Prerequisites. 1787–1789

The French Revolution can be rightly regarded as the beginning of modern era. At the same time, the revolution in France was itself part of a broad movement that began even before 1789 and affected many European countries, as well as North America.

The "old order" ("ancien régime") was undemocratic by its very nature. The first two estates, the nobility and the clergy, who had special privileges, strengthened their positions, relying on a system of various kinds. state institutions. The reign of the monarch was based on these privileged classes. "Absolute" monarchs could only carry out such a policy and carry out only such reforms that strengthened the power of these estates.

By the 1770s, the aristocracy felt pressure from two sides at once. On the one hand, “enlightened” reforming monarchs (in France, Sweden and Austria) encroached on her rights; on the other hand, the third, unprivileged, estate sought to eliminate or at least curtail the privileges of the aristocrats and the clergy. By 1789 in France, the strengthening of the position of the king caused a reaction from the first estates, which were able to nullify the monarch's attempt to reform the system of government and strengthen finances.

In this situation, the French king Louis XVI decided to convene the States General - something similar to a national representative body that had long existed in France, but had not been convened since 1614. It was the convening of this assembly that served as the impetus for the revolution, during which the big bourgeoisie first came to power, and then the Third Estate, which plunged France into civil war and violence.

In France, the foundations of the old regime were shaken not only by conflicts between the aristocracy and royal ministers, but also by economic and ideological factors. Since the 1730s, the country has experienced a constant rise in prices caused by the depreciation of the growing mass of metallic money and the expansion of credit benefits - in the absence of an increase in production. Inflation hit the poor the hardest.

At the same time, some representatives of all three estates were influenced by enlightenment ideas. Famous writers Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau suggested introducing an English constitution and judicial system in France, in which they saw guarantees of individual freedoms and effective government. The success of the American War of Independence brought renewed hope to the determined French.

Convocation of the Estates General.

The States General, convened on May 5, 1789, faced the task of resolving economic, social and political problems who faced France at the end of the 18th century. The king hoped to reach agreement on a new system of taxation and avoid financial ruin. The aristocracy sought to use the Estates General to block any reforms. The Third Estate welcomed the convocation of the States General, seeing the opportunity to present their demands for reform at their meetings.

Preparations for the revolution, during which discussions about the general principles of government and the need for a constitution, continued for 10 months. Lists, the so-called orders, were compiled everywhere. Thanks to the temporary easing of censorship, the country was flooded with pamphlets. It was decided to give the third estate an equal number of seats in the States General with the other two estates. However, the question of whether the estates should vote separately or together with other estates was not resolved, just as the question of the nature of their powers remained open. In the spring of 1789, elections were held for all three estates on the basis of universal male suffrage. As a result, 1201 deputies were elected, of which 610 represented the third estate. May 5, 1789 at Versailles, the king officially opened the first meeting of the Estates General.

The first signs of a revolution.

The Estates General, without any clear direction from the king and his ministers, became bogged down in disputes over procedure. Inflamed by political debates taking place in the country, various groups took irreconcilable positions on issues of principle. By the end of May, the second and third estates (the nobility and the bourgeoisie) completely disagreed, and the first (clergy) split and sought to buy time. Between June 10 and 17, the Third Estate took the initiative and declared itself the National Assembly. In doing so, it asserted its right to represent the entire nation and demanded the authority to revise the constitution. In doing so, it disregarded the authority of the king and the demands of the other two classes. The National Assembly decided that if it were dissolved, the provisionally approved system of taxation would be abolished. On June 19, the clergy voted by a narrow majority to join the Third Estate. Groups of liberal-minded nobles also joined them.

The alarmed government decided to seize the initiative and on June 20 attempted to expel members of the National Assembly from the meeting room. The delegates, gathered in a nearby ballroom, then swore an oath not to disperse until the new constitution was enacted. On July 9, the National Assembly proclaimed itself the Constituent Assembly. The pulling of the royal troops to Paris caused unrest among the population. In the first half of July, unrest and unrest began in the capital. To protect the life and property of citizens, the National Guard was created by the municipal authorities.

These riots resulted in an assault on the hated royal fortress of the Bastille, in which the national guardsmen and the people took part. The fall of the Bastille on July 14 was a clear indication of the impotence of royal power and a symbol of the collapse of despotism. However, the assault caused a wave of violence that swept across the country. Residents of villages and small towns burned the houses of the nobility, destroyed their debt obligations. At the same time, the mood of “great fear” was spreading among the common people - panic associated with the spread of rumors about the approach of “bandits”, allegedly bribed by aristocrats. When some prominent aristocrats began to leave the country and periodic army expeditions began from the starving cities to the countryside to requisition food, a wave of mass hysteria swept through the provinces, generating blind violence and destruction.

On July 11, the reformist banker Jacques Necker was removed from his post. After the fall of the Bastille, the king made concessions, returning Necker and withdrawing troops from Paris. The liberal aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolutionary War, was chosen to command the emerging new middle-class National Guard. A new national tricolor flag was adopted, combining the traditional red and blue colors of Paris with the white of the Bourbon dynasty. The municipality of Paris, like the municipalities of many other cities in France, was transformed into a Commune - in fact, an independent revolutionary government that recognized only the power of the National Assembly. The latter assumed responsibility for the formation of a new government and the adoption of a new constitution.

On August 4, the aristocracy and clergy renounced their rights and privileges. By August 26, the National Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which proclaimed freedom of the individual, conscience, speech, the right to property, and resistance to oppression. It was emphasized that sovereignty belongs to the whole nation, and the law should be a manifestation of the general will. All citizens must be equal before the law, have the same rights in holding public office, and equal obligations to pay taxes. The declaration "signed" the death warrant to the old regime.

Louis XVI delayed with the approval of the August decrees that abolished church tithes and most feudal dues. On September 15, the Constituent Assembly demanded that the king approve the decrees. In response, he began to draw troops to Versailles, where the assembly met. This had an exciting effect on the townspeople, who saw in the actions of the king a threat of counter-revolution. Living conditions in the capital worsened, food supplies decreased, many were left without work. The Paris Commune, whose sentiments were expressed by the popular press, set up the capital to fight against the king. On October 5, hundreds of women marched in the rain from Paris to Versailles, demanding bread, the withdrawal of troops, and the king's move to Paris. Louis XVI was forced to sanction the August Decrees and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The next day, the royal family, which had become virtually a hostage to the gloating crowd, moved to Paris under the escort of the National Guard. The Constituent Assembly followed 10 days later.

Position in October 1789.

By the end of October 1789, the pieces on the chessboard of the revolution moved to new positions, which was caused both by previous changes and by accidental circumstances. The power of the privileged classes was over. Significantly increased the emigration of representatives of the highest aristocracy. The Church - with the exception of a part of the higher clergy - has tied its fate with the liberal reforms. The Constituent Assembly was dominated by liberal and constitutional reformers in confrontation with the king (they could now consider themselves the voice of the nation).

During this period, much depended on the persons in power. Louis XVI, a well-meaning but indecisive and weak-willed king, lost the initiative and was no longer in control of the situation. Queen Marie Antoinette - "Austrian" - was unpopular because of her extravagance and connections with other royal courts in Europe. The Comte de Mirabeau, the only one of the moderates who possessed the ability of a statesman, was suspected by the Assembly of supporting the court. Lafayette was believed much more than Mirabeau, but he did not have a clear idea of ​​the nature of the forces that were involved in the struggle. The press, freed from censorship and gaining considerable influence, has largely passed into the hands of extreme radicals. Some of them, such as Marat, who published the newspaper "Friend of the People" ("Ami du Peuple"), exerted a vigorous influence on public opinion. Street speakers and agitators at the Palais Royal excited the crowd with their speeches. Taken together, these elements constituted an explosive mixture.

A CONSTITUTIONAL MONARCHY

The work of the Constituent Assembly.

The experiment with constitutional monarchy, which began in October, has given rise to a number of problems. The royal ministers were not members of the Constituent Assembly. Louis XVI was deprived of the right to postpone meetings or dissolve the meeting, he did not have the right to initiate legislation. The king could delay laws, but had no veto power. The legislature could act independently of the executive and intended to exploit the situation.

The Constituent Assembly limited the electorate to about 4 million French total strength population of 26 million, taking as a criterion for an "active" citizen his ability to pay taxes. The assembly reformed local government, dividing France into 83 departments. The Constituent Assembly reformed the judiciary by abolishing the old parliaments and local courts. Torture and the death penalty by hanging were abolished. A network of civil and criminal courts was formed in the new local districts. Less successful were attempts to carry out financial reforms. The taxation system, although reorganized, failed to ensure the solvency of the government. In November 1789, the Constituent Assembly carried out the nationalization of church land holdings in order to find funds to pay salaries to priests, to worship, to educate, and to help the poor. In the months that followed, it issued government bonds secured by nationalized church lands. The famous "asssignats" rapidly depreciated during the year, which spurred inflation.

Civil status of the clergy.

The relationship between the congregation and the church caused the next major crisis. Until 1790, the French Roman Catholic Church recognized changes in its rights, status and financial base within the state. But in 1790, the assembly prepared a new decree on the civil status of the clergy, which in fact subordinated the church to the state. Church positions were to be filled on the basis of popular elections, and newly elected bishops were forbidden to recognize the jurisdiction of the papacy. In November 1790, all non-monastic clergy were required to take an oath of allegiance to the state. Within 6 months it became clear that at least half of the priests refused to take the oath. Moreover, the pope rejected not only the decree on the civil status of the clergy, but also other social and political reforms of the Assembly. A religious schism was added to the political differences, the church and the state entered into a dispute. In May 1791, the papal nuncio (ambassador) was recalled, and in September the Assembly annexed Avignon and Venessin, papal enclaves in French territory.

June 20, 1791 late at night, the royal family hid from the Tuileries Palace through a secret door. The whole journey in a carriage that could move at a speed of no more than 10 km per hour was a series of failures and miscalculations. Plans to escort and change horses failed, and the group was detained in the town of Varennes. The news of the flight caused panic and a premonition of civil war. The news of the capture of the king forced the Assembly to close the borders and put the army on alert.

The forces of law and order were in such a nervous state that on July 17 the National Guard opened fire on the crowd on the Champ de Mars in Paris. This "massacre" weakened and discredited the moderate constitutionalist party in the Assembly. Differences intensified in the Constituent Assembly between the constitutionalists, who strove to preserve the monarchy and public order, and the radicals, who aimed at overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a democratic republic. The latter strengthened their positions on August 27, when the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Prussia promulgated the Declaration of Pillnitz. Although both monarchs refrained from invading and used rather cautious language in the declaration, it was perceived in France as a call for joint intervention by foreign states. Indeed, it clearly stated that the position of Louis XVI was "the concern of all the sovereigns of Europe."

Constitution of 1791.

Meanwhile, the new constitution was adopted on September 3, 1791, and on September 14 was publicly approved by the king. It envisaged the creation of a new Legislative Assembly. The right to vote was granted to a limited number of representatives of the middle strata. Members of the Assembly were not eligible for re-election. Thus, the new Legislative Assembly threw aside the accumulated political and parliamentary experience with one blow and encouraged energetic politicians to be active outside its walls - in the Paris Commune and its branches, as well as in the Jacobin Club. The separation of executive and legislative power created the prerequisites for a deadlock, since few believed that the king and his ministers would cooperate with the Assembly. By itself, the Constitution of 1791 had no chance of embodying its principles in the socio-political situation that developed in France after the flight of the royal family. Queen Marie Antoinette after the capture began to profess extremely reactionary views, resumed intrigues with the Emperor of Austria and did not attempt to return the emigrants.

European monarchs were alarmed by the events in France. Emperor Leopold of Austria, who took the throne after Joseph II in February 1790, as well as Gustav III of Sweden, ended the wars in which they were involved. By the beginning of 1791, only Catherine the Great, the Russian Empress, continued the war with the Turks. Catherine openly declared her support for the King and Queen of France, but her goal was to bring Austria and Prussia into the war with France and to secure a free hand for Russia to continue the war with the Ottoman Empire.

The deepest response to the events in France appeared in 1790 in England - in the book of E. Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France. Over the next few years, this book was read all over Europe. Burke countered the doctrine of the natural rights of man with the wisdom of the ages, and the projects of radical reorganization with a warning about the high cost of revolutionary change. He predicted civil war, anarchy and despotism, and was the first to draw attention to the large-scale conflict of ideologies that had begun. This growing conflict turned the national revolution into a general European war.

Legislative Assembly.

The new constitution gave rise to irresolvable contradictions, primarily between the king and the Assembly, since the ministers did not enjoy the confidence of either the first or the second, and besides, they were deprived of the right to sit in the Legislative Assembly. In addition, the contradictions between the rival political forces escalated, as the Paris Commune and political clubs (for example, the Jacobins and the Cordeliers) began to express doubts about the power of the Assembly and the central government. Finally, the Assembly became the arena of struggle between the warring political parties- Feuillants (moderate constitutionalists), who were the first to come to power, and Brissotins (radical followers of J.-P. Brissot).

Key ministers - Comte Louis de Narbon (illegitimate son of Louis XV), and after him Charles Dumouriez (former diplomat under Louis XV) - pursued an anti-Austrian policy and viewed the war as a means of containing the revolution, as well as restoring order and the monarchy, relying on the army. In carrying out this policy, Narbon and Dumouriez became closer and closer to the Brissotins, later called the Girondins, since many of their leaders came from the Gironde district.

In November 1791, in order to bring down the wave of emigration, which had a negative impact on the financial and commercial life of France, as well as army discipline, the Assembly adopted a decree obliging emigrants to return to the country by January 1, 1792, under the threat of confiscation of property. Another decree from the same month required the clergy to take a new oath of allegiance to the nation, the law, and the king. All priests who refused this new political oath were deprived of their allowance and subjected to imprisonment. In December, Louis XVI vetoed both decrees, which was a further step towards open confrontation between the crown and the radicals. In March 1792, the king removed Narbonne and the Feuillants, who were replaced by the Brissotins. Dumouriez became Minister of Foreign Affairs. At the same time, the Austrian emperor Leopold died, and the impulsive Franz II took the throne. Militant leaders rose to power on both sides of the border. April 20, 1792, after an exchange of notes, which subsequently resulted in a series of ultimatums, the Assembly declared war on Austria.

War outside the country.

The French army turned out to be poorly prepared for military operations; only about 130 thousand undisciplined and poorly armed soldiers were under arms. Soon she suffered several defeats, the serious consequences of which immediately affected the country. Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the extreme Jacobin wing of the Girondins, consistently opposed the war, believing that the counter-revolution should first be crushed inside the country, and then fight it outside of it. Now he appeared in the role of a wise people's leader. The king and queen, forced in the course of the war to take openly hostile positions towards Austria, felt the growing danger. The war party's calculations to restore the king's prestige proved completely untenable. Leadership in Paris was seized by the radicals.

Fall of the monarchy.

On June 13, 1792, the king vetoed the previous decrees of the Assembly, dismissed the Brissotine ministers, and returned the Feuillants to power. This step towards reaction provoked a series of riots in Paris, where again - as in July 1789 - there was an increase in economic difficulties. On July 20, a popular demonstration was planned to celebrate the anniversary of the oath in the ballroom. The people submitted petitions to the Assembly against the removal of ministers and the royal veto. Then the crowd broke into the building of the Tuileries Palace, forced Louis XVI to put on the red cap of freedom and appear before the people. The king's boldness aroused sympathy for him, and the crowd dispersed peacefully. But this respite was short-lived.

The second incident took place in July. On July 11, the Assembly announced that the fatherland was in danger, and called to the service of the nation all the French who were able to bear arms. At the same time, the Paris Commune called on citizens to join the National Guard. So the National Guard suddenly became an instrument of radical democracy. On July 14, approx. 20,000 provincial national guards. Although the celebration of 14 July passed peacefully, it helped to organize the radical forces, which soon came out with demands for the deposition of the king, the election of a new National Convention and the proclamation of a republic. On August 3, the manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, the commander of the Austrian and Prussian troops, published a week earlier, became known in Paris, which proclaimed that his army intended to invade French territory to suppress anarchy and restore the power of the king, and the national guardsmen who resisted would be shot . The inhabitants of Marseille arrived in Paris to the marching song of the Army of the Rhine, written by Rouget de Lille. Marseillaise became the anthem of the revolution, and later the anthem of France.

On August 9, the third incident took place. The delegates of the 48 sections of Paris removed the legal municipal authority and established the revolutionary Commune. The 288-member General Council of the Commune met daily and exerted constant pressure on political decisions. Radical sections controlled the police and the National Guard and began to compete with the Legislative Assembly itself, which by then had lost control of the situation. On August 10, by order of the Commune, the Parisians, supported by detachments of federates, went to the Tuileries and opened fire, destroying approx. 600 Swiss Guards. The king and queen took refuge in the building of the Legislative Assembly, but the entire city was already under the control of the rebels. The assembly deposed the king, appointed a provisional government, and decided to convene a National Convention on the basis of universal male suffrage. The royal family was imprisoned in the Temple fortress.

REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT

Convention and War.

The elections to the National Convention, held in late August and early September, were held in an atmosphere of great excitement, fear and violence. After Lafayette deserted on August 17, a purge of the army command began. Many suspects were arrested in Paris, including priests. A revolutionary tribunal was created. On August 23, the border fortress of Longwy surrendered to the Prussians without a fight, and rumors of betrayal infuriated the people. Riots broke out in the departments of the Vendée and Brittany. On September 1, reports were received that Verdun would soon fall, and the next day the "September massacre" of prisoners began, which lasted until September 7, in which approx. 1200 people.

On September 20, the Convention met for the first time. His first act of 21 September was the liquidation of the monarchy. From the next day, September 22, 1792, the new revolutionary calendar of the French Republic began counting. Most of the members of the Convention were Girondins, heirs of the former Brissotins. Their main opponents were representatives of the former left wing - the Jacobins, led by Danton, Marat and Robespierre. At first, the Girondin leaders seized all the ministerial posts and secured for themselves the powerful support of the press and public opinion in the provinces. The forces of the Jacobins were concentrated in Paris, where the center of the branched organization of the Jacobin Club was located. After the extremists discredited themselves during the "September massacre", the Girondins strengthened their authority, confirming it with the victory of Dumouriez and François de Kellermann over the Prussians at the Battle of Valmy on September 20.

However, during the winter of 1792-1793, the Girondins lost their positions, which opened the way to power for Robespierre. They were mired in personal disputes, speaking first (which turned out to be disastrous for them) against Danton, who managed to win the support of the left. The Girondins sought to overthrow the Paris Commune and deprive the support of the Jacobins, who expressed the interests of the capital, not the provinces. They tried to save the king from judgment. However, the Convention, in fact, unanimously found Louis XVI guilty of treason and, by a majority of 70 votes, sentenced him to death. The king was executed on January 21, 1793 (Marie Antoinette was guillotined on October 16, 1793).

