1. The French Revolution
1789-1799
LifeLearn
4 October 2010
Session III Quatre-vingt-neuf (‘Eighty-nine)
I. Causes (6-36)
A. Political- a broken system
1. the monarchs
2. the aristocratic resurgence
B. Economic- agricultural and fiscal crisis
1. long and short term crop failures
a. bread
2. the tax system
3. military spending
C. Social- archaic class structure
1. new demands from the Third Estate
D. Intellectual- revolutionary ferment—as in session ii
II. Summoning the Estates General (37-60)
A. the Assembly of Notables
1. the aristocratic “revolution”
B. the process for the Estates General
1. the cahiers
a. Sieyès, What is the Third Estate?
2. elections
a. Mirabeau
3. convening at Versailles
a. Tennis Court Oath (20 June)
III. 14 Juillet (61-75)
A. immediate causes
1. the “foreign” regiments ordered to Paris
2. Necker’s dismissal
a. Camille Desmoulins
B. the day itself
1. the Prise
2. the violence afterwards
C. immediate consequences

2. IV. Jacquerie & la Grande Peur (76-83)
A. who was Jacques?
1. why? what? with what results?
B. the patrie en danger syndrome (Schama)
V. National Constituent Assembly (84-92)
A. the abolition of feudalism (4 August)
1. what exactly/
2. redemption
B. Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (26 August)
1. source/s?
2. comparison with U.S. Bill of Rights
C. chief constitutional thinkers
1. Jean Joseph Mounier
a. Monarchials
b. bicameralism
2. the Abbé Sieyès
a. unicameralist
b. royal veto-none? absolute? suspensive?
D. what sort of a constitution?
VI. Les Poissardes (93-107)
A. women and the Revolution
1. the political press
a. Jean-Paul Marat
B. the march on Versailles—5-6 October
1. Théroigne de Méricourt
2. Lafayette’s and the Guard
C. the attack
D. the outcome
jbp
11 September 2010