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French Revolution (part 1)
Part 1 of the French Revolution. From the Convocation of the Estates General to the storming of the Bastille. For extra coverage of the French Revolution outside the scope of the AP course, click here. Created by Sal Khan.
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- Do you know what happened to the King and Queen's children?(163 votes)
- I am a French History teacher and I can assure you they were not executed. Louis XVII died in prison probably of some illness at the age of 10. Rumors spread that he had been swaped for another boy but a DNA analysis proved them wrong in 2000.
Two other chlidren died young but it had nothing to do with the Revolution.
The eldest daughter was the only one to grow old. She was swaped for French prisoners at the age of 17 in 1795 and lived in exile in Austria, her mother's country.
None of them were executed beacause as children they were not considered responsible for the Nobilty and Royal Family's wrong doings.(57 votes)
- The poor paying the taxes while the wealthy pay very little, isn't that what is happening in America right now?(22 votes)
- Actually, the top 10% pay for like 40% of the taxes. Big misconception that lower/middle people pay more.(51 votes)
- France was in a bad position because of its wars against England. The Seven Years War, and definitely the American Revolution, must've drained ENGLAND significantly. Starvation and disease ran rampant is both countries, but even more in England: after all, France is significantly larger in size and less overpopulated. So what about France put it in such a position for revolution, when neighboring powers in similar crises were fine?(14 votes)
- In England, the people had more rights (relative to France) and the power of the Monarchy was more limited (following the Glourious Revolution in 1688). Thus there was more scope to work within the system and argue for political changes, rather than resorting to violence.(11 votes)
- What happened to the king ,queen and their children?(7 votes)
- King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed by the guillotine and their children were jailed, with the exception of Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrice, who died at 11 months old in 1787 and Dauphin Louis-Joseph, who died at 7 and a half years old before the Revolution officially began. (Both were because of tuberculosis). Two children were imprisoned with their mother and Dauphin Louis-Charles/ Louis XVII died while in the prison. His cause of death is not known completely and there is much controversy about whether it was illness or mistreatment or both. However, both of these children didn't die. The eldest child of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse-Charlotte, lived until the age of 74. She WAS prisoned with her other relatives BUT she was liberated in December 1795. She then went to Austria, her mother's homeland and where her maternal extended family lived, and stayed there until her death. *Fun fact- she was Queen of France at one point- but only for 20 minutes!
Hope this helps! :D(12 votes)
- why a tennis court?(7 votes)
- Because it was the only place they had access. Besides this, undoubtedly they needed space ;)(11 votes)
- Did Robespierre murder Marie Antoinette first or Louis XVI?(6 votes)
- Robespierre did not 'murder' anyone. He did cause a lot of people to be guillotined though. Louis XVI was executed before he became in charge, but he did speak at Louis XVI's trial, in favor of executing him and he also voted for killing him. Marie Antoinette was executed when he was in charge of the Committee of Public Safety, so I guess he did kill her.(10 votes)
- How big a role do you think the enlightenment played?(8 votes)
- The philosophies that the Enlightenment revolved around the idea that all men are created equal. The French Revolution also revolved that all men deserve the same rights because they are all created equal.(5 votes)
- at the last parts of the video, you said 1798 but the subtitle said 1789, which one's corect?(7 votes)
- 1789. Because it is the beginning of the French Revolution, and we don't here of napoleon bonaparte yet.(12 votes)
- what happened of the French nobility who WEREN'T killed by the common masses?(2 votes)
- They either fled to neighboring states or joined the revolution. Some might question, why would some members of the nobility join the anti-aristocratic revolution. Surprisingly, a lot of the nobles actually shared similar ideals with the revolutionaries who at times contested the vast power that the royalty, the clergy, and the most elite nobles had. The nobles, especially the minor ones, saw their chances to shine, and they would eventually make the bourgeoisie class at a later date. Furthermore, the nobles were pretty much the only educated class of the French society, so the republican government thought they could make use of this.(6 votes)
- I am a huge Oversimplified fan and I can gurantee you that everything he says is true(4 votes)