The Girondins involved France in the war with almost all of Europe. In November 1792, Dumouriez defeated the Austrians at Jemappe and invaded the territory of the Austrian Netherlands (modern Belgium). The French opened the mouth of the river. Scheldts for ships of all countries, thus violating the international agreements of 1648 that navigation on the Scheldt should be controlled exclusively by the Dutch. This signaled the invasion of Holland by Dumouriez, which caused a hostile reaction from the British. On November 19, the Girondin government promised "fraternal help" to all peoples who wanted to achieve freedom. Thus, a challenge was thrown to all European monarchs. At the same time, France annexed Savoy, the possession of the Sardinian king. On January 31, 1793, the doctrine of the "natural borders" of France was proclaimed through the mouth of Danton, which implied claims to the Alps and the Rhineland. This was followed by an order from Dumouriez to occupy Holland. On February 1, France declared war on Great Britain, ushering in the era of "general war".

The national currency of France depreciated sharply due to the fall in the value of banknotes and military spending. British Secretary of War William Pitt the Younger began an economic blockade of France. In Paris and other cities, there was a shortage of the most necessary, especially food, which was accompanied by growing discontent among the people. Furious hatred was caused by military suppliers and speculators. In the Vendée, a rebellion against military mobilization flared up again, which flared throughout the summer. By March 1793, all the signs of a crisis appeared in the rear. On March 18 and 21, Dumouriez's troops were defeated at Neuerwinden and Louvain. The general signed an armistice with the Austrians and tried to turn the army against the Convention, but after the failure of these plans, he and several people from his headquarters went over to the side of the enemy on April 5.

The betrayal of the leading French commander dealt a tangible blow to the Girondins. The radicals in Paris, as well as the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, accused the Girondins of complicity with the traitor. Danton demanded a reorganization of the central executive. On April 6, the Committee of National Defense, set up in January to oversee the ministries, was reorganized into the Committee of Public Safety, which was headed by Danton. The committee concentrated executive power in its hands and became an effective executive body that took over the military command and control of France. The Commune came to the defense of its leader, Jacques Hébert, and Marat, chairman of the Jacobin Club, who were persecuted by the Girondins. During May, the Girondins incited the province to revolt against Paris, depriving themselves of support in the capital. Under the influence of the extremists, the Paris sections established an insurgent committee, which on May 31, 1793, transformed the Commune, taking it under its control. Two days later (June 2), having surrounded the Convention with the National Guard, the Commune ordered the arrest of 29 Girondin deputies, including two ministers. This marked the beginning of the Jacobin dictatorship, although the reorganization of the executive did not take place until July. In order to put pressure on the Convention, an extremist cabal in Paris fomented the enmity of the provinces against the capital.

Jacobin dictatorship and terror.

Now the Convention was obliged to take measures aimed at appeasing the provinces. Politically, a new Jacobin constitution was developed, intended as a model for democratic principles and practice. In economic terms, the Convention supported the peasants and abolished all seigneurial and feudal duties without compensation, and also divided the estates of emigrants into small plots of land so that even poor peasants could buy or rent them. He also carried out the division of communal lands. The new land legislation was intended to become one of the strongest links that connected the peasantry with the revolution. From that moment on, the greatest danger to the peasants was the restoration, which could take away their land, and therefore no subsequent regime tried to annul this decision. By the middle of 1793, the old social and economic system had been abolished: feudal duties were abolished, taxes were abolished, and the nobility and clergy were deprived of power and land. A new administrative system was established in the local districts and rural communes. Only the central government remained fragile, which for many years was subjected to drastic violent changes. The immediate cause of the instability was the ongoing crisis provoked by the war.

By the end of July 1793, the French army was experiencing a series of setbacks, which posed a threat of occupation of the country. The Austrians and Prussians advanced in the north and into Alsace, while the Spaniards, with whom Pitt had made an alliance in May, threatened to invade from the Pyrenees. The revolt spread in the Vendée. These defeats undermined the authority of the Committee of Public Safety under Danton. On July 10, Danton and six of his comrades were deposed. On July 28, Robespierre entered the Committee. Under his leadership, the Committee during the summer ensured a turning point on the military fronts and the victory of the republic. On the same day, July 28, Danton became president of the Convention. The personal enmity between the two Jacobin leaders was mixed with a sharp clash with a new enemy - the Jacobin extremists, who were called "mad". These were the heirs of Marat, who was killed on July 13 by the Girondin Charlotte Corday. Under pressure from the "madmen," the Committee, now recognized as the real government of France, took tougher measures against profiteers and counter-revolutionaries. Although by the beginning of September the "mad" were defeated, many of their ideas, in particular the preaching of violence, were inherited by the left-wing Jacobins, led by Hébert, who occupied significant positions in the Paris Commune and the Jacobin Club. They demanded an increase in terror, as well as tighter government controls on supplies and prices. In mid-August, Lazar Carnot, who soon received the title of "organizer of the victory," joined the Committee of Public Safety, and on August 23, the Convention announced a general mobilization.

In the first week of September 1793 another series of crises erupted. A summer drought led to a shortage of bread in Paris. A plot to free the queen has been uncovered. There were reports of the surrender of the port of Toulon to the British. Hébert's followers in the Commune and the Jacobin Club renewed their powerful pressure on the Convention. They demanded the creation of a "revolutionary army", the arrest of all suspects, tightening price controls, progressive taxation, the trial of the leaders of the Gironde, the reorganization of the revolutionary tribunal to try the enemies of the revolution, and the deployment of mass repression. On September 17, a decree was adopted ordering the arrest of all suspicious persons by the revolutionary committees; at the end of the month, a law was introduced that set marginal prices for basic necessities. The terror continued until July 1794.

Thus, the terror was conditioned by the state of emergency and the pressure of the extremists. The latter used for their own purposes the personal conflicts of the leaders and factional clashes in the Convention and the Commune. On October 10, the constitution drafted by the Jacobins was officially adopted, and the Convention proclaimed that for the duration of the war the Committee of Public Safety would act as a provisional, or "revolutionary" government. The goal of the Committee was declared to be the exercise of rigidly centralized power, aimed at the complete victory of the people in the matter of saving the revolution and defending the country. This body supported the policy of terror, and in October held major political trials of the Girondins. The committee exercised political control over the central food commission, which was set up that same month. The worst manifestations of terror were "unofficial"; were carried out on the personal initiative of fanatics and thugs who settled personal scores. Soon, a bloody wave of terror covered those who held high positions in the past. Naturally, in the course of the terror, emigration intensified. It is estimated that about 129 thousand people fled from France, about 40 thousand died in the days of terror. Most executions took place in rebellious cities and departments, such as the Vendée and Lyon.

Until April 1794, the policy of terror was largely determined by the rivalry between the followers of Danton, Hebert and Robespierre. At first, the Eberists set the tone, they rejected the Christian doctrine and replaced it with the cult of Reason, introduced a new, republican calendar instead of the Gregorian, in which the months were named according to seasonal phenomena and were divided into three "decades". In March, Robespierre did away with the Héberists. Hebert himself and 18 of his followers were executed by guillotine after a speedy trial. The Dantonists, who sought to soften the excesses of terror in the name of national solidarity, were also arrested, and in early April they were convicted and executed. Now Robespierre and the reorganized Committee of Public Safety ruled the country with unlimited power.

The Jacobin dictatorship reached its most terrible expression in the decree of 22 Prairial (June 10, 1794), which accelerated the procedures of the revolutionary tribunal, depriving the accused of the right to defense and turning the death sentence into the only punishment for those who were found guilty. At the same time, the propaganda of the cult of the Supreme Being, put forward by Robespierre as an alternative to both Christianity and the atheism of the Eberists, reached its peak. Tyranny reached fantastic extremes - and this led to the rebellion of the Convention and the coup on 9 Thermidor (July 27), which eliminated the dictatorship. Robespierre, along with his two main assistants - Louis Saint-Just and Georges Couthon - were executed the next evening. Within a few days, 87 members of the Commune were also guillotined.

The highest justification for terror - victory in the war - was also the main reason for its end. By the spring of 1794, the French Republican army numbered approx. 800 thousand soldiers and was the largest and most efficient army in Europe. Thanks to this, she achieved superiority over the fragmented troops of the allies, which became clear in June 1794 at the battle of Fleurus in the Spanish Netherlands. Within 6 months, the revolutionary armies again occupied the Netherlands.

THERMIDORIAN CONVENTION AND DIRECTORATE. JULY 1794 - DECEMBER 1799

Thermidorian reaction.

The forms of "revolutionary" government persisted until October 1795, as the Convention continued to provide executive power based on the special committees it created. After the first months of the Thermidorian reaction - the so-called. "White Terror" directed against the Jacobins - the terror began to gradually subside. The Jacobin Club was closed, the powers of the Committee of Public Safety were limited, and the decree of 22 Prairial was annulled. The revolution lost momentum, the population was depleted civil war. During the period of the Jacobin dictatorship, the French army achieved impressive victories, invading Holland, the Rhineland and northern Spain. The first coalition of Great Britain, Prussia, Spain and Holland collapsed, and all the countries that were part of it - except Austria and Great Britain - sued for peace. The Vendée was pacified with the help of political and religious concessions, and religious persecution also ceased.

AT Last year the existence of the Convention, which got rid of the Jacobins and royalists, the key positions in it were occupied by moderate republicans. The Convention was strongly supported by peasants who were content with their land, by army contractors and suppliers, by businessmen and speculators who traded land and made capital from it. He was also supported by a whole class of new rich people who wanted to avoid political excesses. The social policy of the Convention was aimed at meeting the needs of these groups. The abolition of price controls led to a resumption of inflation and new disasters for the workers and the poor, who had lost their leaders. Independent riots broke out. The largest of these was the uprising in the capital on the Prairial (May 1795), supported by the Jacobins. The rebels erected barricades on the streets of Paris, captured the Convention, thereby hastening its dissolution. To suppress the uprising in the city (for the first time since 1789) troops were brought in. The rebellion was ruthlessly suppressed, almost 10 thousand of its participants were arrested, imprisoned or deported, the leaders ended their lives on the guillotine.

In May 1795, the revolutionary tribunal was finally abolished, and the emigrants began to look for ways to return to their homeland. There were even royalist attempts to restore something similar to the pre-revolutionary regime, but all of them were brutally suppressed. In the Vendée, the rebels again took up arms. The English fleet landed over a thousand armed royalist emigrants on the Quibron Peninsula on the northeastern coast of France (June 1795). In the cities of Provence in southern France, the royalists made another attempt at rebellion. On October 5 (13 Vendemière), an uprising of monarchists broke out in Paris, but it was quickly suppressed by General Napoleon Bonaparte.

Directory.

The moderate republicans, having strengthened their power and the Girondins, having restored their positions, developed a new form of government - the Directory. It was based on the so-called Constitution of the III year, which officially approved the French Republic, which began its existence on October 28, 1795.

The Directory relied on suffrage, limited by property qualification, and on indirect elections. The principle of separation of powers between the legislative power, represented by two assemblies (the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Elders), and the executive power, vested in the Directory of 5 people (one of which had to leave his post annually) was approved. Two-thirds of the new legislators were elected from the members of the Convention. The irresolvable contradictions that arose in relations between the legislative and executive authorities, apparently, could only be resolved by force. Thus, from the very beginning, the seeds of the coming military coups fell on fertile ground. The new system was maintained for 4 years. Its prelude was the revolt of the royalists, specially timed to coincide with October 5, swept away by Bonaparte with a "volley of buckshot." It was not difficult to assume that the general would put an end to the existing regime, resorting to the same means of forceful pressure, which happened during the "coup of 18 Brumaire" (November 9, 1799).

The four years of the Directory were a time of corrupt government inside France and brilliant conquests abroad. These two factors in their interaction determined the fate of the country. The need to continue the war was now dictated less by revolutionary idealism and more by nationalist aggression. In the agreements with Prussia and Spain, concluded in 1795 in Basel, Carnot sought to keep France practically within its old borders. But the aggressive nationalist doctrine of reaching "natural frontiers" spurred the government to lay claim to the left bank of the Rhine. Since the European states could not but react to such a noticeable expansion of the borders of the French state, the war did not stop. For the Directory, it became both an economic and political constant, a source of profit and a means of asserting the prestige necessary to maintain power. In domestic politics, the Directory, which represented the republican majority of the middle class, had to suppress all resistance from both the left and the right in order to preserve itself, since the return of Jacobinism or royalism threatened its power.

As a result, the internal policy of the Directory was characterized by a struggle along these two lines. In 1796, the "Conspiracy of Equals" was uncovered - an ultra-Jacobin and pro-communist secret society led by Gracchus Babeuf. Its leaders were executed. The trial of Babeuf and his associates created a new republican myth, which after some time acquired great attraction among the adherents of underground and secret societies in Europe. The conspirators supported the ideas of social and economic revolution - as opposed to the reactionary social policy of the Directory. In 1797, the Fructidor coup took place (September 4), when the royalists won the elections, and the army was used to annul their results in 49 departments. This was followed by the Floreal coup (May 11, 1798), during which the results of the election victory of the Jacobins were arbitrarily canceled in 37 departments. They were followed by the Prairial coup (June 18, 1799) - both extreme political groups strengthened in the elections at the expense of the center, and as a result, three members of the Directory lost power.

The Directory's rule was unprincipled and immoral. Paris and other major cities have earned a reputation as hotbeds of licentiousness and vulgarity. However, the decline in morals was not universal and ubiquitous. Some members of the Directory, primarily Carnot, were active and patriotic people. But it was not they who created the reputation of the Directory, but people like the corrupt and cynic Count Barras. In October 1795, he enlisted the young artillery general Napoleon Bonaparte to crush the rebellion, and then rewarded him by giving him his former mistress Josephine de Beauharnais as his wife. However, Bonaparte encouraged Carnot much more generously, entrusting him with the command of an expedition to Italy, which brought him military glory.

Rise of Bonaparte.

The strategic plan of Carnot in the war against Austria assumed the concentration of three French armies near Vienna - two moving from the north of the Alps, under the command of generals J. B. Jourdan and J.-V. Moreau, and one from Italy, under the command of Bonaparte. The young Corsican defeated the king of Sardinia, imposed the terms of the peace agreement on the pope, defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Lodi (May 10, 1796) and entered Milan on May 14. Jourdan was defeated, Moreau was forced to retreat. The Austrians sent one army after another against Bonaparte. All of them were destroyed one by one. Having captured Venice, Bonaparte turned it into an object of bargaining with the Austrians and in October 1797 made peace with Austria at Campo Formio. Austria handed over the Austrian Netherlands to France and, under a secret clause of the agreement, promised to cede the left bank of the Rhine. Venice remained with Austria, which recognized the Cisalpine Republic created by France in Lombardy. After this agreement, only Great Britain remained at war with France.

Bonaparte decided to strike at the British Empire, cutting off access to the Middle East. In June 1798 he captured the island of Malta, in July he took Alexandria and moved troops against Syria. However, the British naval forces blockaded his land army, and the expedition to Syria failed. Napoleon's fleet was sunk by Admiral Nelson in the Battle of Aboukir (August 1, 1798).

Meanwhile, the Directory was in agony due to defeats on the fronts and growing discontent within the country. A second anti-French coalition was formed against France, in which England managed to attract Russia, which had been neutral until that time, as an ally. Austria, the Kingdom of Naples, Portugal and the Ottoman Empire also joined the alliance. The Austrians and Russians drove the French out of Italy, and the British landed in Holland. However, in September 1799, the British troops were defeated near Bergen, and they had to leave Holland, while the Russians were defeated near Zurich. The formidable combination of Austria and Russia fell apart after Russia withdrew from the coalition.

In August, Bonaparte left Alexandria, avoiding a meeting with the English fleet guarding him, and landed in France. Despite huge losses and defeat in the Middle East, Napoleon was the only person who managed to inspire confidence in a country where power was close to bankruptcy. As a result of the elections in May 1799, many active opponents of the Directory entered the Legislative Assembly, which led to its reorganization. Barras, as always, remained, but now he has teamed up with the Abbé Sieyes . In July, the Directory appointed Joseph Fouche as Minister of Police. A former Jacobin terrorist, cunning and unscrupulous in his means, he began the persecution of his former comrades-in-arms, which prompted the Jacobins to actively resist. On the 28th fructidor (September 14) they made an attempt to force the Council of Five Hundred to proclaim the slogan "the fatherland is in danger" and to set up a commission in the spirit of Jacobin traditions. This initiative was prevented by Lucien Bonaparte, the most intelligent and educated of all Napoleon's brothers, who managed to postpone the discussion of this issue.

On October 16, Napoleon arrived in Paris. Everywhere he was met and hailed as a hero and savior of the country. Bonaparte became a symbol of revolutionary hopes and glory, the prototype of the ideal republican soldier, the guarantor of public order and security. On October 21, the Council of Five Hundred, sharing the enthusiasm of the people, elected Lucien Bonaparte as its chairman. The cunning Sieyes decided to involve him in a conspiracy he had long hatched to overthrow the regime and revise the constitution. Napoleon and Lucien saw Sieyes as a tool with which to clear the way to power.

The coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799) can be said to have been an "internal affair" of the Directory, since two of its members (Sieyes and Roger Ducos) led the conspiracy, which was supported by the majority of the Council of Elders and part of the Council of Five Hundred. The Council of Elders voted to move the meeting of both assemblies to the Parisian suburb of Saint-Cloud, and entrusted the command of the troops to Bonaparte. According to the plan of the conspirators, the meetings, terrified by the troops, would be forced to vote for a revision of the constitution and the creation of a provisional government. After that, three consuls would have received power, who were instructed to prepare a new Constitution and approve it in a plebiscite.

The first stage of the conspiracy went according to plan. The congregations moved to Saint-Cloud, and the Council of Elders was accommodating on the issue of revising the constitution. But the Council of Five Hundred showed a clearly hostile attitude towards Napoleon, and his appearance in the chamber of meetings caused a storm of indignation. This almost thwarted the plans of the conspirators. If not for the resourcefulness of the chairman of the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon could immediately be outlawed. Lucien told the grenadiers guarding the palace that the deputies were threatening to kill the general. He put a drawn sword to his brother's chest and swore to kill him with his own hand if he violated the foundations of freedom. The grenadiers, convinced that they, in the person of the zealous Republican General Bonaparte, were saving France, entered the chamber of the Council of Five Hundred. After that, Lucien hurried to the Council of Elders, where he told about the conspiracy that the deputies were plotting against the republic. The elders formed a commission and adopted a decree on temporary consuls - Bonaparte, Sieyes and Ducos. Then the commission, reinforced by the remaining deputies of the Council of Five Hundred, announced the abolition of the Directory and proclaimed the consuls a provisional government. The meeting of the Legislative Assembly was postponed to February 1800. Despite gross miscalculations and confusion, the coup of 18 Brumaire was a complete success.

The main reason for the success of the coup, which was greeted with joy in Paris and throughout most of the country, was that the people were extremely tired of the rule of the Directory. The revolutionary pressure finally dried up, and France was ready to recognize a strong ruler capable of ensuring order in the country.

