The French Revolution and the Rise of Napoleon
The French Monarchy in Crisis
In the last third of the eighteenth century, during the reign of Louis XVI, France was a model of absolute monarchy governed by the principles of the Enlightenment. However, broad sectors of the population began to openly criticize the regime and demand change. By 1789, liberal ideas had permeated part of the population, even among a sector of the nobility and the Church, so criticism of absolutism and estate society began to spread, as well as the defense of the separation of powers and equality before the law.
The privileged classes were exempt from paying direct taxes and were seen as parasites by the bourgeoisie and the peasantry, who did pay them. The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), in which France lost Canada and possessions in India and Africa to Great Britain, also affected the Royal Treasury, which was forced to pay the enormous debt it contracted to finance its war actions. Despite this generalized economic crisis, the court of Versailles did not decrease either its expenses or its luxuries.
Personalities from France, such as the Marquis de La Fayette, had fought in the American War of Independence alongside the rebel militias, and signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence (Franklin, Jefferson) regularly visited France, so their example was present. The population had grown significantly throughout the eighteenth century, and agricultural production could not meet the demand for food at times of poor harvests, when social inequalities were more evident. The atmosphere in France was one of great political agitation: a multitude of pamphlets and propaganda against the Ancien Régime were circulating, with the figures of the king and queen being openly criticized. This generalized unrest materialized in more than 25,000 notebooks of complaints, memorials, or registers that the assemblies of each French constituency in charge of electing deputies in the Estates-General filled in with petitions and complaints from each estate. The model of absolute monarchy was put to the test in the following years and showed its inability to adapt.
The Estates-General (1789)
King Louis XVI convened the Estates-General (an assembly of the Ancien Régime where representation was by estate and not individual) in the face of the problems of the Royal Treasury to propose that privileged people pay taxes. As it was an estate assembly, the voting system was one vote per estate (nobility, clergy, and third estate), so the privileged had the possibility of decision. The third estate required that the vote be individual, that is, one vote per attendee, since they would win by majority. The rejection of the nobility and the clergy led to the dissolution of the Estates-General. But the deputies of the Third Estate constituted themselves into the National Assembly, declaring themselves the sole representatives of the French people and swearing not to dissolve until France had a Constitution.
The Constituent Assembly
While the National Assembly carried out its work, the social situation worsened. In the countryside, properties of the nobility were raided and, in Paris, the sans-culottes (people from the most disadvantaged social strata) allied themselves with the bourgeoisie and were protagonists of the main revolutionary events, such as the storming of the Bastille, a prison where the absolute monarchy imprisoned political prisoners. The guard that was supposed to defend it opened the doors to the people. The king failed to dissolve the Assembly, which enacted reforms such as the abolition of feudal privileges, the establishment of census suffrage, and the creation of a single direct and universal tax. In addition, the Assembly approved the Constitution of 1791, which determined the division of powers, reserving the Executive to the King, and incorporated the text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
The Legislative Assembly (1791-1792)
Although it seemed that Louis XVI accepted the situation, he contacted other absolute monarchies to conspire against the new regime. His intention was to take advantage of the alarm in the European courts about what was happening in France, fearful that this situation would spread to their domains; however, he was discovered and arrested at the Tuileries Palace. Once the Constitution was approved, the Constituent Assembly was dissolved and elections were called by census suffrage. The result determined the composition of the Legislative Assembly, in which the following could be differentiated:
- La Llanura: Deputies without specific affiliation. They were in the majority.
- Girondins: Moderate deputies, federalists, and supporters of the parliamentary monarchy, who obtained the second largest representation. Their leader was Jacques Pierre Brissot.
- Jacobins: Radical liberal deputies, centralists, and sympathizers of the republic, with less representation. Their leader was Maximilien de Robespierre.
- Cordeliers: A more radical faction composed largely of the humblest section of the people, the sans-culottes.
Meanwhile, Austria and Prussia attacked France and threatened Paris in 1792. In this context, there was a rebellion of sans-culottes (assault on the Tuileries Palace), who distrusted a king who had conspired with the invading monarchies. The Legislative Assembly suspended the monarch’s executive power and called elections by universal male suffrage.
The National Convention (1792-1795)
After the elections, the Assembly assumed the Legislative and Executive powers, becoming the National Convention. It was entrusted with the drafting of a new Constitution, although in the face of the war emergency, its priority was the fight against the invading army, which it ended up defeating in the decisive battle of Valmy. Although the Jacobin party obtained a higher representation in the elections than the Girondins, it did not win a majority. However, the Convention deposed Louis XVI, who was imprisoned and, in September 1792, the Republic was proclaimed.
In the months that followed, the Jacobin party gained control of the Convention, which voted for more radical measures as the war abroad intensified. The king was tried for treason and executed by guillotine, committees were organized to attend to the different tasks of government, slavery was abolished, and measures in favor of the disadvantaged classes were approved. The National Convention drafted a Constitution that was never applied. Inspired by Jacobin ideals, it envisaged greater political democratization through the establishment of universal male suffrage and the distribution of wealth by enshrining the right to food, education, and work.
