[1789 - 1799] The French Revolution

We begin in the year 1789. In the gilded halls of the Palace of Versailles, the air is thick with the scent of perfume and powdered wigs. Courtiers in silks and brocades glide across polished floors, their laughter echoing under frescoed ceilings. This is the world of King Louis XVI, a well-meaning but indecisive monarch, and his queen, the Austrian-born Marie Antoinette. They are the pinnacle of a society structured like a precarious, top-heavy pyramid. This was the Ancien Régime, the Old Order. At the very top, less than 2% of the population, sat the First Estate (the clergy) and the Second Estate (the nobility). They owned over a third of the land in France, held all the high-ranking positions in the military and government, and, most crucially, paid virtually no taxes. Beneath them, bearing the weight of the entire nation, was the Third Estate. This was everyone else, a staggering 97% of the population. It included wealthy merchants and lawyers, humble shopkeepers, and the vast majority—the peasants who worked the land. It was this Third Estate that paid the crushing taxes: taxes on land, on salt, on the bread that kept them alive. And in 1789, the price of bread was soaring. A series of poor harvests had left the people hungry, and hunger breeds anger. For a Parisian family, a simple loaf of bread could now consume up to 80% of their income. Meanwhile, the royal treasury was empty. Decades of extravagant spending and costly wars, including financially backing the American Revolution, had plunged France into catastrophic debt. Desperate, King Louis did something no French king had done in 175 years: he summoned the Estates-General, an ancient assembly of representatives from all three estates, to approve new taxes. But the Third Estate arrived in Versailles not just to discuss taxes, but with a burning desire for reform. They were educated men, lawyers and thinkers, filled with the new Enlightenment ideas of liberty, reason, and the rights of the common man. They saw the injustice. The voting system gave each estate one vote, meaning the clergy and nobility could always outvote the Third Estate, 2-to-1. They demanded change. They declared themselves the true voice of the nation—a National Assembly. When they found themselves locked out of their usual meeting hall on June 20th, they did not disperse. Instead, they crowded into a nearby royal tennis court. Amidst the stuffy, echoing space, they raised their hands and swore the "Tennis Court Oath," a solemn vow not to quit until they had written a constitution for France. It was a direct defiance of the King. The air in Paris crackled with tension. On July 14th, fearing the King would use his army to crush the new Assembly, the people took matters into their own hands. A mob of thousands surged towards the Bastille, a grim medieval fortress used as a state prison. To them, its stone walls were a terrifying symbol of royal tyranny. After a bloody, chaotic battle, the crowd stormed the fortress, tore it down brick by brick, and paraded the governor’s head on a pike through the streets. The Revolution had turned violent. In a flurry of revolutionary fever, the National Assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August. It was a radical document for its time, declaring, “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” It championed liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. The ideals of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”—Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood—became the rallying cry of the new France. But ideals couldn't fill empty stomachs. That October, thousands of Parisian women, furious over the continuing bread shortages, armed themselves with kitchen knives and farm tools and marched the 12 miles to Versailles in the pouring rain. They stormed the palace, a fearsome, determined mob, demanding the King return with them to Paris. The royal family was forced to comply, becoming virtual prisoners in the Tuileries Palace in the heart of the city, now at the mercy of its volatile citizens. The Revolution grew more radical. The King, feeling like a caged animal, attempted to flee with his family in June 1791. They were caught near the border at Varennes and brought back to Paris in disgrace. Any lingering affection the people had for their king evaporated. He was now seen as a traitor. War broke out with Austria and Prussia, who feared the revolution would spread. As the threat of foreign invasion loomed, paranoia and fear gripped Paris. In 1793, the radical faction known as the Jacobins, led by the intense, unyielding lawyer Maximilien Robespierre, seized control. The King was put on trial for treason and, on a cold January morning, executed by a new, terrifyingly efficient invention: the guillotine. The "national razor" became the symbol of a dark new phase. This was the beginning of the Reign of Terror. The Committee of Public Safety, with Robespierre at its head, was established to "protect" the Revolution from its enemies. But soon, anyone could be an enemy. A misspoken word, a complaint about the price of food, a lack of revolutionary enthusiasm—all could lead to a denunciation and a swift trip to the guillotine. Over the next year, at least 17,000 people were officially executed, and some 300,000 were arrested. The revolution, born of a desire for liberty, was now devouring its own children. The Terror could not last. In July 1794, Robespierre himself was overthrown and met the same fate as those he had condemned. France, exhausted by the bloodshed and chaos, stumbled into a period of uncertain rule by a five-man committee called the Directory. The government was weak, corrupt, and unstable. The nation craved order. And out of that chaos, a new figure was rising. A brilliant, ambitious young general from Corsica, who had won stunning victories for France in Italy and Egypt. His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1799, he saw his chance. In a swift coup d'état, he overthrew the Directory and seized power. The French Revolution was over. A decade of turmoil had ended, but it had irrevocably changed France and the world. The age of kings was dying, and the age of the citizen had begun, carried forth on the bayonets of Napoleon's armies.