Consulate.

France was ruled by three consuls. Each of them had equal power, they exercised leadership in turn. However, from the very beginning, Bonaparte's voice was undoubtedly decisive. The Brumaire Decrees were a transitional constitution. In essence, it was a Directory, reduced to the power of three. At the same time, Fouche remained Minister of Police, and Talleyrand became Minister of Foreign Affairs. The commissions of the two previous assemblies were preserved and worked out new laws at the behest of the consuls. On November 12, the consuls took an oath "to be loyal to the Republic, one and indivisible, based on equality, liberty and representative government." But the Jacobin leaders were arrested or expelled while the new system was being consolidated. Gaudin, who was entrusted with the important task of organizing the chaotic finances, achieved impressive results due to his honesty, competence and ingenuity. In the Vendée, a truce broke out with the royalist rebels. The work of creating a new basic law, called the Constitution of the VIII year, passed into the jurisdiction of Sieyes. He supported the doctrine that "trust must come from below and power from above."

Bonaparte had far-reaching plans. On the sidelines of the coup, it was decided that he himself, J.-J. de Cambaceres and Ch.-F. Lebrun become consuls. It was assumed that Sieyes and Ducos would head the lists of future senators. By December 13, the new constitution was completed. Electoral system formally relied on universal suffrage, but at the same time established a complex system indirect elections, excluding democratic control. 4 meetings were established: the Senate, the Legislative Assembly, the Tribunate and the State Council, whose members were appointed from above. The executive power was transferred to three consuls, but Bonaparte, as the first consul, towered over the other two, who were content with just an advisory vote. The constitution did not provide for any counterbalances to the absolute power of the first consul. It was approved by plebiscite in an open vote. Bonaparte forced the course of events. On December 23, he issued a decree according to which the new constitution was to come into force on Christmas Day. The new institutions began to operate even before the announcement of the results of the plebiscite. This put pressure on the voting results: 3 million votes in favor and only 1,562 against. Consulate opened new era in the history of France.

The legacy of the revolutionary years.

The main result of the activities of the Directory was the creation outside of France of a ring of satellite republics, completely artificial in terms of the system of government and in relations with France: in Holland - the Batavian, in Switzerland - the Helvetian, in Italy - the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Roman and Parthenopean republics. France annexed the Austrian Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine. In this way she enlarged her territory and surrounded herself with six satellite states modeled after the French Republic.

Ten years of revolution left an indelible mark on the state structure of France, as well as in the minds and hearts of the French. Napoleon was able to complete the revolution, but he failed to erase its consequences from memory. The aristocracy and the church were no longer able to restore their pre-revolutionary status, although Napoleon created a new nobility and concluded a new concordat with the church. The revolution gave birth not only to the ideals of freedom, equality, fraternity, popular sovereignty, but also to conservatism, fear of revolution and reactionary sentiments.

Literature:

Great French Revolution and Russia. M., 1989
Freedom. Equality. Brotherhood. The French Revolution. M., 1989
Smirnov V.P., Poskonin V.S. Traditions of the French Revolution. M., 1991
Furet F. Comprehension of the French Revolution. M., 1998
Historical sketches on the French Revolution. M., 1998

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Second Republic (-)
Second Empire (-)
Third Republic (-)
Vichy mode (-)
Fourth Republic (-)
Fifth Republic (c)

French revolution(fr. Revolution Francaise), often referred to as the "Great", represents a major transformation in the social and political systems of France that took place at the end of the 18th century, as a result of which the Old Order was demolished. It began with the capture of the Bastille in 1789, and various historians consider the coup of 9 Thermidor of 1794 or the coup of 18 Brumaire of 1799 to be the end of it. During this period, France from an absolute monarchy for the first time became a republic of theoretically free and equal citizens. The events of the French Revolution had a significant impact both on France itself and on its neighbors, and by many historians this revolution is considered one of the most important events in the history of Europe.

Causes

According to its socio-political structure in the 18th century, it was an absolute monarchy, based on bureaucratic centralization and a standing army. Nevertheless, between the royal power, which was completely independent of the ruling classes, and the privileged estates, there was a kind of alliance - for the renunciation of the clergy and nobility of political rights, the state power with all its strength and all the means at its disposal protected the social privileges of these two estates. .

Until some time, the industrial bourgeoisie put up with royal absolutism, in whose interests the government also did a lot, strenuously caring about "national wealth", that is, about the development of manufacturing and trade. However, it turned out to be more and more difficult to satisfy the desires and demands of both the nobility and the bourgeoisie, who, in their mutual struggle, sought support from the royal power.

On the other hand, feudal exploitation increasingly armed the masses against itself, whose most legitimate interests were completely ignored by the state. In the end, the position of the royal power in France became extremely difficult: whenever she defended the old privileges, she met with liberal opposition, which intensified - and whenever new interests were satisfied, a conservative opposition arose, becoming more and more every time. sharp.

Royal absolutism lost credibility in the eyes of the clergy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie, among whom the idea was asserted that absolute royal power is a usurpation in relation to the rights of estates and corporations (Montesquieu's point of view) or in relation to the rights of the people (Rousseau's point of view). The "Queen's necklace" scandal played some role in the isolation of the royal family.

Thanks to the activities of the enlighteners, of which the groups of physiocrats and encyclopedists are especially important, even in the minds of the educated part of French society, a revolution took place. There was a mass passion for the democratic philosophy of Rousseau, Mably, Diderot and others. The North American War of Independence, in which both French volunteers and the government itself took part, seemed to suggest to society that new ideas could be implemented in France.

General course of events in 1789-1799

background

After a number of unsuccessful attempts to get out of a difficult financial situation, Louis XVI announced in December that in five years he would convene the state officials of France. When Necker became minister for the second time, he insisted that the Estates General be convened in 1789. The government, however, had no definite program. At court, they thought about this least of all, at the same time considering it necessary to make a concession to public opinion.

On August 26, 1789, the Constituent Assembly adopted the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" - one of the first documents of bourgeois-democratic constitutionalism, which appeared in the very center of feudal Europe, in the "classical" country of absolutism. The “old regime”, based on class privileges and the arbitrariness of those in power, was opposed to the equality of all before the law, the inalienability of “natural” human rights, popular sovereignty, freedom of opinion, the principle of “everything that is not prohibited by law” and other democratic principles of revolutionary enlightenment, which have now become the requirements of law and current legislation. The Declaration also asserted as a natural right the right of private property.

-October 6, the March on Versailles to the residence of the king took place in order to force Louis XVI to sanction the decrees and the Declaration, the approval of which the monarch had previously refused.

Meanwhile, the legislative activity of the Constituent National Assembly continued and was aimed at solving the country's complex problems (financial, political, administrative). One of the first was administrative reform: seneschals and generalities were liquidated; The provinces were united into 83 departments with a single judiciary. The policy of economic liberalism began to assert itself: the removal of all restrictions on trade was announced; Medieval guilds and state regulation of entrepreneurship were abolished, but at the same time (according to the Le Chapelier law) workers' organizations - companions were banned. This law in France, having survived more than one revolution in the country, was valid until 1864. Following the principle of civil equality, the Assembly abolished class privileges, abolished the institution of hereditary nobility, noble titles and coats of arms. In July 1790, the National Assembly completed the church reform: bishops were appointed to all 83 departments of the country; all ministers of the church began to receive salaries from the state. In other words, Catholicism was declared the state religion. The National Assembly demanded that the clergy swear allegiance not to the Pope, but to the French state. Only half of the priests decided to take this step and only 7 bishops. The Pope responded by condemning the French Revolution, all the reforms of the National Assembly, and especially the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen".

In 1791, the National Assembly proclaimed the first written constitution in the history of Europe, approved by the people's parliament. According to it, it was proposed to convene the Legislative Assembly - a unicameral parliamentary body based on a high property qualification for elections. There were only 4.3 million “active” citizens who received the right to vote under the constitution, and only 50 thousand electors who elected deputies. Deputies of the National Assembly could not be elected to the new parliament either.

The king, meanwhile, was inactive. On June 20, 1791, he, however, tried to escape from the country, but was recognized at the border (Varenne) by a postal employee, returned to Paris, where he actually ended up in custody in his own palace (the so-called "Varenne Crisis").

On October 1, 1791, in accordance with the constitution, the Legislative Assembly opened. This fact testified to the establishment of a limited monarchy in the country. For the first time at its meetings, the issue of unleashing a war in Europe was raised, primarily as a means of solving internal problems. The Legislative Assembly confirmed the existence of a state church in the country. But in general, his activities turned out to be ineffective, which, in turn, provoked the French radicals to continue the revolution.

In conditions when the demands of the majority of the population were not satisfied, society was going through a split, and the threat of foreign intervention loomed over France, the state-political system based on the monarchical constitution was doomed to failure.

national convention

• On August 10, about 20,000 rebels surrounded the royal palace. His assault was short-lived, but bloody. The heroes of the assault were several thousand soldiers of the Swiss Guard, who, despite the betrayal of the king and the flight of most of the French officers, remained true to their oath and crown, they gave a worthy rebuff to the revolutionaries and all fell at the Tuileries. Napoleon Bonaparte, who was in Paris at that time, said that if the Swiss had an intelligent commander, they would have destroyed the revolutionary crowd that attacked them. In Lucerne, Switzerland, stands the famous stone lion - a monument to the courage and loyalty of the last defenders of the French throne. One of the results of this assault was the abdication of Louis XVI from power, the immigration of Lafayette.
• In Paris, on September 21, the national convention opened its meetings, Dumouriez repulsed the attack of the Prussians at Valmy (September 20). The French went on the offensive and even began to make conquests (Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine and Savoy with Nice at the end of 1792). The National Convention was divided into three factions: the Montagnard Jacobins on the left, the Girondins on the right, and the amorphous Centrists. There were no more monarchists in it. The Girondins argued with the Jacobins only on the question of the extent of the revolutionary terror.
• By decision of the Convention, citizen Louis Capet (Louis XVI) was executed for treason and usurpation of power on January 21.
• Vendée rebellion. To save the revolution, a Committee of Public Safety is formed.
• June 10 arrest of the Girondins by the forces of the National Guard: the establishment of the Jacobin dictatorship.
• 13 July Girondist Charlotte Corday stabs Marat with a dagger. Beginning of Terror.

• During the siege of Toulon, which had surrendered to the British, the young artillery lieutenant Napoleon Bonaparte especially distinguished himself. After the liquidation of the Girondins, Robespierre's contradictions with Danton and the extreme terrorist Hébert came to the fore.
• In the spring of the city, first Hebert and his followers, and then Danton, were arrested, brought to a revolutionary court and executed. After these executions, Robespierre no longer had rivals. One of his first measures was the establishment in France, by decree of the convention, of the veneration of the Supreme Being, according to Rousseau's "civil religion". The new cult was solemnly announced during a ceremony arranged by Robespierre, who played the role of the high priest of the "civil religion".
• The increase in terror plunged the country into bloody chaos, which was opposed by units of the National Guard who undertook the Thermidorian coup. Jacobin leaders, including Robespierre and Saint-Just, were guillotined and power passed to the Directory.

Thermidorian Convention and Directory (-)

After the 9th Thermidor, the revolution did not end at all, although for a long time there was a discussion in historiography as to what should be considered the Thermidorian coup: the beginning of the "descending" line of the revolution or its logical continuation? The Jacobin Club was closed, and the surviving Girondins returned to the Convention. The Thermidorians canceled the Jacobin measures of state intervention in the economy, liquidated in December 1794 the "maximum". The result was a huge increase in the cost of living, inflation, disruption of the food supply. The wealth of the nouveau riche opposed the disasters of the lower classes: they feverishly profited, greedily used their wealth, unceremoniously advertising it. In 1795, the surviving supporters of terror twice raised the population of Paris to the convention (12 Germinal and 1 Prairial), demanding "bread and the constitution of 1793", but the Convention pacified both uprisings with the help of military force and ordered the execution of several "last Montagnards". In the summer of the same year, the Convention drew up a new constitution, known as the Year III Constitutions. Legislative power was entrusted to not one, but two chambers - the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Elders, and a significant electoral qualification was introduced. Executive power was placed in the hands of the Directory - five directors elected by the Council of Elders from candidates presented by the Council of Five Hundred. Fearing that elections to new legislative councils would give a majority to the opponents of the republic, the convention decided that two-thirds of the "five hundred" and "elders" would be necessarily taken from the members of the convention for the first time.

When this measure was announced, royalists in Paris itself organized an uprising, in which the main part belonged to the sections, who believed that the Convention had violated the "sovereignty of the people." There was a mutiny on the 13th Vendemière (October 5); the convention was saved thanks to the diligence of Bonaparte, who met the insurgents with grapeshot. On October 26, 1795, the Convention dissolved itself, giving way to councils of five hundred and elders and directories.

In a short time, Carnot organized several armies, into which the most active, most energetic people from all classes of society rushed. Those who wanted to defend their homeland went into the army, and those who dreamed of spreading republican institutions and democratic orders throughout Europe, and people who wanted military glory and conquest for France, and people who saw in military service the best remedy stand out and exalt yourself. Access to the highest positions in the new democratic army was open to every capable person; many famous commanders came out at this time from the ranks of ordinary soldiers.

Gradually, the revolutionary army began to be used to seize territories. The directory saw the war as a means to divert public attention from internal turmoil and a way to raise money. To improve finances, the Directory imposed large monetary contributions on the population of the conquered countries. The French victories were greatly facilitated by the fact that in neighboring regions they were greeted as liberators from absolutism and feudalism. At the head of the Italian army, the directory put the young General Bonaparte, who in 1796-97. forced Sardinia to abandon Savoy, occupied Lombardy, took indemnities from Parma, Modena, the Papal States, Venice and Genoa, and annexed part of the papal possessions to Lombardy, which was turned into the Cisalpine Republic. Austria sued for peace. Around this time, a democratic revolution took place in aristocratic Genoa, which turned it into the Ligurian Republic. Having done away with Austria, Bonaparte advised the Directory to strike at England in Egypt, where a military expedition was sent under his command. Thus, by the end of the revolutionary wars, France owned Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, Savoy and some part of Italy and was surrounded by a number of "daughter republics".

But at the same time, a new coalition was formed against it from Austria, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey. Emperor Paul I sent Suvorov to Italy, who won a number of victories over the French and by the autumn of 1799 cleared all of Italy from them. When the external failures of 1799 joined the internal turmoil, the directory began to be reproached for having sent the most skillful commander of the republic to Egypt. Learning about what was happening in Europe, Bonaparte hurried to France. On Brumaire 18 (November 9), a coup took place, as a result of which a provisional government was created from three consuls - Bonaparte, Roger-Ducos, Sieyes. This coup d'état is known as the 18th Brumaire and is generally regarded as the end of the French Revolution.

Religion in revolutionary France

The periods of Reformation and Counter-Reformation were an era of upheaval for the Roman Catholic Church, but the revolutionary era that followed was even more tragic. This was largely due to the fact that, despite the polemical malice of Reformation theology, the opponents of the conflict of the 16th and 17th centuries still for the most part had much in common with the Catholic tradition. Politically, the assumption on both sides was that the rulers, even if they opposed each other or the church, adhered to Catholic traditions. However, in the 18th century a political system and a philosophical worldview emerged that no longer took Christianity for granted, but in fact clearly opposed it, forcing the Church to redefine its position more radically than it had done since the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.

Notes

Literature

General histories of the revolution- Thiers, Mignet, Buchet and Roux (see below), Louis Blanc, Michelet, Quinet, Tocqueville, Chassin, Taine, Cheret, Sorel, Olara, Zhores, Laurent (much translated into Russian);

• Manfred A. The Great French Revolution M., 1983.
• Mathiez A. French Revolution. Rostov-on-Don, 1995.
• Olar A. Political history of the French Revolution. M., 1938.
• Revunenkov VG Essays on the history of the Great French Revolution. 2nd ed. L., 1989.
• Revunenkov V. G. Parisian sans-culottes of the era of the Great French Revolution. L., 1971.
• Sobul A. From the history of the Great Bourgeois Revolution of 1789-1794. and the revolution of 1848 in France. M., 1960.
• Kropotkin P. A. The Great French Revolution
• New History A. Ya. Yudovskaya, P. A. Baranov, L. M. Vanyushkina
• Tocqueville A. de. The Old Order and Revolution Translated from French. M. Fedorova.

M.: Moscow Philosophical Fund, 1997

• Furet F. Comprehension of the French Revolution., St. Petersburg, 1998.
• popular books by Carnot, Rambaud, Champion (Esprit de la révolution fr., 1887) and others;
• Carlyle T., The French Revolution (1837);
• Stephens, "History of fr. rev.";
• Wachsmuth, "Gesch. Frankreichs im Revolutionszeitalter" (1833-45);
• Dahlmann, "Gesch. der fr. Rev." (1845); Arnd, idem (1851-52);
• Sybel, "Gesch. der Revolutionszeit" (1853 onwards);
• Hausser, "Gesch. der fr. Rev." (1868);
• L. Stein, "Geschichte der socialen Bewegung in Frankreich" (1850);
• Blos, "Gesch. der fr. Rev."; in Russian - op. Lyubimov and M. Kovalevsky.
• Actual problems of studying the history of the Great French Revolution (materials of the "round table" September 19-20, 1988). Moscow, 1989.
• Albert Saubul "The Problem of the Nation in the Course of Social Struggle during the French Bourgeois Revolution of the 18th Century"
• Eric Hobsbawm Echo of the Marseillaise
• Tarasov A. N. Necessity of Robespierre
• Cochin, Augustin. Small people and revolution. M.: Iris-Press, 2003

Links

• "French Revolution" original text of the article from ESBE in wiki format, (293kb)
• The French Revolution. Articles from encyclopedias, chronicle of the revolution, articles and publications. Biographies of political figures. Cards.
• Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Monographs, articles, memoirs, documents, discussions.
• The French Revolution. References on personalities of figures of the Great French Revolution, counter-actors, historians, fiction writers, etc. in scientific works, novels, essays and poems.
• Mona Ozuf. The history of the revolutionary holiday
• Materials on the French Revolution on the official website of the French Yearbook

The last decade of the 18th century was marked by an event that not only changed the existing order in a single European country, but also influenced the entire course of world history. The French Revolution of 1789-1799 became the preachers of the class struggle of several succeeding generations. Its dramatic events brought heroes out of the shadows and exposed anti-heroes, destroying the habitual attitude of millions of inhabitants of monarchical states. The main prerequisites and the French Revolution of 1789 itself are briefly described below.

What led to the revolution?

The causes of the French Revolution of 1789-1799 have been repeatedly rewritten from one history textbook to another and boil down to the thesis that the patience of that large part of the French population, which, in conditions of hard daily work and extreme poverty, was forced to provide a luxurious existence for representatives of the privileged classes.

