The conmen, however, stole the necklace. The extravagance of the jewellery solidified the image of the Queen as a spendthrift, more interested in her own luxury than the welfare of France. Such slurs may not have led directly to the fall of the monarch, they nevertheless undermined the majesty and prestige of the Bourbons. Calonne recognised that these reforms would take time to be effective.
This would reassure lenders as to the solvency of the French state and allow it to borrow more money at better rates of interest. The Parlement refused to register the reforms and also demanded political change. Louis responded by exiling the Parlement.
A vigorous political debate emerged as the Parlement portrayed itself as the centre of resistance to royal despotism.
Brienne was dismissed and replaced by Necker. Necker persuaded the King to call the Estates General as a means of breaking the political deadlock. The Estates General, however, had not met since and represented a medieval view of how society functions. It was divided into three estates. The first represented the clergy, the second the nobility, whilst the third encompassed the mass of society in the commons.
Each estate held its own elections, which were accompanied by the drawing up of lists of grievances, the so-called cahiers de doleances , that the deputies were to present to the King.
Initially, each estate was to have the same number of deputies, but a pamphlet campaign prior to the elections forced the King to agree reluctantly to double the number of deputies of the Third Estate. A key work in the debate was the manifesto What is the Third Estate? What does it wish to be? Some two-third of the deputies voted to the Third Estates were professional men, lawyer, notaries or judges who had experience of public debate and oratory.
Each estate voted en bloc. It was, therefore, still possible for the First and Second Estate to unite to block proposals from the Third. This proved a recipe for political stalemate. Whilst liberal-minded nobles wanted to work with the Third Estate, their conservative colleagues refused to abandon voting by bloc and insisted on defending their social status.
The deputies of the Third Estate called on the First and Second Estate to unite with them to deliberate and vote in common, but they were ignored. On 12 and 19 June several priests left the First Estate to join the Third. No longer representative of commoners alone the Third Estate voted on 17 June to range itself the National Assembly. The King tried to reassert control over the Third Estate by locking it out it customary meeting place at the palace of Versailles on 20 June.
The deputies gathered in the royal tennis court and swore an oath not to disband until they had provided France with a written Constitution. This Tennis Court Oath was a direct challenge to the authority of the King. The power and authority of the King had been badly undermined. Orders had been issued on 26 June for regiments to march on Versailles and Paris, whilst the garrison of the Bastille was reinforced. Here the lawyer turned radical journalist, Camille Desmoulins, addressed the crowd and advocated insurrection.
Wearing green ribbons, a colour associated with liberty, the crowd ransacked guardhouses for weapons and warehouses for food. Crucially, the French Guards refused to intervene and many instead joined the crowd.
On 14 July attention turned to the Bastille. The Bastille was a prison, but, more importantly, it was also an arsenal.
The crowd that besieged the Bastille were more interested in seizing the guns and munitions stored there than freeing the prisoners.
The governor, the Baron de Launay refused initially to surrender the fortress and fired on the crowd. After some fighting the Bastille was surrendered. De Launay was stabbed to death, decapitated and his head paraded on a pike. The capital was in the hands of the revolutionaries. Louis XVI, meanwhile, was warned by his generals that his soldiers were unreliable and might not disperse the crowds in Paris.
Louis was forced to order his regiments to stand down and recalled Necker on 16 July. On 17 July he visited Paris with the National Assembly. At the city hall he was handed a tricolour cockade which blended the red and blue colours of the city of Paris with the white of the Bourbon monarch. Although Paris was, briefly, calm, unrest had now spread to the provinces and countryside. The National Assembly passed a series of laws in an effort to provide stability.
On 4 August noble deputies vied with each other to renounce their noble privileges. Sales contacts. Publishing contacts. Social Media Overview. Terms and Conditions. Privacy Statement. Login to my Brill account Create Brill Account. Email this content Share link with colleague or librarian You can email a link to this page to a colleague or librarian:.
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Export References. Abstract Metadata. Content Metrics. Sign in to annotate. Perhaps the most serious question about the proletariat, then, is why they will revolt. Marx believes that revolutions are spontaneous uprisings of exploited peoples. He does a plausible job of showing why the proletariat have reason to overthrow the current system, and even why they would eliminate private property if they succeeded.
What is less clear is what would motivate the original revolution. There is a jump between historical forces and individual agency that it may be hard to accept. The proletariat are unique in large degree because their conditions are so dire. It is worth considering whether Marx underestimates the power of such conditions to defeat, rather than motivate, oppressed peoples.
Marx argues that the property rights that the bourgeoisie wish to protect are actually bourgeois property rights. They protect bourgeois interests, as can be seen by the fact that only the bourgeoisie actually own property. Marx further argues that property itself is a social commodity. It belongs to people because of the social structure of society.
Thus, changing private property into communal property is really only changing the social character of property. It is not violating a personal claim. Counter-Revolutionary measures nobles, churchmen, Catholic peasants.
Sans-Culottes "no pants" shopkeepers, artisans, wage earners : not rev. Fear from other countries: Austria fought off, Aug. Louis XVI executed January Two bourgeois political parties: Jacobins strong central government; supported by Sans-Culottes vs. Girondins oppose government inference in business. Maximilien Robespierre: The Reign of Terror. Robespierre executed July 27, the 9th of Thermidor, according to the Republican calendar , ending Jacobin domination of the government.
New Republican Government: The Directory. Thermidoreans: bourgeois property owners; not sympathetic to commoners, massacre Jacobins.
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