The French Revolution The Revolution Begins 1789 Mr

The French Revolution The Revolution Begins - 1789 Mr Scully Preliminary Modern History

Outcomes for this Lesson Explain the reasons for the storming of the Bastille. Describe the response from the King. Analyse the reasoning for the Great Fear. Conduct source work.

The seeds of Revolution On 11 July 1789, with troops at key cities in anticipation, Louis XVI, acting under the influence of the conservative nobles of his privy council, dismissed and banished his finance minister, Jacques Necker, who had been sympathetic to the Third Estate, and completely reconstructed the ministry. Necker had been considered by many the man who had kept France afloat economically, preventing a serious collapse of its’ economy several times. The banishing of Necker also represented a return to older style conservative government by Louis – and this did not sit well with many citizens.

News of Necker's dismissal reached Paris in the afternoon of Sunday, 12 July. The Parisians generally presumed that the dismissal marked the start of a coup by conservative elements. Liberal Parisians were further enraged by the fear that a concentration of Royal troops brought to Versailles would attempt to shut down the National Constituent Assembly, which was meeting in Versailles. Crowds gathered throughout Paris, including more than ten thousand at the royal palace (later called the “Paris Mob”). Camille Desmoulins, a known freemason, successfully rallied the crowd by "mounting a table, pistol in hand, exclaiming: 'Citizens, there is no time to lose; the dismissal of Necker is the knell of a Saint Bartholomew for patriots! This very night all the Swiss and German battalions will leave the Champ de Mars to massacre us all; one resource is left; to take arms!'"

Storming of the Bastille The Paris mob, not only angry with Necker’s banishment, but also severely hungry because of the lack of food from poor harvests, took the law into their own hands. On July 14 th, 1789, the mob rioted and attacked the royal fortress prison called the Bastille. They saw the Bastille as a symbol of everything that was wrong with France. It was a symbol of the King and his government and the Paris mob wanted it destroyed. The Paris mob killed the governor of the prison, Marquis de Launay. The Soldiers in and around Paris refused to stop the attack, showing that King Louis XVI had also lost control of the army.

Intense fighting outside of the Bastille

The Aftermath The citizenry of Paris, expecting a counterattack, entrenched the streets, built barricades of paving stones, and armed themselves as well as they could, especially with improvised pikes. By the morning of 15 July the outcome appeared clear to the king as well, and he and his military commanders backed down. The Royal troops concentrated around Paris were dispersed to their frontier garrisons. Jean-Sylvain Bailly – leader of the Third Estate and instigator of the Tennis Court Oath – became the city's mayor under a new governmental structure known as the Commune de Paris. The king announced that he would recall Necker and return from Versailles to Paris.

The Bourbon Family’s Royal Coat of Arms, the prerevolutionary French National Flag, and the Tricolor, the revolutionary and current national flag of France. On 27 July, in Paris Louis accepted a tricolor flag and entered the Hôtel de Ville (the home of the Paris Mob) as cries of "Long live the King" were changed to "Long live the Nation".

The Great Fear Throughout France, peasants were also losing patience. They took part in widespread attacks on the chateaux and palaces of their lords. This peasant insurgency eventually merged into the movement known as the Great Fear. Rumours abounded that these vagrants were actually brigands in the pay of nobles, who were marching on villages to destroy the new harvest and coerce the peasants into submission. The fear was baseless, but hundreds of false alarms and panics stirred up hatred and suspicion of nobles, led peasants to arm themselves as best they could, and set off widespread attacks on châteaus and destruction of feudal documents.

“The whole country is in the greatest agitation. Many chateaux have been burned and others plundered. The lords hunted down like beasts. Their feudal documents burned. Their property destroyed. ” Source A - Arthur Young an eyewitness 1789. Source B - Farmers and Women gather arms outside of Paris, October 1789. What image do these sources convey? Explain your answer.