Grounds for the revolution in France at the end of the 18th century:

• huge external debt of the country;
• unlimited power of the monarch;
• bureaucracy of officials and lawlessness of high-ranking officials;
• heavy tax burden;
• harsh exploitation of the peasants;
• exorbitant demands of the ruling elite.

More about the causes of the revolution

Louis XVI of the Bourbon dynasty headed the French monarchy at the end of the 18th century. The power of his crowned majesty was unlimited. It was believed that she was given to him by God by chrismation during the coronation. In making a decision, the monarch relied on the support of the smallest, but the most senior and wealthy residents of the country - the nobility and representatives of the clergy. By that time, the state's external debts had grown to monstrous proportions and became an unbearable burden not only for the mercilessly exploited peasants, but also for the bourgeoisie, whose industrial and commercial activities were subject to exorbitant taxes.

The main causes of the French Revolution of 1789 are the discontent and gradual impoverishment of the bourgeoisie, which until recently put up with absolutism, which patronized the development of industrial production in the interests of national welfare. However, it became more and more difficult to satisfy the demands of the upper classes and the big bourgeoisie. There was a need to reform the archaic system of government and National economy, choking on bureaucracy and corruption of government officials. At the same time, the enlightened part of French society was infected with the ideas of philosopher writers of that time - Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Montesquieu, who insisted that an absolute monarchy infringes on the rights of the main population of the country.

Also, the reasons for the French bourgeois revolution of 1789-1799 can be attributed to the natural disasters preceding it, which worsened the already difficult living conditions of the peasants and reduced the income of a few industrial productions.

The first stage of the French Revolution 1789-1799

Let us consider in detail all the stages of the French Revolution of 1789-1799.

The first stage began on January 24, 1789, with the convocation of the Estates General at the behest of the French monarch. This event was out of the ordinary, since the last time a meeting of the highest class-representative body of France took place at the beginning of the 16th century. However, the situation, in which the government had to be dismissed and a new chief financial officer, Jacques Necker, urgently elected, was an emergency and required drastic measures. Representatives of the upper classes set the goal of the meeting to find funds to replenish the state treasury, while the whole country expected total reforms. Disagreements began between the estates, which led to the formation of the National Assembly on June 17, 1789. It included delegates from the third estate and two dozen deputies from the clergy who joined them.

Formation of the Constituent National Assembly

Soon after the meeting, the king made a unilateral decision to cancel all the decisions adopted at it, and already at the next meeting the deputies were placed according to their class affiliation. A few days later, 47 more deputies joined the majority, and Louis XVI, forced to make a compromise, ordered the remaining representatives to join the ranks of the assembly. Later, on July 9, 1789, the abolished States General were reorganized into the Constituent National Assembly.

The position of the newly formed representative body was extremely shaky due to the unwillingness of the royal court to put up with defeat. The news that the royal troops were put on alert to disperse the Constituent Assembly stirred up a wave of popular discontent, which led to dramatic events that decided the fate of the French Revolution of 1789-1799. Necker was removed from office, and it seemed that the short life of the Constituent Assembly was drawing to a close.

Storming of the Bastille

In response to events in Parliament, an uprising broke out in Paris, which began on July 12, reached its climax the next day and was marked by the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. The capture of this fortress, which was in the minds of the people a symbol of absolutism and despotic power of the state, entered the history of France forever as the first victory of the insurgent people, forcing the king to admit that the French Revolution of 1789 had begun.

Declaration of Human Rights

Riots and unrest swept the whole country. Large-scale peasant uprisings secured the victory of the French Revolution. In August of the same year, the Constituent Assembly approved the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen - a landmark document that marked the beginning of the construction of democracy throughout the world. However, not all representatives of the lower class had a chance to taste the fruits of the revolution. The assembly abolished only indirect taxes, leaving direct ones in force, and after a while, when the fog of romantic illusions dissipated, numerous townspeople and peasants realized that the big bourgeoisie had removed them from making state decisions, providing themselves with financial well-being and legal protection.

Hike to Versailles. reforms

The food crisis that broke out in Paris in early October 1789 provoked another wave of discontent, culminating in a campaign against Versailles. Under pressure from the crowd that broke into the palace, the king agreed to sanction the Declaration and other decrees adopted in August 1789.

The state headed for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. This meant that the king exercised his rule within the framework of existing legislation. The changes affected the structure of the government, which lost the royal councils and secretaries of state. The administrative division of France was greatly simplified, and instead of a multi-stage complex structure, 83 departments of equal size appeared.

The reforms affected the judiciary, which lost its corrupt positions and acquired a new structure.

The clergy, part of which did not recognize the new civil status of France, was in the grip of a split.

Next stage

The Great French Revolution of 1789 was only the beginning in a chain of events, including the attempted escape of Louis XVI and the subsequent fall of the monarchy, military conflicts with the leading European powers that did not recognize the new state structure of France, and the subsequent proclamation of the French Republic. In December 1792, a trial took place over the king, who found him guilty. Louis XVI was beheaded on January 21, 1793.

Thus began the second stage of the French Revolution of 1789-1799, marked by a struggle between the moderate party of the Girondins, seeking to stop the further development of the revolution, and the more radical Jacobins, who insisted on expanding its activities.

Final stage

The deterioration of the economic situation in the country as a result of the political crisis and hostilities aggravated the class struggle. Peasant uprisings broke out again, leading to the unauthorized division of communal lands. The Girondins, who colluded with the counter-revolutionary forces, were expelled from the Convention, the highest legislative body of the First French Republic, and the Jacobins came to power alone.

In the following years, the Jacobin dictatorship culminated in an uprising of the National Guard, which ended with the transfer of power to the Directory at the end of 1795. Her further actions were aimed at suppressing pockets of extremist resistance. Thus ended the ten-year French bourgeois revolution of 1789 - a period of socio-economic upheaval, which was brought to an end by a coup d'etat that took place on November 9, 1799.

French Revolution of 1789 and the fall of absolutism. The French Revolution of 1789-1794 played a special role in the process of establishing the constitutional order and new democratic principles of organizing state power. She is often called great. It was indeed such, because it turned into a truly popular revolution, both in terms of a wide range of its participants, and in terms of far-reaching social consequences.

The revolution in France, unlike all previous revolutions, shook the edifice of feudalism that had been built up over the centuries to its foundations. It crushed the economic and political foundations of the "old regime", including the absolute monarchy, which was a symbol and the result of the centuries-old evolution of medieval statehood.

Significance of the French Revolution in the 18th century is not limited to one country and one decade. It gave a powerful impetus to social progress throughout the world, predetermined the triumphant march around the globe of capitalism as an advanced socio-political system for its time, which became a new step in the history of world civilization.

Revolution 1789-1794 was essentially inevitable, since French society, which continued to bear the burden of feudal ideas and institutions, reached a dead end. The absolute monarchy could not prevent the steadily growing economic, social and political crisis. The main obstacle to the further development of France was precisely the absolute monarchy. It had long ceased to express national interests and more and more frankly defended medieval class privileges, including the exclusive rights of the nobility to land, the guild system, trade monopolies and other attributes of feudalism.

Absolutism, which had once played an important role in the economic, cultural, and spiritual development of the country, finally turned into the end of the 18th century. into the political stronghold of feudal reaction. By this time, the bureaucratic and military-police apparatus had become the basis of an absolutist state. It was used more and more openly to suppress the growing frequency of peasant revolts and the growing political opposition to royal power from bourgeois circles.

In the last third of the XVIII century. the anti-popular and stagnant character of absolutism became more evident. It was especially evident in the financial policy of the royal government. Huge sums from the state treasury went to cover the fabulous expenses of the royal family itself, to feed the top of the nobility and clergy, to maintain the outward splendor of the royal court, which became in the full sense of the word the “grave of the nation”. Despite the constant increase in taxes and other fees levied on the third estate, the royal treasury was always empty, and the public debt grew to astronomical proportions.

Thus, the French Revolution of the XVIII century. matured and proceeded in fundamentally different conditions than it took place in previous revolutions. The confrontation of the popular masses, headed by representatives of the bourgeoisie, with absolutism, the nobility and the ruling Catholic Church took on much sharper forms than it took place a century and a half ago in England. Realizing their growing economic strength, the French bourgeoisie reacted more painfully to class humiliation and political lack of rights. She no longer wanted to put up with the feudal-absolutist order, in which representatives of the third estate were not only excluded from participation in public affairs, but were not protected from illegal confiscations of property, did not have legal protection in cases of arbitrariness of royal officials.

Readiness for political action and revolutionary determination of the French bourgeoisie at the end of the 18th century. They also had certain ideological foundations. The political revolution in France was preceded by a revolution in the minds. Outstanding educators of the XVIII century. (Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, etc.) subjected the vices of the “old regime” to crushing criticism in their works. From the position of the school of "natural law" they convincingly showed his "irrationality".

French revolutionaries of the 18th century had the opportunity to rely on the experience of the English and American revolutions. They already had at their disposal a fairly clear program for the organization of a constitutional order. They also adopted political slogans (“freedom, equality, fraternity”), capable of rousing the third estate, that is, practically the broad masses of the people, to an uncompromising struggle against absolutism and the entire “old regime”.

The political platform of the third estate found its fullest embodiment in the famous pamphlet of Abbé Sieyes, What is the Third Estate? To this question, challenging absolutism, Sieyes confidently answered: "Everything." No less categorical was the answer to another question concerning the position of the third estate in public life: “What was it until now in the political system?” - "Nothing." Sieyes and other leaders of the third estate opposed the estate privileges of the clergy and nobility with the idea of ​​national unity and national sovereignty.

The revolutionary situation that arose in France in the late 80s. in connection with the commercial and industrial crisis, lean years and food riots, as well as the financial bankruptcy of the state, forced the royal government to go for reformist maneuvers. There were reshuffles in the government (change of general controllers of finance), it was also announced the convocation of the Estates General, which had not met since the beginning of the 17th century.

The king and the highest state nobility, blinded by the splendor of palace life and mired in court intrigues, finally broke away from French society. They had a poor idea of ​​the real political situation in the country, they did not know the true moods of their subjects. Expecting to find a way out of financial and political difficulties with the help of the States General, the king agreed to an increase in their representation from the third estate (up to 600 people), while the clergy and nobility still sent 300 delegates each.

The change in the number of deputies was supposed to be neutralized by maintaining the old order of voting by estates. But already in May 1789, after the opening of the Estates General, the delegates of the third estate, which were joined by some of the delegates from other estates, showed disobedience to the king. They demanded the holding of not class meetings, but joint meetings with decisions being made on the basis of a majority of votes of all deputies of the States General.

Behind the procedural conflict, during which the deputies of the third estate refused to make concessions to royal power, lurked a decisive challenge to absolutism.

Sieyes's pamphlet also spoke of the need for the adoption of constitutional, fundamental laws of France. The unanimous demand for a constitution was contained in most orders to the deputies of the Estates General. Some of them even provided that the adoption of the constitution should precede the solution of financial issues that were raised by the royal government. Seeing themselves as representatives of the entire nation, the rebellious deputies organized themselves first into National(June 17, 1789), and then (July 9, 1789) in Constituent Assembly. This emphasized its transformation into a classless, unified and indivisible national body, which set itself a revolutionary goal: to determine the foundations of a new, constitutional order for France.

The decisive actions of the leaders of the third estate were crowned with success because they expressed the prevailing political mood in the country and at a critical moment were supported by the revolutionary action of the broad masses of the people. In response to the plans of King Louis XVI to disperse the Constituent Assembly, the people of Paris rose up on July 14, 1789, which marked the beginning of the revolution and at the same time marked the end of centuries of absolutist rule.

Throughout the country, the insurgent people displaced the royal administration, replacing it with elected bodies - municipalities, which included the most authoritative representatives of the third estate. The loss of the royal power's ability to control the political events unfolding throughout the country against its will led to the transformation of the French state from an absolute monarchy into a kind of "revolutionary monarchy".

At the first stage of the revolution (July 14, 1789 - August 10, 1792), power in France was in the hands of a group of the most active deputies - Lafayette, Sieyes, Barnave, Mirabeau, Munier, Duport and others, who spoke in the States General on behalf of the French people and the name of the revolution. Objectively, they reflected the interests of the big bourgeoisie and the liberal nobility. They strove to preserve the monarchy, to lay a solid foundation of constitutionalism under the tottering edifice of the old statehood. In this regard, the leaders of the third estate in the Constituent Assembly were called constitutionalists.

The constitutionalists had as their main and immediate political goal the achievement of a compromise with the royal power, but at the same time they constantly experienced the “impact of the street” - the revolutionary-minded masses. Thus, the main content of the first period of the revolution was the intense and protracted struggle of the Constituent Assembly with the royal power for a constitution, for the reduction of traditional royal prerogatives, for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy.

Under the influence of the masses of the population, who were increasingly drawn into the revolutionary process, the constitutionalists carried out a number of anti-feudal transformations through the Constituent Assembly and developed important democratic documents.

The French Revolution

The French Revolution of 1789-1794 dealt a decisive blow to the feudal-absolutist system. She played an important role in the process of establishing the constitutional order and the new democratic principles of the organization of state power.

French Revolution of the 18th century gave a powerful impetus to social progress throughout the world, cleared the ground for the further development of capitalism as an advanced socio-political system for its time, which became a new stage in the history of world civilization. Revolution of 1789 - 1794 was a natural result of a long and progressive crisis of an absolute monarchy that had become obsolete and became the main obstacle to the further development of France. The inevitability of the revolution was predetermined by the fact that absolutism:

ceased to express national interests;

defended medieval class privileges;

defended the exclusive rights of the nobility to land;

supported the guild system;

established trade monopolies, etc.

At the end of the 70s. 18th century commercial and industrial crisis caused by crop failures famine led to increased unemployment, the impoverishment of the urban lower classes and the peasantry. Peasant unrest began, which soon spread to the cities. The monarchy was forced to make concessions - on May 5, 1789, meetings of the Estates General, which had not met since 1614, were opened.

On June 17, 1789, the assembly of deputies of the third estate proclaimed itself the National Assembly, and on July 9, the Constituent Assembly. An attempt by the royal court to disperse the Constituent Assembly led to an uprising in Paris on July 13-14.

2. The course of the French Revolution 1789 - 1794 conditionally divided into the following stages:

the second stage - the establishment of the Girondin Republic (August 10, 1792 - June 2, 1793);

The French bourgeois revolution went through three stages in its development: 1. July 1789 - August 1792 (the period of domination of the so-called constitutionalists (feuillants) - a bloc of the big financial bourgeoisie and the liberal nobility); 2. August 1792 - June 1793 (the period of domination of the Girondins - more radical layers of the large and medium commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, mainly provincial); 3. June 1793 - July 1794 (the period of domination of a broad bloc of revolutionary-democratic forces, the so-called Jacobins, objectively reflecting the interests of the petty, partly middle bourgeoisie, artisans, peasantry).

The day is considered the beginning of the first stage of the revolution. July 14, 1789 year, when the rebellious people stormed the royal fortress - prison Bastille, a symbol of absolutism. Most of the troops went over to the side of the rebels, and almost all of Paris was in their hands. In the weeks that followed, the revolution spread throughout the country. The people displaced the royal administration and replaced it with new elected bodies - municipalities, which included the most authoritative representatives of the third estate. In Paris and the provincial cities, the bourgeoisie created its own armed forces - the National Guard, the territorial militia. Each national guard had to purchase weapons and equipment at his own expense - a condition that closed access to the national guard to poor citizens. The first stage of the revolution became a period of domination by the big bourgeoisie - power in France was in the hands of a political group that represented the interests of the wealthy bourgeois and liberal nobles and did not seek to completely eliminate the old system. Their ideal was a constitutional monarchy, so in the Constituent Assembly they were called constitutionalists. Their political activities were based on attempts to reach an agreement with the nobility on the basis of mutual concessions. The beginning of the revolution. Fall of the Bastille 14 July 1789 The king and his entourage followed the developments in Versailles with anxiety and irritation. The government was gathering troops to disperse the Assembly, which had dared to declare itself Constituent. Troops were gathering in Paris and Versailles. Unreliable parts were replaced with new ones. People's orators in front of a huge crowd of people explained the threat that hung over the Constituent Assembly. A rumor spread among the bourgeoisie about the forthcoming declaration of state bankruptcy, that is, the intention of the government to cancel its debt obligations. The stock exchange, shops and theaters were closed. On July 12, news of the resignation of Minister Necker, who was ordered by the king to leave France, penetrated Paris. This news caused a storm of indignation among the people, who had been carrying busts of Necker and the Duke of Orleans through the streets of Paris the day before. Necker's resignation was taken as a transition of the counter-revolutionary forces to the offensive. Already in the evening of July 12, the first clashes between the people and government troops took place. On the morning of July 13, the alarm sounded over Paris, calling on the Parisians to revolt. In gun shops, in the House of Invalids, people seized several tens of thousands of guns. Under the onslaught of the armed people, government troops were forced to retreat, leaving quarter after quarter. By evening, most of the capital was in the hands of the rebels. On July 13, the Parisian electors organized a Standing Committee, later transformed into a commune - the Paris Municipality. The Standing Committee on the same day decided to form the National Guard - the armed force of the bourgeois revolution, designed to defend the revolutionary gains and protect bourgeois property. However, the outcome of the confrontation between the king and the deputies of the Constituent Assembly was not yet decided. The muzzles of the cannons of the 8-tower fortress-prison of the Bastille still continued to look towards the Saint-Antoine suburb. The Standing Committee tried to reach an agreement with the commandant of the Bastille, de Launay. Historians attribute the call for the storming of the Bastille to young journalist Camille Desmoulins. In the crowd they noticed how a detachment of dragoons proceeded to the fortress. The people rushed to the gates of the fortress. The garrison of the Bastille opened fire on the crowd that stormed the fortress. Once more blood was shed. However, it was already impossible to stop the people. An angry mob burst into the fortress and killed the commandant de Donet. People of various professions took part in the storming of the Bastille: carpenters, jewelers, cabinetmakers, shoemakers, tailors, marble craftsmen, etc. e. The capture of the stronghold of tyranny meant the victory of the popular uprising. Having formally acknowledged his defeat, the king, together with the deputation of the Constituent Assembly, arrived in Paris on July 17, and on July 29, Louis XVI returned the popular Necker to power.