Video transcript
In this video we're going
to talk about the French Revolution. And what makes this especially
significant is that not only is this independence from a
monarchy-controlled empire, like in the American
independence, this is an actual overthrowing
of a monarchy. A monarchy that controls
a major world power. Depending on how you view it,
the American Revolution came first and kind of put out the
principles of self-governance and why do we need kings
and all of that. But the French Revolution was
the first time that those type of principles really took foot
in Europe and really overthrew a monarchy. So just to understand kind of
the environment in which this began, let's talk about what
France was like in 1789. Which most people kind of view
as the beginning of the Revolution. One, France was poor. Now, you wouldn't think that
France was poor, if you looked at Louis XVI, who was
king of France. If you looked at Louis XVI,
and the clothes he wore. If you looked at
Marie-Antoinette, his wife, they don't look poor. They lived in the palace of Versailles, which is ginormous. It's this massive palace, it
would compare to the greatest palaces in the world. They were living a
lavish lifestyle. Just in case you want to know
where this is, this is what's now almost a suburb of Paris. But at the time it was a village
20 or 30 kilometers away from Paris. So they don't seem to be poor. But the the actual government
of France is poor. And when I say poor,
they're in debt. They've just had two major
military adventures. One was the American
Revolution. They played a major part
in supporting the revolutionaries. Because they wanted to
stick it to their enemy, Great Britain. They wanted their empire
to shrink a little bit. So France sent significant
military help and resources. And you could imagine, that's
not a cheap thing when you're doing it across the
Atlantic Ocean. And even before the American
Revolution, the Seven Years' War that ended in 1763, this
really drained the amount of wealth that the French
government had. And for those of you who are
more American history focused, the Seven Years' War is really
the same thing as the French and Indian War. The French and Indian War was
the North American theater of the Seven Years' War. But the Seven Years' War is
the more general term. Because there was also a
conflict going on in Europe simultaneously. The French and Indian
War and it was just part of that conflict. And the Seven Years' actually
engulfed most of the powers of Europe at the time. So France had participated in
this, ended in 1763, you had the American Revolution. Both of these really just
drained the amount of funds that the government
itself had. At the same time, the French
people were starving. There was a generalized
famine at the time. They weren't producing enough
grain, people couldn't get their bread to eat. So you can imagine,
when people are starving they're not happy. And to kind of add insult to
injury, you would see your royals living like this. But even worse than the royals,
who you don't see every day, you saw
your nobility. Who is roughly a little over
1.5% of the population. But you saw the nobility really,
really, living it up. And the nobility, just so you
know, these are people with fancy titles who inherit land
and wealth from generation to generation. They don't dress too differently
from the king. And they essentially live in
smaller versions of the palace of Versailles. And if you're a peasant, you
work on their fields, do all the work, you send them
some of your crops and they pay no taxes. So from your point of view,
and it's not hard to understand why you would think
this, these are essentially kind of parasites who are
completely ignoring the fact that you are starving
and you're paying all of the taxes. You can imagine people weren't
too happy about that. And then to top it all off,
you had all of these philosophers hanging around
talking about the Enlightenment. And this is kind of the whole
movement where people, and authors, and poets, and
philosophers, are starting to realize that, gee, maybe
we don't need kings. Maybe we don't need priests to
tell us what it means to be good or bad. Maybe people could
essentially rule themselves all of a sudden. And obviously, the biggest proof
of the Enlightenment was the American Revolution. That was kind of the first
example of people rising up and saying, we don't need
these kings anymore. We want to govern ourselves. For the people, by the people. So you also had kind of
this philosophical movement going around. Now if you ask me my opinion of
what the biggest thing was, I think the people starving,
you can never underestimate what people are willing to do
when they're actually hungry. And, this is kind
of more from the intellectual point of view. People said, oh there's
Enlightenment movement here. So this is the state
of France. They had a financial crisis. So a meeting was called, kind
of an emergency meeting, of the major groups of France to
