The French Revolution Essay -- essays research papers

The french Revolution (1789-99) violently transformed France from a monarchical state with a cockeyed social hierarchy into a modern nation in which the social structure was loosened and power passed increasingly to the middle classes. There is considerable line of reasoning over the causes of the Revolution. Marxist scholars emphasize material factors as the population increased, food supplies grew short land had become divided into such small parcels that most Frenchmen lived beside to the subsistence level and after 1776 agricultural recession forced property owners to exploit their sources of revenue. Marxists also maintain that commercial prosperity had stimulated the growth of a moneyed middle class that threatened the position of the established landed aristocracy. Other social historians emphasize the importance of the growing discrepancy between reality and the legally defined social structure, which distinguished men by hereditary or acquired rank and recognized corp orate rather than individual rights. They also emphasize, however, the complexity of French society and question the importance of capitalism.The first phase of the Revolution was marked by moral and physical violence. The National Assembly established a recent legal structure by abolishing privileges, venality, and "feudal" obligations (August 4) formulating a Declaration of Rights (August 26) and specifying basic constitutional principles that left the king as the chief executive officer barely deprived him of any legislative power except a suspensive veto. In 1789-91, a comparatively peaceful period, the National Assembly did much to originate France. Despite the Declaration of Rights, the reformed franchise still excluded the poor but the public maintained its faith in freedom and unity. In 1791 the call for a clerical oath of loyalty crystallized the conflict between the modern reign and traditional loyalties and split the whole country. In 1791-92 the hard-won cons titution collapsed. On Apr. 20, 1792, the new Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria, which it believed to be instigating counterrevolutionary agitation and thus launched the French Revolutionary Wars. Born of this second revolution and briefly favored by military victory, the National Convention horrified Europe by establishing a republic (Sept. 22, 1792), inaugurating a policy of revolutionary war, and sendin... ...utions were nonetheless steady eroded until the creation of the First Empire (1804-15) ended the revolutionary period.The most concrete results of the French Revolution were probably achieved in 1789-91, when land was freed from customary burdens and the gaga corporate society was destroyed. The great reforms of 1789-91 nevertheless established an enduring administrative and legal system, and much of the revolutionaries work in humanizing the law itself was subsequently incorporated in the Napoleonic Code. Politically, the revolution was more significant than s uccessful. Since 1789 the French government has been either parliamentary and constitutional or based on the plebiscitary system that Napoleon patrimonial and developed. The Revolution nevertheless freed the state from the trammels of its medieval past, releasing such unprecedented power that the revolutionaries could defy, and Napoleon conquer, the rest of Europe. Moreover, that power acknowledged no restraint in 1793 unity was imposed on the nation by the Terror. Europe and the world have ever since been learning what infringements of liberty can issue from the concepts of national sovereignty and the will of the people.