signed by Louis XV and minister Louis Phélypeaux

71. French
Revolution
• Libelles
• State censorship in 18th c. France
• Smuggling – most libelles published in London
• Rousseaus du ruisseau – “Rousseaus of the
Gutter”
• Libellistes who rented rooms, printing
presses on Grub Street
• More focused on making money, not
revolution
• And often more from blackmail than sales

72. French Revolution
• Libelles
• Charles de Morande (1741-1805)
• One of the most notorious of the libellistes
• Attacked women as vigorously as men
• Alleged one aristocratic woman was having
sex with her butler
• Claimed women at Versailles were infected
with syphilis, causing teeth, eyebrows to fall
out
• Common people – might not relate to
philosophes, but this acceptable

73. French Revolution
• Libelles
• By 1789, majority focused on Marie Antoinette
• Before 1789, maybe 10% were directed at her
• Ridiculed by the Grub Street Hacks
• Foreigner, fashion-focused, slow to deliver a
royal heir
• Depicted as having an insatiable sexual appetite
• King said to be unable to satisfy her alleged
nymphomania

74. French
Revolution
• Libelles & Marie Antoinette
• One of the earliest: Essays on the Private
Life of Marie Antoinette
• Published 1781, appeared repeatedly
• Accused Marie Antoinette of treacherous,
immoral acts
• Dalliances with the king’s own brother
• Lesbianism, masturbation, wasteful
spending for its own sake
• Political intriguing against the king and the
French people

75. French Revolution
• Libelles & Marie Antoinette
• Often pornographic & detailed
• Orgies, lesbian scenes
• Devastating to reputation
• Humiliation of the royal family

76. French
Revolution
• Libelles and the Revolution
• Didn’t preach or incite revolution
• No cogent political criticism of the old order
• No outline for change
• Libelles reflected, reinforced declining respect &
affection
• For the monarchy, by holding them up to ridicule
• Louis XVI’s incompetence – couldn’t crush the
gutter press

77. French
Revolution
• The Lawyers & the Revolution
• Enlightenment ideas also spread by legal pleadings
• Which couldn’t be censored or suppressed
• The Jansenists
• Religious minority within the Catholic Church
• Perceived as a threat by Church & the government
• Thousands of legal briefs published, defending
Jansenists against attacks by government

78. French
Revolution
• The Lawyers & the Revolution
• King’s attempts to close regional parlements
• In midst of Seven Years’ War, parlements
resisting increased taxes
• Magistrates in the parlements could issue
“remonstrances”
• Expressing opposition to monarchy & policy
• Pulling on tradition that king ruled by
consent of parlements
• Note – not accepted by the monarchy
• Who claimed rule by Divine Right

79. French
Revolution
• The Lawyers & the Revolution
• King’s attempts to close regional parlements
• Conflict between king and Parlement of
Brittany
• Was monarch’s central government entitled
to rule a province
• That always had enjoyed substantial
autonomy
• Magistrates, members of press defended
autonomy in local affairs through
published arguments
• Louis XV – dissolved all 13 Parlements in bid
to centralize

80. French
Revolution
• The Lawyers
• Royal attempts to close regional parlements
• Louis XV – created new courts
• Louis XVI – recalled the old magistrates
• Though pledging support for the monarchy
• Magistrates declared their traditional
liberties against king’s reforms
• And claimed king needed to rely on
“publicity” – opinion of the public

81. French Revolution
• The Lawyers
• King’s response: beyond absolute divine monarchy
• Voltaire: advocated for “enlightened” absolutism,
that needed a strong, centralized government
• Especially in a large, complex society such as
France
• Other supporters advocated for modernization
• But modernization tarnished by the depictions of
a monarchy out of control

82. French
Revolution
• The Lawyers
• Lawyers’ petitions
• Depicted a monarchy over-stepping lines of
acceptability
• Behaving in a despotic way
• That there’s something called a nation with
traditional rights
• Not with individual liberties
• But certain traditions in how France was
governed
• And these were being violated by the monarchy

83. The French Revolution
The Affair of the Necklace

84. French Revolution
• Affair of the Necklace
• Louis XV
• Ordered an extravagant diamond
necklace for his mistress
• Madame du Barry
• Cost of about $14-15 million in
today’s value
• Louis XVI
• Refused to make the purchase for
Marie Antoinette
• Which left the jewelers hanging
with a gaudy, costly necklace

85. French Revolution
• Affair of the Necklace
• Enter Jeanne de la Motte
• Impoverished member of the nobility
• Sought assistance of Marie Antoinette, but
rejected
• But met - & started affair with – Cardinal de
Rohan
• Among other lovers
• De Rohan wanted nothing more than to win
approval of Marie Antoinette

86. French Revolution
• Affair of the Necklace
• The Scam worked both ways
• Against Cardinal and Marie Antoinette
• Forged letters to the Cardinal
• Secret night meeting with an imposter
• All convinced the Cardinal to buy the
necklace for the Queen
• De la Motte, husband kept money paid by
the Cardinal
• And the necklace given by the jewelers

87. French
Revolution
• Affair of the Necklace
• Jewelers complained of non-payment
• Rohan, de la Motte & her husband, the
prostitute, the forger
• All tried and convicted in public courts
• Rohan charged with lèse majesté, plotting
against Queen
• By identifying the prostitute as Marie
Antoinette
• Acquitted, and had the public’s sympathy

88. French
Revolution
• Affair of the Necklace
• From trials & notoriety, monarchy takes a hit
• Cardinal de Rohan portrayed as victim of the regime
• Crossing the line between absolutism, despotism
• Marie Antoinette, in particular, is vilified
• Believed she used the fraudsters as a way to get
even with a man she hated … de Rohan
• Became even more unpopular, even despised

89. French Revolution
• Libelles and the Affair of the Necklace
• Jeanne de la Motte’s Memoirs
• Blamed Marie Antoinette for the necklace affair
• Included rumors of Marie Antoinette’s behavior
• By 1789, libelles shaped public opinion
• Of the royal family, but of monarchy in general

90. French Revolution
• Affair of the Necklace
• Erosion of Monarchial Prestige
• Culmination of a century-long
onslaught against the monarchy
• Through a combination of
• Enlightenment philosophy
• Increased literacy rate
• Printing, especially of the libelles