try to resolve some of these problems. It's a fiscal crisis,
people are starving, what do you do? So they called the Convocation
of the Estates-General. Let me write that down. Which was a meeting of the
three estates of France. Now what are the three
estates of France? You can really just view them
as the three major social classes of France. The First Estate
was the clergy. The Second Estate
is the nobility. And then the Third Estate
is everyone else. And this gives you a sense
of how skewed the power structure was. Because people kind of grouped
the power as OK, these are the three groups and maybe they can
vote against each other. But this was only 0.5% of the
population, this is 1.5% of the population, this was
98% of the population. But these people had equal
weight with these guys. But these people had the burden
of most of the taxes. These are the people who are
doing all the work, producing all of France's wealth,
dying in the wars. But these guys, despite their
small population, have more weight than everybody else. So you had the Convocation of
the Estates-General, where representatives of these three
estates met at the Palace of Versailles to essentially figure
out what to do about this fiscal crisis. Now obviously, these people
right here, the Third Estate, they were angry. They were like look, we've taken
the burden on ourselves for much of the recent
history of France. We're tired of you guys getting
away with not paying taxes and just kind of
leeching off of us. They were afraid that even more
of the tax burden was going to be put on them. And the nobility, or the king,
or the clergy, that they wouldn't have to make
sacrifices. So they came in already angry. And so they really wanted to
meet in one big room together. Because they actually had
roughly 600 representatives. Which only the king at the
last minute agreed to. Before, it was only going to
be equal numbers of them. These guys had 300 roughly. These guys had 300 as well. These guys were able to say,
hey we're 98% of the population, maybe we should
have at least 600 representative. But even there, they wanted
to meet in the same room. And essentially try to
make it so it's one representative, one vote. But obviously these other
estates, the clergy and the nobility, said no, let's
each vote as estates. And at the end of the day, these
guys lost. So they were essentially forced to kind of
organize independently as a Third Estate. So that made them
even angrier. So they met at an assembly hall
and said, if these guys are going to ignore us, not
only are we going to be in this room and start organizing
ourselves. But we're not going to call this
the Convocation of the Estates-General. We're going to declare
that we are the National Assembly of France. That we represent the people. We are essentially going
to become the parliamentary body of France. Instead of just being this
emergency Convocation of the Estates-General. And they actually got some
sympathy from some elements of the clergy and some elements
of the nobility. Now obviously, Louis XVI
was not amused by this whole turn of events. Here he was, he was an absolute
monarch, which means that he held pretty much all of
the power to do whatever he saw was fit. And all of a sudden you had this
group of upstarts taking advantage of this emergency
situation where he can't continue to buy as many silk
robes as he was before. They're taking advantage of
the situation to declare a National Assembly of France. To declare somehow that I'm
not an absolute monarch. That my power is going to be
taken by this assembly. So he wasn't happy. So when they took a break,
he locked the door of the assembly room. So they couldn't get in. And he said, oh I think
there needs to be some repairs in that room. Maybe you all can
assemble later. And that was kind of his
way of saying no. If you're declaring you're the
National Assembly of France, I'm not going to even
let you assemble. I'm not even going to let
you get in the room. So that clearly didn't do a lot
to make these guys, or in particular these guys,
any happier. People are hungry. These people are living
lavishly. They've already been
not allowed to vote in one room together. When they vote in their own
room, and declare themselves as representatives of the people
of France, which they really are, the king locks the
room, doesn't let them go in. So they go to an indoor tennis
court in Versailles. This is a picture of
it right here. This is an indoor
tennis court. And that gives you an idea of
how lavish Versailles was, that it had an indoor tennis
court in the late 1700s. And they proclaimed the
Tennis Court Oath. Where they proclaimed, not are
we only the National Assembly of France, but even more than
that, we all pledge to not stop until we create a
constitution of France. So they went from being
a National Assembly to essentially morphing into
a constituent assembly. We're going to create
a constitution. And they had sympathy from some
elements of the clergy and the nobility. So eventually Louis XVI,