The news of the success of the popular uprising quickly spread throughout France. Vox Dei swept like a punishing right hand over many royal officials who despised the people and saw in them only a stupid « black » . The royal official Fulong was hung from a lamp post. The same fate befell the mayor of Paris, Flessel, who slipped boxes of rags instead of weapons. In towns and cities, people took to the streets and replaced appointed king, the power that personified the old order by the new elected municipal self-government bodies. Unrest began in Troyes, Strasbourg, Amiens, Cherbourg, Rouen, etc. This broad movement, which engulfed the cities of France in July - August, was called « municipal revolution » . Peasant uprisings began as early as the beginning of 1789, before the convocation of the Estates General. Under the impression made by the storming of the Bastille in July-September, the peasants began to protest, which received a new revolutionary scope. Everywhere the peasants stopped paying feudal duties, smashed the noble estates, castles and burned documents confirming the rights of the feudal lords to the identity of the peasants. The owners of the estates were seized with horror, which went down in history under the name « great fear » . The beginning of the work of the Constituent Assembly on July 9, 1789 - September 30, 1791. The Constituent Assembly, which finally united all three estates, was the most important step towards the establishment of a monarchy limited by law in the kingdom. However, after the victory won on July 14, power and political leadership actually passed into the hands of the big bourgeoisie and the bourgeois liberal nobility, which united with it. Jean Bailly became the head of the Parisian municipality, and Lafayette became the head of the National Guard. The provinces and most municipalities were also dominated by the big bourgeoisie, which, in alliance with the liberal nobility, formed the constitutionalist party. Divided into right and left

The French Revolution

the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1789–94 in France, which dealt a decisive blow to the feudal-absolutist system and cleared the ground for the development of capitalism.

V. f. R. was a natural result of a long and progressive crisis of the obsolete feudal-absolutist system, reflecting the growing conflict between the old, feudal production relations and the new, capitalist mode of production that had grown up in the depths of the feudal system. The expression of this conflict was the deep irreconcilable contradictions between the third estate, which constituted the overwhelming majority of the population, on the one hand, and the ruling privileged classes, on the other. Despite the difference in class interests of the bourgeoisie, peasantry and urban plebeians (manufactory workers, urban poor), which were part of the third estate, they were united in a single anti-feudal struggle by an interest in the destruction of the feudal-absolutist system. The leader in this struggle was the bourgeoisie, which at that time was a progressive and revolutionary class.

The main contradictions which predetermined the inevitability of revolution, were exacerbated by state bankruptcy, which began in 1787 with a commercial and industrial crisis, and lean years that led to famine. In 1788-89 a revolutionary situation developed in the country. Peasant uprisings that engulfed a number of French provinces were intertwined with plebeian uprisings in the cities (in Rennes, Grenoble, and Besancon in 1788, in the Saint-Antoine suburb of Paris in 1789, and others). The monarchy, unable to maintain its positions by the old methods, was forced to make concessions: notables were convened in 1787, and then Estates General, not assembled since 1614.

On May 5, 1789, meetings of the Estates General opened at Versailles. On June 17, 1789, the assembly of deputies of the third estate proclaimed itself the National Assembly; July 9 - Constituent Assembly. Open preparation of the court for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly (resignation of J. Necker a , the pulling of troops, etc.) served as a direct pretext for a nationwide uprising in Paris on July 13-14.

The first stage of the revolution (July 14, 1789-August 10, 1792). On July 14, the insurgent people stormed the Bastille (See. Bastille) - symbol of French absolutism. The storming of the Bastille was the first victory of the insurgent people, the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. R. The king was forced to recognize the revolution. In the weeks that followed, the revolution spread throughout the country. In the cities, the people displaced the old organs of power and replaced them with new bourgeois municipal organs. In Paris and in the provincial towns, the bourgeoisie created its own armed force, the National Guard. National Guard). At the same time, in many provinces (especially in Dauphine, Franche-Comte, Alsace, and others), peasant uprisings and uprisings of unusual strength and scope unfolded. The powerful peasant movement in the summer and autumn of 1789 expanded and consolidated the victory of the revolution. A reflection of the enormous revolutionary upsurge that swept the whole country in the initial period of the revolution, when the bourgeoisie boldly went for an alliance with the people and the entire third estate opposed the feudal-absolutist system, was Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, adopted by the Constituent Assembly on August 26, 1789.

However, the fruits of the revolution were not used by the entire third estate, and not even by the entire bourgeoisie, but only by the big bourgeoisie and the liberal nobility that marched with it. Dominating the Constituent Assembly, the municipalities, and commanding the National Guard, the big bourgeoisie and its constitutionalist party (leaders H. Mirabeau, M. J. Lafayette, J. S. Bailly, and others) became the dominant force in the country.

First stage the revolution became a period of domination by the big bourgeoisie; the legislation and the entire policy of the Constituent Assembly were determined by its interests. To the extent that they coincided with the interests of the rest of the third estate - the democratic layers of the bourgeoisie, the peasantry and the plebeians - and contributed to the destruction of the feudal system, they were progressive. Such were the decrees on the abolition of the division into estates, on the transfer of church property to the disposal of the nation (November 2, 1789), on church reform (which placed the clergy under the control of the state), on the destruction of the old, medieval administrative division of France and on the division of the country into departments, districts, cantons and communes (1789-90), on the abolition of workshops (1791), on the destruction of regulations and other restrictions that impeded the development of trade and industry, etc. But on the main issue of the revolution, the agrarian one, the big bourgeoisie stubbornly resisted the main demand of the peasantry - the abolition of feudal duties. The decisions of the Constituent Assembly on the agrarian question, adopted under the pressure of peasant uprisings, left the basic feudal rights in force and did not satisfy the peasantry. Decrees (end of 1789) introducing a qualifying electoral system and dividing citizens into "active" and "passive" were imbued with the desire to consolidate the political dominance of the big bourgeoisie and eliminate the popular masses from participation in political life (the decrees were included in the Constitution of 1791). The class interests of the bourgeoisie dictated the first anti-worker law - Le Chapelier law(June 14, 1791), forbidding strikes and labor unions.

The anti-democratic policy of the big bourgeoisie, which separated from the rest of the third estate and turned into a conservative force, aroused sharp discontent among the peasantry, the plebeians, and the democratic section of the bourgeoisie that followed them. Peasant uprisings in the spring of 1790 intensified again. The masses in the cities became more active. The deteriorating food situation in Paris and the counter-revolutionary intentions of supporters of the royal court prompted the people of Paris on October 5-6, 1789 to march on Versailles. The intervention of the people frustrated the counter-revolutionary plans and forced the Constituent Assembly and the king to move from Versailles to Paris. Along with the Jacobin Club (See. Jacobin club) other revolutionary-democratic clubs, the Cordeliers, also gained more and more influence on the masses, “ social circle” and others, as well as such organs of revolutionary democracy as published by J.P. Marat om newspaper "Friend of the People". The consistent struggle in the Constituent Assembly of a small group of deputies headed by M. Robespierre om against the anti-democratic policies of the majority met with increasing sympathy in the country. An expression of the aggravated class contradictions within the former third estate was the so-called Varennes crisis - an acute political crisis in June - July 1791, which arose in connection with the attempt of King Louis XVI to flee abroad. On July 17, on the orders of the Constituent Assembly, the demonstrations on the Champ de Mars of Parisians, who demanded the removal of the king from power, meant the transformation of the big bourgeoisie from a conservative into a counter-revolutionary force. The split of the Jacobin Club that took place the day before (July 16) and the separation of the constitutionalists into the Feuillants Club (See. Feuillants) also expressed the open split of the third estate.

The events in France had a great revolutionary influence on the progressive social forces of other countries. At the same time, a counter-revolutionary bloc of European feudal monarchies and bourgeois-aristocratic circles in Great Britain began to take shape against revolutionary France. From 1791 the preparation of the European monarchies for intervention against the French Revolution took on an open character. The question of the impending war became the main question of the political struggle in the Legislative Assembly, which opened on October 1, 1791 (See. Legislative Assembly) between the groups of Feuillants, Girondins (See. Girondins) and the Jacobins (cf. Jacobins). April 20, 1792 France declared war on Austria. In the same year, Prussia and the Kingdom of Sardinia entered the war with revolutionary France, in 1793 - Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, the Kingdom of Naples, the German states, etc. In this war, "revolutionary France defended itself against reactionary-monarchist Europe" (V. Lenin and ., Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., v. 34, p. 196).

From the very beginning of the hostilities, the internal counter-revolution closed in on the external one. The betrayal of many generals of the French army made it easier for the interventionists to penetrate French territory, and then attack Paris. In the process of the mighty patriotic movement of the masses who rose to defend the revolutionary fatherland, numerous formations of volunteers were created in the shortest possible time (see. federates). The Legislative Assembly was forced to declare July 11, 1792 "the fatherland is in danger." At the same time, popular anger turned against the secret allies of the interventionists - the king and his accomplices. The movement against the monarchy resulted on August 10, 1792, in a powerful popular uprising in Paris, headed by the Paris Commune created on the night of August 9-10 (see Art. Paris Commune 1789-94). A victorious uprising overthrew the monarchy that had existed for about 1,000 years, overthrew the big bourgeoisie that was in power and its party of Feuillants, who had joined forces with the feudal-noble counter-revolution. This gave impetus to the further development of the revolution along an ascending line.

The second stage of the revolution(August 10, 1792-June 2, 1793) was determined by a sharp struggle between the Montagnard Jacobins and the Girondins. The Girondins (leaders - J. P. Brissot, P. V. Vergnot, J. M. Rolland, etc.) represented the commercial, industrial and landowning bourgeoisie, mainly provincial, who managed to get some benefits from the revolution. Coming as the ruling party to replace the Feuillants and moving to conservative positions, the Girondins sought to stop the revolution and prevent its further development. The Jacobins (leaders - M. Robespierre, J. P. Marat, J. J. Danton, L. A. Saint-Just) were not a homogeneous party. They represented a bloc of the middle and lower strata of the bourgeoisie, the peasantry and the plebeians, that is, class groups whose demands had not yet been satisfied, which prompted them to strive to deepen and expand the revolution.

This struggle, which took the form of a conflict between the Legislative Assembly, dominated by the Girondins, and the Paris Commune, dominated by the Jacobins, was then transferred to the elected on the basis of universal suffrage (for men) Convention, which began work on September 20, 1792, on the day of the victory of the French revolutionary troops over the interventionists at Valmy. At the first public meeting, the Convention unanimously decided to abolish royal power (September 21, 1792). A republic was established in France. Despite the resistance of the Girondins, the Jacobins insisted on bringing the former king to the court of the Convention, and then, after admitting his guilt, on passing him a death sentence. January 21, 1793 Louis XVI was executed.

The victory at Valmy stopped the offensive of the interventionists. On November 6, 1792, a new victory was won at Zhemapa; on November 14, revolutionary troops entered Brussels.

The sharp deterioration in the economic and especially food situation as a result of the war contributed to the aggravation of the class struggle in the country. In 1793 the peasant movement intensified again. In a number of departments (Air, Gard, Nord, and others), the peasants arbitrarily carried out the division of communal lands. The protests of the starving poor in the cities took very sharp forms. Spokesmen for the interests of the plebeians - " frenzied"(leaders - J. RU, J. Varle etc.), required the establishment Maximum a (fixed prices for commodities) and curbing speculators. Considering the demands of the masses and taking into account the current political situation, the Jacobins agreed to an alliance with the "mad". On May 4, the Convention, despite the resistance of the Girondins, decreed the establishment of fixed prices for grain. The stubborn desire of the Girondins to impose their anti-popular policy on the country, the intensification of repressive measures against popular movements, the betrayal in March 1793 of the gene. Ch. F. Dumouriez, who was closely associated with the Girondin leaders, and the almost simultaneous trial of Marat testified that the Girondins, like the Feuillants in their time, began to turn from a conservative force into a counter-revolutionary one. The attempt of the Girondins to oppose the provinces to Paris (where their positions were strong), the rapprochement of the Girondins with openly counter-revolutionary elements made a new popular uprising of May 31 - June 2, 1793, inevitable. It ended with the expulsion of the Girondins from the Convention and the transfer of power to the Jacobins.

The third stage of the revolution that began (June 2, 1793-July 27/28, 1794) was its highest stage - the revolutionary-democratic Jacobin dictatorship. The Jacobins came to power at a critical moment in the life of the republic. The interventionist troops invaded from the north, east and south. counter-revolutionary riots Vendean Wars) covered the entire north-west of the country, as well as the south. About two-thirds of the territory of France fell into the hands of the enemies of the revolution. Only the revolutionary determination and courage of the Jacobins, who unleashed the initiative of the popular masses and led their struggle, saved the revolution and prepared for the victory of the republic. By agrarian legislation (June - July 1793), the Jacobin Convention handed over communal and emigrant lands to the peasants for division and completely abolished all feudal rights and privileges. Thus, the main issue of the revolution - the agrarian one - was resolved on a democratic basis, the former feudally dependent peasants turned into free owners. This "truly revolutionary reprisal against obsolete feudalism ..." (V. I. Lenin, ibid., p. 195) predetermined the transition to the side of the Jacobin government of the bulk of the peasantry, their active participation in the defense of the republic and its social gains. On June 24, 1793, the Convention approved a new constitution, much more democratic, instead of the qualified constitution of 1791. However, the critical situation of the republic compelled the Jacobins to postpone the introduction of the constitutional regime and replace it with a regime of revolutionary democratic dictatorship. The system of the Jacobin dictatorship, which took shape in the course of intense class struggle, combined strong and firm centralized power with broad popular initiative coming from below. convention and Public Safety Committee, which actually became the main organ of the revolutionary government, and also to a certain extent The committee public safety had complete power. They relied on organized throughout the country Revolutionary Committees and "folk societies". The revolutionary initiative of the masses during the period of the Jacobin dictatorship manifested itself especially brightly. Thus, at the request of the people, on August 23, 1793, the Convention adopted a historic decree on the mobilization of the entire French nation to fight for the expulsion of enemies from the republic. The action of the plebeian masses of Paris on September 4–5, 1793, prepared by the “madmen,” forced the Convention, in response to the terrorist acts of the counter-revolution (the murder of J. P. Marat, the leader of the Lyon Jacobins, J. Chalier, and others), to put revolutionary terror on the order of the day, expanding the repressive policy against enemies of the revolution and against speculative elements. Under pressure from the plebeian masses, the Convention adopted (September 29, 1793) a decree on the introduction of a general maximum. While setting a maximum for consumer products, the Convention at the same time extended it to wages workers. In this, the controversial policy of the Jacobins was especially clearly manifested. It also showed itself in the fact that, having accepted a number of demands of the "mad" movement, the Jacobins crushed this movement by the beginning of September 1793.

The Jacobin revolutionary government, having mobilized the people to fight against external and internal counter-revolution, boldly using the creative initiative of the people and the achievements of science to supply and arm the numerous armies of the republic, created in the shortest possible time, putting forward talented commanders from the masses of the people and boldly applying new tactics of military operations, has already by October 1793 it had achieved a turning point in the course of military operations. On June 26, 1794, the troops of the republic inflicted a decisive defeat on the interventionists at Fleurus.

In one year, the Jacobin dictatorship solved the main tasks of the bourgeois revolution, which had remained unresolved for the previous four years. But in the Jacobin dictatorship itself and in the Jacobin bloc, which united heterogeneous class elements, there were deep internal contradictions. Until the outcome of the struggle against the counter-revolution was decided and the danger of a feudal-monarchist restoration remained real, these internal contradictions remained muted. But already from the beginning of 1794, an internal struggle unfolded in the ranks of the Jacobin bloc. The Robespierre grouping that led the revolutionary government in March-April successively defeated the left Jacobins (see. Chaumette, hebertists), striving for a further deepening of the revolution, and the Dantonists, who represented the new bourgeoisie, which had profited during the years of the revolution, and sought to weaken the revolutionary dictatorship. Adopted in February and March 1794, the so-called Decrees of Vantoise, in which the leveling aspirations of the Robespierreists found expression, were not put into practice due to the resistance of the large-property elements in the apparatus of the Jacobin dictatorship. The plebeian elements and the rural poor began to partly depart from the Jacobin dictatorship, a number of social requirements of which were not satisfied. At the same time, most of the bourgeoisie, who did not want to continue to put up with the restrictive regime and plebeian methods of the Jacobin dictatorship, switched to counter-revolutionary positions, dragging with them the prosperous peasantry, dissatisfied with the policy of requisitions, and after it the middle peasantry. In the summer of 1794, a conspiracy arose against the revolutionary government headed by Robespierre, which led to a counter-revolutionary coup on 9 Thermidor (July 27/28, 1794), which overthrew the Jacobin dictatorship and thus put an end to the revolution. Thermidorian coup). The defeat of the Jacobin dictatorship was due to the deepening of its internal contradictions and, mainly, the turn of the main forces of the bourgeoisie and peasantry against the Jacobin government.

V. f. R. was of great historical importance. Being popular, bourgeois-democratic in nature, V. f. R. more decisively and more thoroughly than any other of the early bourgeois revolutions, put an end to the feudal-absolutist system and thereby contributed to the development of progressive capitalist relations for that time. V. f. R. laid the foundation for the strong revolutionary-democratic traditions of the French people; it had a serious and lasting influence on the subsequent history not only of France, but also of many other countries (their ideology, art, and literature).

2. Revolutionary events of 1789-1799 In France: a brief overview

According to some historians, the French Revolution of 1789-1799 (Fr. Revolution francaise) is one of the most important events in the history of Europe. This revolution is even called the Great. During this period, there was a radical change in the social and political system of France, from an absolute monarchy to a republic. At the same time, it is appropriate to recall the word that is sometimes used in relation to the French Republic: republic in theory free citizens.

The causes of a revolution, like the causes of any other important historical event, can never be determined with absolute certainty. Nevertheless, historians name some facts that could serve as an impetus for this event.

1. The political system of France. He was an absolute monarchy, which ruled alone with the help of the bureaucracy and the army. The nobles and the clergy did not take part in political government, for which the royal power provided full and comprehensive support for their social privileges. The industrial bourgeoisie also enjoyed the support of the royal power. It was beneficial for the king that the economy developed. But the bourgeois were constantly at enmity with the nobility, and both sought protection and support from the royal power. This created constant difficulties, because it was impossible to protect the interests of some and not infringe on the interests of others.

2. The immediate cause of the revolution is called by historians the bankruptcy of the state, which was unable to pay off its monstrous debts without abandoning the system of privileges based on nobility and family ties. Attempts to reform this system caused strong discontent among the nobles.

In 1787, a commercial and industrial crisis began, which was aggravated by lean years, which led to famine. In 1788-1789, peasant uprisings that engulfed a number of French provinces intertwined with plebeian uprisings in the cities: Rennes, Grenoble, Besancon in 1788, in the Saint-Antoine suburb of Paris in 1789, etc.

3. Of course, many historians also point to the so-called "class struggle". As the cause of this struggle, the feudal exploitation of the masses, whose interests were completely ignored by the state, is displayed. When the state supported the conservative interests of the feudal lords, the liberal opposition rose up against it, which stood up for the various rights of the people, and when the state supported the interests of the liberals, the conservative opposition took up arms against it.

In such an environment, it turned out that everyone was already criticizing the royal power. The clergy, the nobility and the bourgeoisie believed that royal absolutism too usurps the power of estates and corporations, and on the other hand, Rousseau and his ilk also argued that royal absolutism usurps power in relation to the rights of the people. It turned out that absolutism was to blame on all sides. And if we add to this the scandal with the so-called "queen's necklace" (the case of the necklace intended for the French Queen Marie Antoinette, which caused a loud and scandalous criminal trial of 1785-1786 shortly before the French Revolution) and the North American War of Independence, in which they took participation and French volunteers (the French had someone to follow), the authority of the king inevitably fell, and many came to the conclusion that the time was ripe for decisive change in France.

