French Revolution Research Paper

The pivotal event of European history in the eighteenth century was the French Revolution. From its outbreak in 1789, the Revolution touched and transformed social values and political systems in France, in Europe, and eventually throughout the world. France's revolutionary regime conquered much of Western Europe with its arms and with its ideology. But not without considerable opposition at home and abroad. Its ideals defined the essential aspirations of modern liberal society, while its bloody conflicts posed the brutal dilemma of means versus ends.

The revolutionaries advocated individual liberty, rejecting all forms of arbitrary constraint: monopolies on commerce, feudal charges laid upon the land, vestiges of servitude such as serfdom,
He promised equality in taxation, civil liberties, and regular meetings of the Estates General at which, however, voting would be by order. France would be provided with a constitution, he pledged, "but the ancient distinction of the three orders will be conserved in its entirety." He then ordered the three orders to retire to their individual meeting halls. This, the Third Estate refused.

When the royal chamberlain repeated his monarch's demand, the deputies, spokesman dramatically responded: "The assembled nation cannot receive orders." Startled by the determination of the patriots, the king backed down. For the time being, he recognized the National Assembly and ordered deputies from all three estates to join it. Thus the French Revolution began as a nonviolent, "legal" Revolution.
IV. The Convergence of Revolutions

The political struggle at Versailles was not occurring in isolation. Simultaneously, the mass of French citizens, already aroused by elections to the Estates General, were mobilizing over subsistence issues. The winter and spring of 1788-1789 had brought severe economic difficulties, as crop failures and grain shortages almost doubled the price of flour and bread on which the population depended for subsistence. Unemployed vagrants and beggars filled the roads, grain convoys and marketplaces were stormed by angry consumers, and relations between town and country
Since it would take months to draft a constitution, the Assembly drew up a Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen to indicate the outline of its intentions. A rallying point for the future, the Declaration also stood as the death certificate of the old regime. It began with a ringing affirmation of equality: "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility."

The Declaration went on to proclaim the sovereignty of the nation as against the king or any other group, and the supreme authority of legitimate law. Most of its articles concerned liberty, defined as "the ability to do whatever does not harm another . . . whose limits can only be determined by law"; they specified freedom from arbitrary arrest; freedom of expression and of religion; and the need for representative government. The Declaration's concept of natural rights meant that the Revolution would be based on reason rather than history or