French Revolution Begins
The French Revolution began in 1789 as a fiscal crisis and ended with a general crowning himself emperor. The state was bankrupt. Debt from the American war and a tax system that exempted the two privileged orders had produced a deficit that no minister could close, and the Estates General was summoned for May 1789 because everything else had been tried. Within seven weeks the third estate had declared itself the National Assembly and sworn not to disperse. The Bastille was stormed on 14 July, a fortress holding seven prisoners whose fall meant that the king could no longer use force in his own capital. The Assembly abolished feudal privilege on the night of 4 August and issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man later that month. Then it went further than most of the men who began it intended. The church's lands were nationalised and its clergy required to swear an oath; the king attempted to flee and was caught at Varennes; war was declared on Austria in April 1792; the monarchy was overthrown in August and Louis executed in January 1793. The Terror followed, then the Directory, then Bonaparte. What survived every reversal was the legal and administrative settlement: equality before the law, careers open to talent, the abolition of nobility, guilds and internal customs, the civil code, the metric system, and departments in place of provinces. Those were exported across Europe by French armies, and no restoration undid them. The question of when it ended has never been settled and probably cannot be. Some historians stop at Thermidor in 1794, some at Brumaire in 1799, some at Waterloo, and some argue that France spent the next eighty years and four more revolutions deciding which parts of 1789 it would keep.
- Year: 1789 CE
- Category: Political