The royal power tried, yielding to public opinion, to somehow improve the situation by creating on the eve of the revolution the so-called "states general".

The Estates General officially began their work on May 5, 1789. The aim of the states was to ensure order throughout France, so that the elected representatives could bring to the royal power all complaints and proposals even from the most remote provinces. However, only Frenchmen who had reached the age of 25 and were listed in the tax list could be elected to the states. And this did not suit the poorest layers. In addition, elections were held according to a two-stage and even a three-stage system, when only individual locally elected representatives had the final right to vote. It is unlikely that the poor and peasants from the provinces could really vote for themselves and they would hardly be able to solve problems at the state level. But nevertheless, most of the population remained dissatisfied and demanded more rights. One of the slogans of the French revolutionaries was the one that would sound in Russia more than a century later: "Power to the Constituent Assembly!" The Constituent Assembly gradually formed from the previously assembled "general states", which their participants, having decided not to reckon with the decisions of the king, first declared the National Assembly, and then the Constituent Assembly.

Thus, the attempt of the monarchist government of France to prevent the impending revolution was a failure. In order to express their disagreement with the existing order and preparations for the dispersal of that same "Constituent Assembly", the insurgent people urgently stormed the Bastille royal prison. Some historians consider this moment the beginning of the revolution. We can agree with this state of affairs, because it was after the capture of the Bastille that the king was forced to urgently recognize the Constituent Assembly, in all cities of France new elected authorities began to open - Municipalities. A new National Guard was created, and the peasants, inspired by the success of the Parisians, successfully burned the estates of their lords. The absolute monarchy ceased to exist, and since the revolution is considered to be a change in the political system, the fall of the Bastille really marked a revolutionary upheaval in France. Instead of an absolute monarchy, the so-called constitutional monarchy reigned for some time.

From August 4 to 11, various decrees were adopted, which, in particular, abolished feudal duties, church tithes, and declared the equality of all provinces and municipalities. Of course, everything was not abolished and the most serious duties, such as the poll tax and the land tax, remained. No one was going to free the peasants completely. But nevertheless, all events were perceived by the majority of the French very joyfully and with great enthusiasm.

On August 26, 1789, another famous event took place: the Constituent Assembly adopted the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen". The Declaration established such important principles of democracy as equal rights for all without exception, freedom of opinion, the right to private property, the principle "everything is permitted that is not prohibited by law" and others.

Apparently, at first the rebels did not plan to abolish royal power, because despite all the acts adopted by the Constituent Assembly, on October 5-6, a campaign took place on Versailles in order to force Louis XVI to sanction the decrees and the Declaration and accept all other decisions.

The activities of the Constituent Assembly had a significant scope and, as a legislative body, this association made a lot of decisions. In all areas, in the political, economic and social spheres of life, the Constituent Assembly reshaped the state structure of France. So the provinces were disbanded into 83 departments, in which a single legal procedure was established. The lifting of restrictions on trade was announced. Class privileges, the institution of hereditary nobility with all coats of arms and titles were liquidated. Bishops were appointed to all departments, which at the same time meant the recognition of Catholicism as the state religion, but also subordinated the church to the new government. From now on, bishops and priests received a salary from the state and they were required to swear allegiance not to the Pope, but to France. Not all priests took such a step, and the Pope cursed the French Revolution, all its reforms, and especially the "Declaration of the Rights of Man."

In 1791, the French proclaimed the first European Constitution. The king was inactive. True, he tried to escape, but was identified at the border and returned back. Apparently, despite the fact that no one needed the king as such, they did not dare to release him. After all, he could still find supporters of the monarchy and try to make a reverse coup.

On October 1, 1791, the Legislative Assembly opened its work in Paris. The unicameral Parliament began to work, which marked the establishment of a limited monarchy in the country. Although in fact the king no longer made any decisions and was held in custody. The Legislative Assembly got down to business rather sluggishly, although it almost immediately raised the question of unleashing a war in Europe in order to improve its own economic situation (probably in order to bring the economies of surrounding countries to the same decline). From more specific actions, the Legislative Assembly approved the existence of the One Church in the country. But that was the end of his activities. Radical citizens advocated the continuation of the revolution, the demands of the majority of the population were not satisfied, so another split began in France and the constitutional monarchy did not justify itself.

All together led to the fact that on August 10, 1792, twenty thousand rebels stormed the royal palace. It is possible that they wanted to see the reasons for their failures in the still living monarch. One way or another, a short, but very bloody assault followed. The Swiss mercenaries were especially distinguished in this event. Several thousand of these soldiers remained true to their oath and crown to the last, despite the flight of the majority of the French officers. They fought the revolutionaries to the last and fell to the last man at the Tuileries. This feat was highly appreciated later by Napoleon, and in the homeland of the soldiers, in Switzerland, in the city of Lucerne, to this day there is a stone lion - a monument in honor of the loyalty of the last defenders of the French throne. But despite the valor of these hired men, for whom France was not even their homeland, King Louis XVI abdicated. On January 21, 1793, "citizen Louis Capet" (Louis XVI) was executed under the following wording: "for treason and usurpation of power." Apparently, this is the usual way of posing the question, when a coup takes place in this or that country. It is necessary to somehow explain your decision to get rid of the legitimate ruler, who was already overthrown and did not play any special role, but only served as a reminder that his current judges deprived him of the very power that he and several more generations possessed his ancestors.

But this did not succeed in calming the passions and finally completing the revolution in order to do more peaceful and creative things. Too great was the desire of various parties to pull over the "blanket of power." The National Convention was divided into three factions: the Montagnard Jacobins of the left, the Girondins of the right, and the Centrists, who preferred to remain neutral. The main question that haunted the most "left" and most "right" is the extent of the spread of revolutionary terror. As a result, the Jacobins turned out to be stronger and more determined, who, on June 10, arrested the Girondins with the help of the National Guard, establishing the dictatorship of their faction. But order, unlike dictatorship, was not established.

Dissatisfied with the fact that it was not their faction that was the winner, they continued to act. On July 13, Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat to death in his own bath. This forced the Jacobins to launch a wider terror to maintain their power. In addition to the military actions that the National Guard took against the French cities that periodically rebelled or went over to the side of other states, a split began among the Jacobins themselves. This time Robespierre and Danton went against each other. In the spring of 1794, Robespierre won, sending Danton himself and his followers to the guillotine, and finally he could breathe a sigh of relief: theoretically, no one threatened his power anymore.

An interesting fact: since religion is still an integral part of any nation, and Catholicism accountable to the state suited the revolutionaries no more than the revolutionaries themselves suited Catholicism, a certain “civil religion” proposed by Rousseau was established by convention decree, with the worship of the mysterious “Supreme Being”. Robespierre personally held a solemn ceremony at which a new cult was proclaimed and in which he himself played the role of high priest. In all likelihood, this was considered necessary in order to give the people some kind of idol to worship and thereby distract them from the revolutionary mood. If we draw a parallel with the Russian revolution, then the Orthodox religion was replaced by the "religion of atheism" with all the attributes in the form of portraits of the leader and party workers, solemn "chants" and "cross processions" - demonstrations. The French revolutionaries, too, felt the need to replace true religion with something that could keep the people in line. But their attempt was not successful. Against the intensified terror, part of the National Guard spoke out, having made a Thermidorian coup. The Jacobin leaders, including Robespierre and Saint-Just, were guillotined and power passed to the Directory.

There is an opinion that after 9 Thermidor the revolution began to decline and almost ended. But if we trace the course of events, then this opinion will seem erroneous. In fact, no order was achieved by the closing of the Jacobin club and the return to power of the surviving Girondins. The Girondins abolished state intervention in the economy, but this led to an increase in high prices, inflation and food supply disruptions. France was already in a state of economic decline and lack of control could only aggravate this situation. In 1795, the supporters of terror twice raised the people to the convention, demanding the return of the constitution of 1793. But each time, the performances were brutally suppressed by force of arms, and the most significant rebels were executed.

Nevertheless, the Convention worked and in the summer of that year issued a new constitution, which was called the "Constitution of the III year." Under this constitution, power in France was no longer transferred to a one-but two-chamber parliament, which consisted of a Council of Elders and a Council of Five Hundred. And the executive power passed into the hands of the Directory in the person of five Directors elected by the Council of Elders. Since the elections could not give the results that the new government wanted, it was decided that in the first elections two thirds of the Council of Elders and the Council of Five Hundred should be elected from among the government of the Directory. Of course, this caused sharp dissatisfaction with the royalists, who raised another uprising in the center of Paris, which was successfully suppressed by the urgently summoned young military leader Bonaparte. After these events, the Convention happily ended its work, giving way to the aforementioned Councils and the Directory.

The forces of the Directory in France first of all began to create an army. Anyone could get into the army in the hope of ranks and awards, and it turned out to be attractive to a large number of volunteers. The Directory saw the war primarily as a way to distract its own population from internal turmoil and decline. In addition, the war allowed itself to win back what France lacked - money. In addition, the French saw the possibility of quickly subordinating various territories to themselves thanks to their propaganda of the democratic ideals of the French Revolution (such ideals meant liberation from feudal lords and absolutism). Huge cash indemnities were imposed on the territories conquered by the Directory, which were supposed to be used to improve the financial and economic situation of France.

The young Napoleon Bonaparte actively showed himself in this war of conquest. Under his leadership, in 1796-1797, the kingdom of Sardinia was forced to abandon Savoy. Bonaparte occupied Lombardy. With the help of the army, Bonaparte forced Parma, Modena, the Papal States, Venice and Genoa to pay indemnities and attached part of the papal possessions to Lombardy, turning it into the Cisalpine Republic. The French army was lucky. Austria requested peace. A democratic revolution took place in Genoa. Then, at the request of Bonaparte himself, he was sent to conquer the English colonies in Egypt.

Thanks to the revolutionary wars, France took possession of Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, Savoy and some part of Italy. And this is in addition to the fact that it was now surrounded by a number of subsidiary republics. Of course, this situation did not suit everyone, and revolutionary France created a new alliance against itself, which included dissatisfied and frightened Austria, Russia, Sardinia and Turkey. The Russian Emperor Paul I sent Suvorov to the Alps and he, having won a number of victories over the French, cleared all of Italy from them by the autumn of 1799. Of course, the French made claims against their Directory, accusing it of sending Bonaparte to Egypt just when he was most needed in the war with Suvorov. And Bonaparte is back. And he saw what was happening in his absence.

Probably, the future Emperor Napoleon I came to the conclusion that the revolutionaries were completely unrestrained without him. One way or another, but on Brumaire 18 (November 9), 1799, another coup took place, as a result of which a provisional government was created from three consuls - Bonaparte, Roger-Ducos and Sieyes. This event is known as the 18th Brumaire. On it, the Great French Revolution ended with the establishment of the firm dictatorship of Napoleon.

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen 1789 From the very first days of the revolution, the National, and then the Constituent Assembly, began to develop a constitution and determine the principles for organizing the new state power, in connection with which special constitutional commissions were formed. An important milestone in the development of French constitutionalism was the solemn proclamation on August 26, 1789 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. This document formulated the most important state-legal demands of the revolutionary-minded third estate, which at that time still acted as a united front in the conflict with the king and with the entire old regime.

The content of the declaration, designed in the spirit of the natural law concept, was significantly influenced by the ideas of the French enlighteners of the 18th century, as well as the Declaration of Independence of the United States. The authors of the French Declaration (Lafayette, Mirabeau, Munier, Duport) considered man as a being endowed by nature with natural and inalienable rights (“people are born and remain free and equal in rights” - Art. 1). It is the "forgetfulness of human rights", neglect of them that, according to the authors of the Declaration, are "the causes of social disasters and vices of governments."

Among the natural rights, the list of which differed from that provided for in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, included freedom, property, security, resistance to oppression(Art. 2). Putting freedom and property in the first place in the list of natural human rights, the declaration embodied Voltaire's well-known thought: "Freedom and property - this is the cry of nature." In the concept of natural rights, claiming to be a universal expression of human nature, not only the general democratic aspirations of the masses were realized, but also the specific interests of the bourgeoisie, and the most important relations of the emerging capitalist society were consolidated. So, freedom, formulated in Art. 4 in the spirit of the individualistic concepts prevailing at that time, was translated into legal language as an opportunity to “do everything that does not harm another”.

The idea of ​​freedom was undoubtedly the central and most democratic idea of ​​the declaration. It was not limited to political freedom, but ultimately meant a broader understanding of the freedom of man and citizen as freedom of enterprise, freedom of movement, freedom of religious belief, etc. Property was also considered by the authors of the declaration in an abstract individualistic spirit and was the only natural right , which was declared in this document "inviolable and sacred." The inviolability of private property was guaranteed: “No one can be deprived of it except in the case of an undoubted social need established by law”, and only on the terms of “fair and preliminary compensation” (Article 17).

The desire to protect the property interests of citizens was reflected in Articles 13, 14, which prohibited arbitrary royal requisitions (including for the maintenance of the armed forces) and established the general principles of the tax system (even distribution of general contributions, collection of them only with the consent of the citizens themselves or their representatives, etc.). The declaration carried out a kind of “nationalization” of state power, which was no longer considered as based on the “own right of the king”, but was interpreted as an expression of national sovereignty (“the source of sovereignty lies essentially in the nation” - Article 3). Any power in the state, including royal power, could only come from this source. It was seen as a derivative of the will of the nation. The society had the right to demand an account from each official on “the part of management entrusted to him” (Article 15).

The law was seen as "an expression of the general will" (Article 6), and it was emphasized that all citizens have the right to participate personally or through their representatives in its formation. It also proclaimed that all citizens “according to their abilities” are equally open to all public positions. In essence, this meant a rejection of the feudal principle of the closeness of the state apparatus for representatives of the third estate and the justification of the equal availability of public posts "in view of their equality before the law." The Declaration proclaimed a number of political rights and freedoms of citizens that are paramount for securing a democratic system (“the right to speak, write and print freely” - Article II; “the right to express one's opinions, including religious ones” - Article 10).

One of the main ideas of the Declaration of 1789, which has not lost its progressive significance even today, was the idea of ​​legality. Opposing the arbitrariness of royal power, the constitutionalists assumed the obligation to build a new legal order on the "solid foundation of the law." In the era of absolutism and the suppression of the individual, law was based on the principle: "Only that is allowed that is allowed." According to Art. 5 of the Declaration, everything “what is not prohibited by law is permitted”, and no one can be forced to act not provided for in the law.

The deputies of the Constituent Assembly clearly understood that without guarantees of the inviolability of the person, there could be no question of security, declared one of the natural rights of man, and thereby of the free use of property and political rights. That is why Art. 8 clearly formulated the principles of the new criminal policy: "No one can be punished otherwise than by virtue of the law, duly applied, published and promulgated before the commission of the offense." These principles were later expressed in the classic formulas: nullum crimen, nulla poena sine lege (no crime or punishment unless stated in the law), "the law is not retroactive."

The obligation of the state to ensure the safety of its citizens also determined the procedural forms of personal protection. No one could be accused or arrested otherwise than in cases and in compliance with the forms prescribed by law (art. 7). In Art. 9 stated that any person is presumed innocent until proven otherwise. Thus, the presumption of innocence was in effect, as opposed to medieval ideas about the guilt of the suspect. On the other hand, every citizen "detained by virtue of the law must obey unquestioningly." Resistance to the authorities in such cases entailed responsibility.

The idea of ​​legality received its consolidation in the form of general principles of the organization of state power, and above all in the separation of powers. According to Art. 16 "A society in which the enjoyment of rights is not secured and the separation of powers is not carried out has no constitution."

The Declaration of 1789 was of great importance not only for France, but for the whole world, since it consolidated the foundations of the social and political system that was advanced for its era, and determined the foundations of the new legal order. Its creators themselves believed that they had compiled a document "for all peoples and for all times."

For all its clearly expressed political and legal content, the declaration had no legal force. It was only the initial document of the revolutionary power, which sought to establish a constitutional order. Therefore, many of its provisions were of a programmatic nature and could not be immediately put into practice in the conditions of France at the end of the 18th century, which was just embarking on the path of creating a civil society and establishing political democracy. Based on the provisions of the declaration and using the state power that was in their hands, the constitutionalists, under the influence of the broad masses of the people, carried out a number of important anti-feudal and democratic transformations. Under the conditions of the unfolding peasant revolution, the Constituent Assembly, by decrees of August 4-2, 1789, solemnly declared that it "finally abolishes the feudal order." However, only the personal or serf duties of the peasants were destroyed free of charge, as well as such secondary feudal institutions as the seigneurial right to hunt and breed rabbits on peasant lands. The bulk of the feudal duties associated with the land (perpetual land rents, of any kind and origin, both in kind and in cash), had to be redeemed by the peasants. By a decree on feudal rights (March 15, 1790), the assembly expanded the range of lands and land encumbrances that were subject to redemption by the peasants. Anticipating the likely dissatisfaction of the peasantry and the poor of France with a too moderate approach to solving the agrarian problem, which became a key one during the revolution, the Constituent Assembly on August 10, 1789 adopted a special Decree on the suppression of unrest. By this decree, the local authorities were instructed to "monitor the preservation of public peace" and "disperse all rebellious gatherings both in cities and in villages."

By the legislative acts that followed the adoption of the declaration, the Constituent Assembly nationalized church property and the lands of the clergy (Decree of December 24, 1789), which were put on sale and fell into the hands of the large urban and rural bourgeoisie. The French Catholic Church, which received a new civil structure, was withdrawn from subordination to the Vatican. Priests took an oath of allegiance to the French state and transferred to its maintenance. The Church has lost its traditional right to register civil status. The Constituent Assembly abolished class divisions and the guild system, as well as the feudal system of inheritance (majorat). It abolished the old feudal borders and introduced in France a uniform administrative-territorial division (into departments, districts, cantons, communes).

However, the constitutionalists, inclined to compromise with King Louis XVI and the nobility, who professed political moderation and prudence, did not stop at the adoption of tough legislative measures directed against the revolutionary-minded masses. Thus, a series of decrees was continued against "disorder and anarchy", as well as against incitement to disobedience to the laws (Decree of June 18, 1791). To an even greater extent, the constitutionalists' distrust of the common people, especially the lower ranks of society, manifested itself in the Decree of December 22, 1789, which, contrary to the proclaimed idea of ​​equality, provided for the division of the French into active and passive citizens. Only the former were granted the right to vote, the latter were deprived of this right. According to the law, active citizens had to satisfy the following conditions: 1) be French, 2) be at least twenty-five years of age, 3) have lived in a certain canton for at least 1 year, 4) pay a direct tax in the amount of at least three days' wages for the locality, 5) not to be a servant "on a salary". The vast majority of the French did not meet these qualification requirements and fell into the category of passive citizens.