he kind of saw the writing on the wall. The people are angry. And every time he tries
to mess with them, they only get angrier. And they only go to even
more extreme measures. So just to kind of make it seem
like he's going along, he says, OK that's cool, guys. Whatever you all want to do. Yeah, maybe I'm open to it,
we are in an emergency. And maybe it is unreasonable,
I have been a little bit unreasonable. So he lets them be, he lets
them assemble again. But while that's happening,
people start to notice that troops are converging
on Paris. And they're obviously being
sent there by the king. And not only are they just any
troops, a lot of the actual troops, even though they are
French troops, there under the authority of France's
military. They're actually
foreign troops. So, if you think about it, these
would be the ideal types of troops to put down any
type of insurgency, or any type of rebellion. Or even better, to go
in and dissolve the National Assembly. So people start getting
a little bit paranoid, you can imagine. Now on top of that, Louis XVI's
main financial adviser, Necker, Jacques Necker. He was sympathetic to the Third
Estate, to the plight of the Third Estate. And he said hey, Mr. King, I
think it's reasonable for you to essentially budget your
expenses a little bit better. And maybe a little bit less
of a lavish lifestyle. Considering the state of the
government's budget. And the state of the people of
France, they're starving. Why don't you do that
a little bit? But Louis XVI, instead
of taking his advice, he fired him. He fired the financial
adviser. So taken together, troops are
converging on Paris, you have this Tennis Court Oath, Louis
XVI has fired his adviser, people are going hungry. They're genuinely
going hungry. People in Paris said, the king
is going to try to suppress us again, this is no good. And especially if he does
it with troops, we have to arm ourselves. So they stormed the Bastille. This right here is a picture
of the Bastille. And this is most famous, when
you when you first learn about it, or maybe this is the first
time you're learning about it. They put political prisoners
there and they freed the political prisoners. But in reality, there
were only seven prisoners in the Bastille. So it's not like thousands and
thousands of political prisoners were being held there
and there were freed. The real value of the Bastille
to the revolutionaries, we could say, is that there
were weapons there. There was a major arms
cache there. And so by storming the Bastille
and getting the weapons, they all of a sudden
could essentially fend off any type of threat that the
troops would have. But this is also kind of the
very beginning of the real chaos of the French
Revolution. And as we're going to see over
the next several years, the chaos only gets worse
and worse. It's almost on a lot of levels
a lot worse than the American Revolution. Because what actually happened
in the cities and what fellow Frenchman started doing to do
each other was really on many levels barbaric. And you actually saw it here for
the first time, where the governor of the Bastille, the
guy who was in charge of it, he had the standoff between
the troops. And he eventually called
for a ceasefire. Because he's like, oh there's
too much bloodshed. But once the revolutionaries got
to him, they stabbed them, they cut his head off, and
they put it on a pike. Then they went back to the mayor
of Paris, they shot him. So clearly, things were really
getting out of hand. But most people associate the
storming of the Bastille as kind of the landmark event
of the French Revolution. Even today, people celebrate
Bastille Day. And that is July 14, 1789. So just to give you a sense
of how quickly all of this happened, the Convocation
of the Estates-General, that was in May. The Tennis Court Oath
was in June. And then in July, you have the
storming of the Bastille. And then in August, just to kind
of complete the idea that we are definitely in a
revolutionary period. The National Assembly, that
started off at the tennis courts with the Third Estate,
they declared their equivalent of the Declaration
of Independence. They declared their Declaration
of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Which was essentially their
version of the Declaration of Independence. And it essentially put
everything into question of what is life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness? I'm using words from the
American Revolution. But this was their Declaration
of Independence. It wasn't a constitution, it
was just a statement of the things that they think need
to govern any type of constitution or country. Or the ideas that any country
should be based on. So I'm going to leave
you there. We've really now started
the French Revolution. And now, you're going to see
that over the next several years, it's only going to get
bloodier and bloodier and even more complex. And when everything is said and
done, it's actually not going to end that
well in terms of giving people liberty.