Aims and methods of the French Revolution

FRQ: Discussing the reasons for the changing aims and methods of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution was a period of radical reform among the government and bourgeoisie that was initiated by the largest of the three estates to eliminate the unfair treatment that they were subjected to. The Third Estate was comprised of peasants and commoners that were being heavily taxed, while the nobles and bourgeoisie enjoyed a life of luxury with tax exemptions and political benefits like voting. In the beginning of the French Revolution, it was the Third Estate that had the most grievances against the government’s political and economic control, and being comprised of mostly peasant folk, they had little jurisdiction to address these grievances unlike the noble and political based bourgeoisie.

France, like many European countries, had engaged itself in a large number of wars for centuries, and to pay for the cost of the wars, the Third Estate made the largest contribution to paying off these debts of war. The nobles and bourgeoisie were undoubtedly wealthier compared to the Third Estate that bore the weight of the wars and payed for the wages of government officials who did little to ease the suffering of the common people. The Third Estate suffered far more than unequal divisions of taxation. As a result of the debts of war not being able to be paid by the efforts of the Third Estate alone, the prices of regular staples escalated beyond their ability to pay for the daily bread on which they survived on. With the inflation of grain and bread prices, women were angered to see their children deprived of food and safety that the government was supposed to provide. The Women’s March in 1789 was a result of that anger towards the government and their neglect to repair their broken economy.

The political control of the Third Estate was insignificant when compared to the First and Second Estates. From the outlook of the Third Estate, they had ample reasons to revolt against the government. King Louis XVI was the absolute monarch that saw to the punishment of the Third Estate after they had established their own National Assembly by locking the representatives out of the meeting completely. Now they had no way in which to present their grievances to the state, so two factions were created to help in the reformation of their compromised government: the Jacobins and the Girondins. While both of the factions were considered radical, it was the Jacobins that held the most influence over the people. The Girondins encouraged diplomacy to resolve their problems with the state in contrast to the Jacobins who influenced bloodshed and physical violence. An official of the Jacobins and a member of the Committee of Public Safety, Maximilien Robespierre, seized power in 1791 and unleashed a storm of political confusion and death.This radical stage of violence and political control is also known as the Reign of Terror. Because of the general mistreatment of the Third Estate, they were forced into initiating the revolution to obtain the rights that they should have been allowed regardless of status.