Anti-democratic provisions were also included in the Le Chapelier law of 1791, formally directed against feudal corporations and guild associations, but in practice forbidding workers' unions, meetings and strikes. Violators of the law were fined up to 1 thousand livres and imprisoned.

DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND CITIZEN 1789

one of the outstanding documents of the French bourgeois revolution of the 18th century. Entered as an introduction to the constitution of 1791: the commitment to its basic principles is indicated by the Constitutions of 1946 and 1958. The declaration was

adopted by the Constituent Assembly on August 26, 1789. It was the program of the revolution, its ideological justification. It proclaimed the democratic and humanistic principles of the state-legal system. Under conditions of domination in most countries of the world of feudal medieval oppression and even slavery, the Declaration sounded like a revolutionary challenge to the old world, its categorical denial. She made a great impression on her contemporaries, playing an exceptional role in the struggle against feudalism and its ideology.

The authors of the Declaration (Lafayette, Siey-es, Mirabeau, Munier, etc.) had the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 as an example for the document being created, as well as the declarations of the French General States, especially 1484. In ideological and theoretical terms, they stood on positions of Enlightenment thinkers, especially Montesquieu and Rousseau, who made a significant contribution to the development of the theory of natural law. Following the enlighteners, the creators of the Declaration considered the new political worldview as a corresponding requirement of some kind of universal and timeless reason.

The democratic and humanistic orientation of the Declaration was largely determined by the atmosphere of upsurge and jubilation caused by the fall of absolutism. The declaration opened with a statement of historic significance:

"People are born and remain free and equal in rights." In the spirit of the ideas of the Enlightenment, as "natural and inalienable rights of man" were called: freedom, property, security and resistance to oppression.

Freedom was defined by the Declaration as the ability to do anything that does not harm another. The exercise of freedom, like other "natural" human rights, meets "only those limits that ensure the enjoyment of the same rights by other members of society. These limits can only be determined by law." The Declaration singled out individual freedom, freedom of speech and press, freedom of religion. The lack of freedom of assembly and association in the Declaration was determined by the hostility of legislators to mass actions and public organizations and was explained by the negative attitude towards all kinds of unions that dominated the theory of natural law. According to Rousseau, unions restrict personal freedom, distort the formation of the general will of the people. They also feared the possibility of the revival of workshops that had hampered the development of industry and trade in the past.

Of fundamental importance was the declaration in the Declaration of ownership of the right "inviolable and sacred."

In the name of ensuring the security of the individual, a number of progressive principles relating to criminal law and procedure were declared: no one can be charged, detained or imprisoned except in cases provided for by law and in compliance with the forms established by law, i.e. there is no crime unless it is specified in the law; no one can be punished except by virtue of the law duly applied, issued and made public before the commission of the crime, i.e. the law is not retroactive; each is presumed innocent until proven otherwise.

Ensuring the proclaimed "human rights" Declaration assigned to the state ("state union"). In this, she followed one of the main ideas of the theory of natural law, which saw in the state, which arose by virtue of the "social contract", an instrument for the protection of "inalienable human rights." The supreme power in the state was declared to belong to the nation. No corporation, no individual, can wield power that does not explicitly come from this source. Accordingly, the political rights of citizens were declared: their participation personally or through their representatives in the adoption of a law, considered as an "expression of the general will", determining the amount and procedure for levying taxes, in controlling their spending, over the activities of officials, as well as equal access to public office. .

The conclusions of Montesquieu, who believed that the preservation of the freedoms and rights of citizens is largely achieved by the introduction of organizationally independent from each other and mutually balancing authorities (legislative, executive, judicial), were reflected in the Declaration: "A society in which the enjoyment of rights is not ensured and separation of powers, has no constitution." At the time of the revolution, the Declaration sounded like a statement of justice granted to all, but the abstractness of its formulations made it possible to fill them with various political content. The bourgeoisie that came to power gave it its own essentially obligatory interpretation. Contrary to the Declaration of the Constituent Assembly, after 3

months after its publication, adopted a decree on the introduction of property and other qualifications for voters. The Constitution of 1791, the first in the history of France, further deepened the gap between the democratic rights proclaimed by the Declaration and the state-legal system that had been introduced.

The representatives of the French people, having formed the National Assembly, and believing that ignorance, the neglect of the rights of man, or the neglect of them, are the only cause of public misfortunes and the corruption of governments, decided to set forth in a solemn Declaration the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of man, so that this Declaration, constantly remaining before the eyes of all members of the public union, constantly reminded them of their rights and obligations; that the actions of the legislative and executive powers, which at any time could be compared with the purpose of every political institution, be more respected; so that the demands of the citizens, now based on simple and indisputable principles, should aspire to the observance of the Constitution and the common good. Accordingly, the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, before and under the protection of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and citizen.

People are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social differences can only be based on common good.

The goal of any political union is to ensure the natural and inalienable rights of man. These are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

The source of sovereign power is the nation. No institution, no individual, can wield power that does not explicitly come from the nation.

Freedom consists in the ability to do everything that does not harm another: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each person is limited only by those limits that ensure the enjoyment of the same rights by other members of society. These limits can only be determined by law.

The law has the right to prohibit only actions that are harmful to society. Whatever is not forbidden by law is permitted, and no one can be compelled to do what is not prescribed by law.

Law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to participate personally or through their representatives in its creation. It must be the same for everyone, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens are equal before him and therefore have equal access to all posts, public offices and occupations according to their ability and without any other distinction than that due to their virtues and abilities.

No one may be charged, detained or imprisoned except in the cases provided for by law and in the forms prescribed by it. Whoever asks for, gives, executes or forces to execute orders based on arbitrariness, is subject to punishment; but every citizen summoned or detained by virtue of the law must obey unquestioningly: in case of resistance, he is responsible.

The law must establish punishments only strictly and indisputably necessary; no one can be punished otherwise than by virtue of the law, adopted and promulgated before the commission of the offense and duly applied.

Since everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty, in cases where it is considered necessary to arrest a person, any excessively severe measures that are not necessary must be strictly suppressed by law.

No one should be oppressed for their views, even religious ones, provided that their expression does not violate the social order established by law.

Free expression of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious human rights; every citizen is therefore free to speak, write, and print, answering only for the abuse of this freedom in the cases prescribed by law.

State force is necessary to guarantee the rights of man and citizen; it is created in the interests of all, and not for the personal benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.

All citizens have the right to establish themselves or through their representatives the need for state taxation, voluntarily agree to its collection, monitor its spending and determine its share size, basis, procedure and duration of collection.

The Company has the right to demand from any official a report on his activities.

A society where there is no guarantee of rights and no separation of powers does not have a Constitution.

Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it except in the case of a clear social need established by law and subject to fair and preliminary compensation.

Constitution of 1791 The most important result of the first stage of the revolution and the activities of the Constituent Assembly was the Constitution, the final text of which was drawn up on the basis of numerous legislative acts that had a constitutional character and were adopted in 1789-1791. Due to opposition from the king, it was approved only on September 3, 1791, and a few days later the king swore allegiance to the Constitution.

Despite its controversial nature, the Constitution was a new step towards consolidating the political and legal order that had developed over the two years of the revolution. The Constitution was opened by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, although the latter was not regarded as a proper constitutional text. This practice, when the constitution is preceded by a Declaration of Nature, has become common not only for French, but also for world constitutionalism. At the same time, the actual constitutional text was preceded by a brief introduction (preamble). In the preamble, a number of anti-feudal provisions proclaimed in the Declaration of 1789 were concretized and developed. Thus, class distinctions and titles of nobility were abolished, workshops and craft corporations were liquidated, the system of sale and inheritance of public positions and other feudal institutions were abolished. The idea of ​​equality found its new reflection in the preamble: “For no part of the nation, for any individual, there are more special advantages or exceptions from the right common to all Frenchmen.”

The Constitution significantly expanded the list of personal and political rights and freedoms compared to the Declaration of 1789, in particular, it provided for freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, but without weapons and subject to police orders, freedom of appeal to state authorities with individual petitions, freedom of religion and the right to choose clergymen. Only the right to create unions of persons of the same profession, which was still prohibited by the Le Chapelier law, was not allowed.

The Constitution also provided for certain social rights, which were a reflection of the egalitarian sentiments that were widespread in France during the years of the revolution. Thus, the introduction of general and partially free public education, the creation of a special department of “public charity for the upbringing of abandoned children, to alleviate the plight of the poor poor and to find work for those healthy poor who turn out to be unemployed” were declared.

The Constitution further developed the concept of national sovereignty, which is “one, indivisible, inalienable and inalienable”. Emphasizing that the nation is the only source of all power, exercised "only by empowerment," the Constitution put into practice the idea of ​​creating a system of representative bodies of power, advanced for that era. The compromise nature of the Constitution, which reflected the tendency towards a political union of the new bourgeois and old feudal forces, was expressed primarily in the consolidation of the monarchical form of government. The doctrine of the separation of powers, proclaimed as early as the Declaration of 1789 and carried out in the Constitution quite consistently, created an opportunity to organizationally distinguish between participation in the exercise of state power by two politically dominant groups, expressing the interests, on the one hand, of the majority of French society, and, on the other hand, of the nobility , but with the predominance of the former, which actually took shape during the revolution. The elective legislative and judicial power was in the hands of representatives of the victorious third estate, while the executive power, which according to the Constitution was entrusted to the king, was considered by noble circles as their stronghold. Thus, absolutism was finally broken and the a constitutional monarchy. The constitution emphasized what a king reigns "only by virtue of the law", and in this regard provided for the royal oath "of loyalty to the nation and the law." The royal title itself became more modest: “King of the French” instead of the former “King by the Grace of God”. The king's expenses were limited to a civil list approved by the legislature. At the same time, the Constitution declared the person of the king "inviolable and sacred", endowed him with significant powers.

The king was regarded as the supreme head of state and executive power, he was entrusted with ensuring public order and tranquility. He was also the supreme commander in chief, appointed to the highest military, diplomatic and other government posts, supported diplomatic relations, approved the declaration of war. The king single-handedly appointed and dismissed ministers and directed their actions. In turn, royal decrees required the obligatory countersign (signature-staple) of the relevant minister, which, to a certain extent, freed the king from political responsibility and shifted it to the government.

The king could not agree with the decision of the legislative body, he had the right to veto. The recognition of this right of the king was preceded by a sharp and lengthy struggle in the Constituent Assembly. Ultimately, the Constitution gave the king a suspensive rather than an absolute veto, as advocates of maintaining a strong royal power sought. The King's veto was only overridden if two successive members of the legislature presented the same bill "in the same terms." The royal veto did not extend, however, to legislative acts of a financial or constitutional nature. Legislative power was exercised by a unicameral National Legislative Assembly, which was elected for two years. It, as it followed from the principle of separation of powers, could not be dissolved by the king. The Constitution contained provisions guaranteeing the convocation of deputies and the beginning of the work of the assembly. Members of the Legislative Assembly were to be guided by an oath to "live free or die." They could not be persecuted for thoughts expressed verbally or in writing or for acts performed in the exercise of their duties as representatives.

The Constitution contained a list of the powers and duties of the Legislative Assembly, with particular emphasis on its right to establish state taxes and the obligation of ministers to account for the expenditure of public funds. This made the ministers to a certain extent dependent on the legislature. The assembly could initiate proceedings to bring ministers to justice for their crimes "against public safety and the constitution." Only the Legislative Assembly had the right to initiate legislation, adopt laws, and declare war. The Constitution formulated the basic principles of the organization of the judiciary, which "cannot be exercised either by the legislative body or by the king." It was established that justice is administered free of charge by judges elected for a fixed term by the people and confirmed in office by the king. Judges could be removed or removed from office only in cases of a crime and in a strictly established manner. On the other hand, the courts were not supposed to interfere in the exercise of legislative power, to suspend the operation of laws, to interfere in the range of activities of government bodies. The constitution provided for the introduction in France of a previously unknown institution of jurors. The participation of the jury was envisaged both at the stage of accusation and bringing to trial, and at the stage of considering the actual composition of the act and making a judgment on this matter. The accused was guaranteed the right to counsel. A person acquitted by a valid jury could not be "again prosecuted or charged with the same act." The constitution finally fixed the new administrative division of France that had developed during the revolution into departments, districts (districts), and cantons. The local administration was formed on an elective basis. But the royal power retained an important right of control over the activities of local bodies, namely the right to cancel the orders of the departmental administration and even remove its officials from office.

In a number of issues of the organization of state power, the Constitution followed a conservative line, which manifested itself, as noted above, already in the first months of the work of the Constituent Assembly. The political moderation of its leaders was reflected, in particular, in the fact that the constitution reproduced the division of citizens into passive and active established by the Decree of December 22, 1789, recognizing only the latter the most important political right - to participate in elections to the Legislative Assembly. Retaining the eligibility requirements stipulated in this decree, the Constitution introduced two more conditions for active citizens: 1) to be included in the list of the national guard of the municipality and 2) to take the civil oath. Primary assemblies of active citizens elected electors to participate in the departmental assemblies, where the election of representatives to the Legislative Assembly took place. Thus, the elections acquired a two-stage character. For electors, an even higher qualification was provided - income or rent of property (housing), equal to the cost of 100-400 working days (depending on the location and population). The right to be elected as deputies (passive suffrage) was granted to persons with an even higher property income. The privilege of wealth was also reflected in the distribution of deputy seats. One third of the Legislative Assembly was elected in accordance with the size of the territory, the second - in proportion to the number of active citizens, the third - in accordance with the amount of taxes paid, that is, depending on the size of property and income. The inconsistent nature of the constitution was also manifested in the fact that it, built on the idea of ​​equality, did not extend to the French colonies, where slavery continued to be preserved.

The Constitution of 1791 stated that "the nation has the inalienable right to change its Constitution." But at the same time, a complex procedure was established for introducing amendments and additions to it. This made the Constitution "rigid", incapable of adapting to the rapidly changing revolutionary environment. Thus, the imminent death of the constitution and the constitutional order based on it was actually predetermined.

The French Constitution of 1791.

On September 3, 1791, the Constituent Assembly adopted the constitution and submitted it to the king for approval. The king took an oath of allegiance to the constitution and power was returned to him. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen formed part of the constitution. In the introduction to the constitution, it was announced that the National Assembly would destroy all institutions that violate freedom and equality of rights. It was announced that all citizens were allowed to hold office, that taxes would be distributed in accordance with their property status. The rights and freedoms of declaration were enumerated. Further, the constitution emphasized the principles of popular sovereignty and separation of powers. Legislative power was delegated to the National Assembly, executive power to the king, and judicial power to judges elected by the people.

The constitution established a unicameral system. The legislative body consisted of 745 deputies elected for 2 years. Deputy seats were distributed among 83 departments on a threefold basis: by territory, population and the amount of tax paid. Each department elected as many deputies as it paid in taxes. The constitution divided all citizens into "active" and "passive". Active participants participated in the elections of deputies and municipal officials. Three categories of active citizens were established. An active citizen must be French, be at least 25 years of age, have permanent residence within a year, and pay direct tax. Each had 1 vote. The elections were two-stage. First, electors were elected, who then elected deputies at the assembly. Additional qualifications were established for electors: in cities - to be the owner of property that yields income from 200 to 150 daily earnings; in the villages - -//- 150 daily wages.

Deputies were elected only from the inhabitants of this department.

The Legislative Assembly enacted laws, determined government spending, established taxes, created and abolished offices. Decrees passed by the Legislative Assembly were sent to the king. The king's veto is suspensive. If each of the two successive legislatures accepts it without change, the king is obliged to give sanction. The form of government is a monarchy. Executive power was delegated to the king ("king of the French"). The king, the head of the entire administration of the kingdom, the supreme commander of the army and navy, appointed and recalled ministers and other officials, negotiated and concluded treaties, which, nevertheless, were subject to ratification. He could remove elected departmental officials from office.

Jacobin dictatorship.

The popular uprising of May 31 - June 2, 1793, led by the insurgent committee of the Paris Commune, led to the expulsion of the Girondins from the Convention and marked the beginning of the period of Jacobin rule. The French Revolution entered its final third stage(June 2, 1793 – July 27, 1794). State power, already concentrated by this time in the Convention, passed into the hands of the leaders of the Jacobins, a small political group determined to further the decisive and uncompromising development of the revolution.

Behind the Jacobins stood a broad bloc of revolutionary-democratic forces (the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, the rural and especially the urban poor). The leading role in this bloc was played by the so-called Montagnards(Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon, etc.), whose speeches and actions reflected primarily the prevailing rebellious and egalitarian moods of the masses.

At the Jacobin stage of the revolution, the participation of various sections of the population in the political struggle reaches its culmination. Thanks to this, the remnants of the feudal system were uprooted in France at that time, radical political transformations were carried out, the threat of intervention by the troops of the coalition of European powers and the restoration of the monarchy was averted. The revolutionary-democratic regime that took shape under the Jacobins ensured the final victory in France of the new social and political system.

The historical peculiarity of this period in the history of the French Revolution and the state also consisted in the fact that the Jacobins did not show great scrupulousness in choosing the means of combating their political opponents and did not stop at using violent methods of reprisal against the supporters of the “old regime”, and at the same time with their own. "enemies".

The most telling example of the revolutionary assertiveness of the Jacobins is their agrarian legislation. As early as June 3, 1793, the Convention, at the suggestion of the Jacobins, provided for the sale of small plots in installments of lands confiscated from noble emigration. On June 10, 1793, a decree was adopted that returned the land occupied by the nobility to the peasant communities and provided for the possibility of dividing the communal lands if one third of the inhabitants voted for it. The divided land became the property of the peasants.

Of great importance was the Decree of July 17, 1793 “On the final abolition of feudal rights”, which unconditionally recognized that all former seigneurial payments, chinche and feudal rights, both permanent and temporary, “are canceled without any remuneration.” Feudal documents confirming the seigneurial rights to land were subject to burning. Former seniors, as well as officials who withhold such documents or keep extracts from them, were sentenced to 5 years in prison. Although the Jacobins, who in principle advocated the preservation of existing property relations, did not satisfy all the demands of the peasant masses (for the confiscation of noble lands, for their equalizing and free division), the agrarian legislation of the Convention for its time was distinguished by great courage and radicalism. It had far-reaching socio-political consequences and became the legal basis for turning the peasantry into a mass of small proprietors, free from the fetters of feudalism. To consolidate the principles of the new civil society, the Convention Decree of September 7, 1793 decided that "no Frenchman can enjoy feudal rights in any area under pain of deprivation of all rights of citizenship."

It is characteristic that the close connection of the Jacobins with the urban lower classes, when emergency circumstances required it (food difficulties, rising high prices, etc.), repeatedly forced them to deviate from the principle of free trade and the inviolability of private property. In July 1793, the Convention introduced the death penalty for speculation in basic necessities; in September 1793, fixed food prices were established by decree on the maximum. Adopted in late February - early March 1794, the so-called vantoskis decrees The Convention assumed the free distribution among the poor patriots of property confiscated from the enemies of the revolution. However, the Ventose decrees, enthusiastically met by the plebeian lower classes of the city and the countryside, were not put into practice due to opposition from those political forces that believed that the idea of ​​equality should not be carried out by such radical measures. In May 1794, the Convention decreed the introduction of a system of state benefits for the poor, the disabled, orphans, and the elderly. Slavery was abolished in the colonies, etc.