In parallel to these measures, the period known as “the Terror” was unleashed. The Committee of Public Safety, charged with defending the Revolution and led by Maximilien Robespierre, ordered the execution of people who were opposed to the revolutionary order or who were simply suspected of being so. Violence and constant instability led a moderate sector of the deputies to perpetrate a coup d’état in 1794 (Thermidorian Reaction). They seized power and condemned Robespierre to death, which triggered the so-called “White Terror” against the Jacobin party. The National Convention began the drafting of a new Constitution.
The Directory (1795-1799)
In 1795, the new Constitution (of Year III) was approved, which was more restrictive in terms of rights and freedoms than that of 1791. This legal text established an Executive power called the “Directory,” which in its first two years concentrated on putting an end to the excesses of the Jacobin Reign of Terror; mass executions ceased and measures taken against exiled priests and monarchists were relaxed. The new government faced the threat of external war, as France continued to be the target of international counterrevolutionary coalitions. It also had to face conspiracies and internal rebellions of a monarchical and revolutionary nature. Internal instability and the lack of a definitive victory abroad constituted the fertile ground for a new coup d’état.
The Consulate: The most prestigious French general, Napoleon Bonaparte, led a coup d’état on 18 Brumaire (9 November) 1799. He seized power and drafted another constitution that same year. The new constitutional text established a Congress and a Senate with very few powers, since the Consulate, which was the government formed by three consuls, combined the Executive and Legislative powers. In this way, Napoleon was able to govern in an authoritarian manner as first consul of the Republic.
The Empire Emerging from the Revolution
During the period of the Consulate, Napoleon accumulated greater and greater powers of government. The consolidation of his power, his military victories abroad, internal stability after a decade of upheavals, and the fear of being assassinated were the reasons for establishing a hereditary power that would ensure the continuity of the regime. Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French in 1804 after being requested to do so by the Senate. In this way, he confirmed that he was not a sovereign by divine right like those of the Ancien Régime, but that he was an emperor of a new type, since his legitimacy came from the French Revolution.
Napoleon’s Empire meant the reform of the political framework inherited from the period that began in 1789, in addition to constituting the starting point of various aspects of the modern French national state. Main measures included:
- Establishment of a dictatorial government: It controlled the powers of the Executive and the Legislative as well as the appointment of judges.
- End of revolutionary achievements: It ended the abolition of slavery and the separation of powers.
- Creation of a repressive regime: He persecuted all kinds of opposition, both the Bourbon, which sought to restore the monarchy, and the Jacobin and the Republican, opposed to his authoritarianism.
- Creation of a French Civil Code: It ensured the equality of citizenship before the law and abolished the privileges of the nobility and the clergy (but women remained under the authority of their fathers or husbands), prohibited torture, and definitively removed aspects of civil life such as marriage and divorce from the control of the Church. It enshrined private property as a fundamental right and promoted freedom of contract.
- Encouragement of the economy: During the Consulate, the Central Bank of France was founded to control the minting of currency and finance war campaigns. As emperor, he promoted the opening of Chambers of Commerce.
- Modernization of education: Established the lyceums (1802), public high schools designed to educate the nation’s elite rigorously in subjects such as mathematics, science, literature, and classical languages. He also created the Imperial University (1808), an institution charged with overseeing all education in France.
- Improvement of public administration: Creating a Court of Auditors to audit public finances and preparing budgets with the forecast of government expenditure and revenue.
The majority of European liberalism initially hailed Napoleon as the propagator of the ideals and conquests of the French Revolution. However, over time, his authoritarianism caused a part of them to identify him with tyranny.
Expansion and Collapse of the Napoleonic Empire
Napoleon achieved success and fame as a young soldier in defense of the Republic against the counterrevolutionary international coalitions that attacked France, which determines another essential characteristic of the Napoleonic Empire: its expansive nature. Bonaparte resurrected the idea of a European Empire by justifying it in the need to extend the principles of the French Revolution. In reality, he sought to establish a new international order in Europe in which France would enjoy hegemonic power, thus recovering the approaches of Louis XIV’s time.
In the first phase (1804-1812), Napoleon’s repeated victories against the great absolutist powers (Austria, Prussia, and Russia) led to the control of Italy, Central Europe, and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire (1806). Faced with these successes, his fleet, allied with the Spanish, was defeated by the British at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). Faced with the impossibility of obtaining control of the seas, Napoleon decreed the commercial blockade of Great Britain and the invasion of Portugal and Spain in 1808, where he was forced to face a long conflict of attrition.
In a second phase (1812-1815), Napoleon undertook the conquest of Russia, but his army was completely defeated. The subsequent successes of the allied countries against the French emperor and the endless war in Spain finally led to his defeat (1814). Napoleon was condemned to exile on the Italian island of Elba. However, he managed to regain power short-lived but, in 1815, British troops and their allies definitively defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. This time he was banished to the island of St. Helena, where he died in 1821.