Causes and beginning of the revolution. In 1788–1789 France was in the midst of a social and political crisis. And the crisis in industry and trade, and the crop failure of 1788, and the bankruptcy of the state treasury, ruined by the wasteful spending of the court of Louis XVI (1754-1793), were not the main causes of the revolutionary crisis. The main reason that caused widespread dissatisfaction with the existing state of affairs that swept the whole country was that the dominant feudal-absolutist system did not correspond to the tasks of the country's economic, social and political development. Approximately 99% of the population of France was the so-called third estate, and only 1% - the privileged estates - the clergy and nobility.

The third estate was class-wise heterogeneous. It included both the bourgeoisie, and the peasantry, and urban workers, artisans, and the poor. All representatives of the third estate were united by the complete absence of political rights and the desire to change the existing order. All of them did not want and could no longer put up with the feudal-absolutist monarchy.

The immediate cause of the revolution was the bankruptcy of the state, which turned out to be unable to pay off its monstrous debts without abandoning the system of archaic privileges based on nobility and family ties. The unsuccessful attempts of the royal authorities to reform this system exacerbated the dissatisfaction of the nobles with the fall of their influence and encroachments on their primordial privileges. In search of a way out of the financial impasse, Louis XVI was forced to convene (May 5, 1789) the Estates General, which had not met since 1614.

The Estates General was a deliberative body of three chambers, one for each estate. The king and those close to him hoped, with the help of the Estates General, to calm public opinion, to get necessary funds to replenish the treasury. However, already during the elections, it became clear how high the degree of political activity was in the kingdom: the election programs of the deputies went much further than the good, but timid intentions of Louis, demanding not partial financial reforms, but general revival country, decentralization of power, liberalization of all aspects of life.

Particularly strong was the deputation of the third estate, the political tasks of which were formulated by the abbe Sieyes who entered it: “What is the third estate? All. What has it been up to now under the existing order? Nothing. What does it require? Be something." Next to Sieyes, the “thinker of the revolution” is its “actor” Mirabeau and a whole galaxy of young provincial politicians, mostly lawyers and representatives of the liberal professions: Le Chapelier and Barnave, Lanjunet and Robespierre, Busot and Rabaud Saint-Etienne ... But there were radical thinkers deputies from both the nobility and the clergy: the Marquis Lafayette, hero of the American Revolutionary War; brothers Lamet, Bishop Talleyrand of Autun and others.

The States General were solemnly opened at Versailles on May 5, 1789. From the very first days of their work, a conflict arose between the third estate and the first two because of the order of meetings and voting. For more than a month, the House of Commons, as the deputation of the Third Estate came to be called, struggled to ensure that its voice was not drowned out by the voices of the privileged chambers. Finally, on June 17, the deputies of the third estate declared themselves the National Assembly. This bold move encouraged members of the lower clergy to join them. The king's attempt on June 23 to disperse the Assembly failed thanks to the determination of the deputies, in particular Mirabeau, who henceforth became the permanent leader of the "first wave" revolutionaries. The very next day, the rest of the deputies joined the Assembly, and on July 9 it proclaimed itself the Constituent Assembly, proclaiming its goal to develop the constitutional foundations of a new political order.

The king refused to recognize these authorities. The threat of reprisal against the assembly caused a popular uprising in Paris. Armed people captured the city, pushing the troops back. On July 14, 1789, the fortress-prison Bastille, a symbol of absolutism, fell. This day is considered the date of the beginning of the revolution.

There are three stages in the history of the French Revolution:

At the first stage of the revolution, the big bourgeoisie and the liberal nobility seized power. They advocated a constitutional monarchy. Among them, the leading role was played by M. Lafayette, A. Baria, A. Lamet.

A constitutional monarchy. After the capture of the Bastille, a wave of "municipal revolutions" swept through the country, during which new elected local governments were created. The army of the revolution was formed - the national guard, headed by Lafayette. Unrest also broke out in the countryside: the peasants burned castles, destroyed documents of feudal law and seigneurial archives. The Constituent Assembly at a night meeting on August 4, called the "night of miracles", announced the "complete destruction of the feudal order" and the abolition of some of the most odious seigneurial rights. The remaining duties of the peasants were subject to redemption beyond their strength. The principles of the new civil society were enshrined in the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" (August 26, 1789). It proclaimed the sacred and inalienable rights of man and citizen - freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, security and resistance to oppression. A decree was also promulgated declaring all church property national. The Constituent Assembly approved a new administrative division of the kingdom into 83 departments, abolished the old class division and abolished all titles of the nobility and clergy, feudal duties, class privileges, abolished workshops, proclaimed freedom of enterprise.

The "Declaration" served as a preamble to the text of the constitution, the development of which continued until September 1791. Constitutional debates in the Assembly were accompanied by the adoption of decrees regulating the most important aspects of French life. A new territorial and administrative division of the country was approved, which created modern departments. The "civil organization of the clergy" - the election of church servants, the obligatory oath of priests to be faithful to the constitution - deprived catholic church independent political role. Undertaken to pay the public debt and cover running costs sale of so-called. national property (confiscated church and emigrant lands, as well as the possessions of the crown), the issuance of banknotes under their security, which had a forced exchange rate and quickly depreciated, led to a redistribution of property. At the first stage of the revolution, power was in the hands of that part of the nobility and the bourgeoisie, which had financial claims against the royal power and sought to satisfy them at any cost.

The political leadership of the country was carried out at that time by a group of Feuillants. The most famous of the so-called. "Patriotic Societies" became the Jacobin Club. Through an extensive network of branches in the provinces, he had a huge impact on the politicization of a large part of the population. Journalism has gained unprecedented importance: “The Friend of the People” by J. P. Marat, “Papa Duchene” by J. Hébert, “The French Patriot” by J. P. Brissot, “Iron Mouth” by N. Bonville, “Village Sheets” by J. A. Cerutti and other newspapers introduced readers to the complex palette of political struggle.

The king, who retained the status of head of state, but was actually in Paris as a hostage, on June 21, 1791, tried to secretly escape with his family to the Austrian Netherlands, but was identified and detained in the town of Varennes. The "Varenne Crisis" compromised the constitutional monarchy. On July 17, a mass demonstration demanding the abdication of Louis XVI was shot on the Champ de Mars in Paris. In an attempt to save the monarchy, the Assembly allowed the king to sign the finally adopted constitution and, having exhausted its powers, dispersed. The same "Varenne Crisis" served as a signal for the formation of a coalition of European powers against revolutionary France.

Girondins in power. In the new Legislative Assembly, the Feuillants were pushed into the background by the Girondins, who emerged from the depths of the Jacobin Club, headed by J. P. Brissot, P. V. Vergnot, and J. A. Condorcet. The Girondins represented predominantly the republican commercial, industrial and agricultural bourgeoisie. They constituted the majority in the Convention and were the right wing in the Assembly. They were opposed by the Jacobins, who formed the left wing. The Jacobins expressed the interests of the revolutionary-democratic bourgeoisie, which acted in alliance with the peasantry and the plebeians. From the beginning of 1792, the Girondins began to discuss measures to prepare for the separation of church and state. On June 18 and August 25, the Legislative Assembly abolished the redemption of feudal rights, except in cases where "original" documents were presented that stipulated the transfer of land by certain duties. On April 20, 1792, on the initiative of the Girondins, France declared war on Austria, on whose side Prussia soon came out.

The deep social upheavals that took place in the country intensified the friction between revolutionary France and the monarchist powers of Europe. England recalled its ambassador from Paris. The Russian Empress Catherine II (1729–1796) expelled the French attorney Genet. The Islamic ambassador in Paris demanded his credentials back, and the Spanish government began military maneuvers along the Pyrenees. The Dutch ambassador was recalled from Paris.

Austria and Prussia entered into an alliance between themselves and announced that they would prevent the spread of everything that threatened the monarchy in France and the security of all European powers. The threat of intervention forced France to be the first to declare war against them.

The war began with setbacks for the French troops. In connection with the difficult situation at the front, the Legislative Assembly proclaimed: "The Fatherland is in danger." In the spring of 1792, a young sapper captain, poet and composer, Claude de Lisle, in a fit of inspiration, wrote the famous Marseillaise overnight, which later became the French national anthem.

The devastation inevitable for every revolution, inflation, the growth of high prices caused an increasing protest of the rural and urban population. The failures of the first months of the war gave rise to suspicions of treason. On June 20, 1792, a crowd of Parisian sans-culottes broke into the Tuileries Palace, but did not get permission from the king to decree the expulsion of unsworn priests and the creation of a military camp in the vicinity of Paris to save the capital from the Austrian and Prussian armies.

On August 10, 1792, a popular uprising took place, led by the Paris Commune. The second stage of the revolution began, the Paris Commune became during this period the body of Parisian city self-government, and in 1793-1794. was an important organ of revolutionary power. The Commune shut down many monarchist newspapers. She arrested former ministers, abolished the property qualification; all men over the age of 21 were given the right to vote.

Under the leadership of the Commune, crowds of Parisians began to prepare to storm the Tuileries Palace, in which the king was. Without waiting for the assault, the king and his family left the palace and came to the Legislative Assembly.

The armed people seized the palace. The Legislative Assembly adopted a resolution on the removal of the king from power and the convening of a new supreme authority - the National Convention (assembly). On August 11, 1792, the monarchy in France was effectively abolished. The overthrow of the monarchy was the pinnacle of political success for the Girondins. To try the king's supporters, the Legislative Assembly established an Extraordinary Tribunal.

The performance of the Prussian-Austrian troops, which began immediately after the uprising on August 10, 1792, caused a new national upsurge, at the same time provoking yet another rumor of a conspiracy in the rear. Mass beatings of prisoners in Parisian prisons in early September 1792 became a harbinger of the coming terror.

On September 20, two major events. The French troops inflicted the first defeat on the enemy troops at the Battle of Valmy. On the same day, a new, revolutionary Assembly, the Convention, opened in Paris, in which the Montagnards, led by M. Robespierre, competed with the Girondins. Supporters of the latter, even during the time of the Constituent Assembly, sat in the meeting room on the uppermost benches, for which they received the nickname of the Mountain (la montagne - mountain). Between the Jacobins and the Girondins, a sharp struggle unfolded. The Girondins were satisfied with the results of the revolution, opposed the execution of the king and opposed the further development of the revolution.

But two decrees in the Convention were adopted unanimously: on the inviolability of property, on the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the Republic.

On September 21, the Republic (First Republic) was proclaimed in France. The motto of the Republic was the slogan "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity".

The question that worried everyone at that time was the fate of the arrested King Louis XVI. The convention decided to try him. On January 14, 1793, 387 out of 749 deputies of the Convention voted in favor of giving the king the death penalty. One of the deputies of the Convention explained his participation in the vote this way: “This process is an act of public salvation or a measure of public security ...” On January 21, Louis XVI was executed, in October 1793, Queen Marie Antoinette was executed.

The execution of Louis XVI served as a pretext for expanding the anti-French coalition, which included England and Spain. Failures on the external front, the deepening of economic difficulties within the country, the growth of taxes - all this shook the position of the Girondins. Unrest intensified in the country, pogroms and murders began, and on May 31 - June 2, 1793, a popular uprising took place. From this event begins the third stage of the Revolution.

Jacobin dictatorship. Power passed into the hands of the radical bourgeoisie, which relied on the bulk of the urban population and the peasantry. The victory of the Montagnards on a national scale was preceded by their victory over their opponents in the Jacobin Club; therefore the regime they established was called the Jacobin dictatorship. To save the revolution, the Jacobins considered it necessary to introduce an emergency regime. The Jacobins recognized the centralization of state power as an indispensable condition. The convention remained the supreme legislative body. In his submission was a government of 11 people - the Committee of Public Safety, headed by Robespierre. The Committee of Public Safety of the Convention was strengthened to fight against the counter-revolution, revolutionary tribunals became more active.

The position of the new government was difficult. The war was raging. In most departments of France, especially the Vendée, there were riots. In the summer of 1793, Marat was killed by a young noblewoman, Charlotte Corday, which had a serious impact on the course of further political events.

According to the agrarian legislation of the Jacobins (June-July 1793), communal and emigrant lands were transferred to the peasants for division; all feudal rights and privileges were completely destroyed without any redemption. In September 1793, the government established a general maximum - the upper limit of prices for consumer products and the wages of workers. The maximum met the aspirations of the poor; however, it was also very profitable for large merchants who were fabulously rich on wholesale deliveries, because he ruined their competitors - small shopkeepers.

The Jacobins continued to attack the Catholic Church and introduced a republican calendar. In June 1793, the Convention adopted a new constitution, according to which France was declared a single and indivisible Republic; the rule of the people, the equality of people in rights, broad democratic freedoms were consolidated. The property qualification was canceled when participating in elections to state bodies; all men over the age of 21 were given the right to vote. Wars of conquest were condemned. This constitution was the most democratic of all French constitutions, but its introduction was delayed due to the state of emergency in the country.

The Jacobin dictatorship, which successfully used the initiative of the social rank and file, demonstrated a complete rejection of liberal principles. Industrial production and agriculture, finance and trade, public celebrations and the private life of citizens - everything was subject to strict regulation. However, this did not stop the further deepening of the economic and social crisis. In September 1793 the Convention "put terror on the agenda".

The supreme executive body of the Jacobin dictatorship - the Committee of Public Safety - sent its representatives to all departments, endowing them with emergency powers. Starting with those who hoped to resurrect old order or simply reminded of him, the Jacobin terror did not spare even such famous revolutionaries as J. J. Danton and C. Desmoulins. The concentration of power in the hands of Robespierre was accompanied by complete isolation caused by mass executions.

The Committee of Public Safety held a number of important measures to reorganize and strengthen the army, thanks to which, in a fairly short time The republic managed to create not only a large, but also a well-armed army. And by the beginning of 1794 the war was transferred to the territory of the enemy. The decisive victory of General J. B. Jourdan on June 26, 1794 at Fleurus (Belgium) over the Austrians gave guarantees of the inviolability of the new property, the tasks of the Jacobin dictatorship were exhausted, and the need for it disappeared.

Among the Jacobins, internal divisions escalated. Thus, from the autumn of 1793, Danton demanded the weakening of the revolutionary dictatorship, a return to the constitutional order, and the abandonment of the policy of terror. He was executed. The lower classes demanded deepening reforms. Most of the bourgeoisie, dissatisfied with the policy of the Jacobins, who pursued a restrictive regime and dictatorial methods, went over to counter-revolutionary positions, dragging along significant masses of peasants.

Not only the rank-and-file bourgeois acted in this way; the leaders Lafayette, Barnave, Lamet, as well as the Girondins, joined the counter-revolutionary camp. The Jacobin dictatorship was increasingly deprived of popular support.

Using terror as the only method of resolving contradictions, Robespierre prepared his own death and was doomed. The country and the whole people were tired of the horror of the Jacobin terror, and all its opponents united in a single bloc. In the bowels of the Convention, a conspiracy was ripened against Robespierre and his supporters.

On 9 Thermidor (July 27), 1794, the conspirators succeeded in carrying out a coup, arresting Robespierre, and overthrowing the revolutionary government. “The republic has perished, the kingdom of robbers has come,” these were last words Robespierre at the Convention. On Thermidor 10, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and their closest associates were guillotined.

The conspirators now used terror at their own discretion. They released their supporters from prison and imprisoned supporters of Robespierre. The Paris Commune was immediately abolished.

The Thermidorian Revolution and the Directory. In September 1794, for the first time in the history of France, a decree was adopted on the separation of church and state. The confiscation and sale of emigrant property did not stop.

In 1795, a new constitution was adopted, according to which power was transferred to the Directory and two councils - the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Elders. Universal suffrage was abolished, the property qualification was restored (albeit a small one). In the summer of 1795, the republican army of General L. Hoche defeated the forces of the rebels - Chouans and royalists, who had landed from English ships on the Quiberon (Brittany) peninsula. On October 5 (13 Vendemière), 1795, the republican troops of Napoleon Bonaparte crushed a royalist revolt in Paris. However, in the politics of the groupings that were replaced in power (Thermidorians, the Directory), the struggle against the masses of the people became more and more widespread. Popular uprisings in Paris were suppressed on April 1 and May 20-23, 1795 (Germinal 12-13 and Prairial 1-4). On November 9, 1799, the Council of Elders appointed Brigadier General Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) as commander of the army. Large-scale external aggression - the Napoleonic wars in Italy, Egypt, etc. - protected Thermidorian France both from the threat of the restoration of the old order, and from the new upsurge of the revolutionary movement.

The revolution ended on November 9 (Brumaire 18), 1799, when the regime of the Directory was legally abolished and a new state order was established - the Consulate, which existed from 1799 to 1804. A "firm power" was established - the dictatorship of Napoleon.

The main results of the French Revolution:

1. It consolidated and simplified the complex variety of pre-revolutionary forms of ownership.

2. The lands of many (but not all) nobles were sold to the peasants with an installment plan of 10 years in small plots (parcels).

3. Abolished the privileges of the nobility and clergy and introduced equal social opportunities for all citizens. All this contributed to the expansion of civil rights in all European countries, the introduction of constitutions.

4. The revolution took place under the auspices of representative elected bodies: the National Constituent Assembly (1789-1791), the Legislative Assembly (1791-1792), the Convention (1792-1794). This contributed to the development of parliamentary democracy, despite subsequent setbacks.

5. The resolution gave rise to a new state structure - a parliamentary republic.

6. The state now acted as the guarantor of equal rights for the veins of citizens.

7. The financial system was transformed: the estate nature of taxes was abolished, the principle of their universality and proportionality to income or property was introduced. The publicity of the budget was proclaimed.

This refers to the beer known to the ancient Germans.

estate- a legal concept that defines the legal, and not property status.

income generating- a person who received an allotment on royal land with the condition of paying in kind most of the harvest.

Those. the contract must be terminated.

Those. will die a natural death.

Those. debtor.

Those. the son who took the pledge.

The phrase "son of a man" could mean both kinship and belonging to the privileged class of the native Babylonians, full members of the communities. Here it is used in the second sense.

The word "covenant" in the Bible is used in the meaning of "union", "agreement". The “Bible Encyclopedia”, compiled in 1891 by Archimandrite Nikifor, defines this concept as follows: “The Old and New Testament - in other words, the ancient union of God with people and the new union of God with people. The Old Testament was that God promised people a Divine Savior (...) and prepared them to receive Him. The New Testament consisted in the fact that God really gave people the Divine Savior of His Only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

These writings in Akkadian allowed modern science to learn a lot about Near Eastern antiquity, but at that time Aramaic, which had become practically international, already dominated in oral speech.

The legendary king Achaemen was considered the founder of the dynasty.