[110], At Cholet on 17 October, the Republican army won a decisive victory over the Vende rebels, and the survivors escaped into Brittany. [107], The Reign of Terror began as a way to harness revolutionary fervour, but quickly degenerated into the settlement of personal grievances. The socio-economic analysis of the revolution and focus on the experiences or ordinary people dominated French studies of the revolution after World War II. [17], Although willing to authorise one-time taxes, these bodies were reluctant to pass long-term measures, while collection was outsourced to private individuals. May 12, 1780. The news brought crowds of protestors into the streets, and soldiers of the elite Gardes Franaises regiment refused to disperse them. Next morning, some of the protestors broke into the Royal apartments, searching for Marie Antoinette, who escaped. [45] Over 25% of French farmland was subject to feudal dues, which provided most of the income for large landowners; these were now cancelled, along with tithes due to the church. [72], The traditional force for preserving law and order was the army, which was increasingly divided between officers, who largely came from the nobility, and ordinary soldiers. The process was a long and difficult one, hampered by differences of opinion, growing radicalism and the events of 1789-91. . In January 1790, the National Guard tried to arrest Marat for denouncing Lafayette and Bailly as 'enemies of the people'. In August 1790, the loyalist General Bouill suppressed a serious mutiny at Nancy; although congratulated by the Assembly, he was criticised by Jacobin radicals for the severity of his actions. The French Revolution swept away the monarch and killed their king and queen; the Terror which followed the twisting of the revolutionary ideals was in no sense an improvement. [39], On the 14th, many of these soldiers joined the mob in attacking the Bastille, a royal fortress with large stores of arms and ammunition. On 25 September 1792, Lasource, of Brissot's party, told the convention: "I fear the despotism of Paris, and I do not want those who dispose there of the opinion of the men they mislead to dominate the national convention and the whole France. [204] This sparked a counter-revolutionary movement led by women; while supporting other political and social changes, they opposed the dissolution of the Catholic Church and revolutionary cults like the Cult of the Supreme Being. [163], Fighting continued for two reasons; first, French state finances had come to rely on indemnities levied on their defeated opponents. READ: The Atlantic Revolutions (article) | Khan Academy In a speech made to the convention on 26 July, he claimed certain members were conspiring against the Republic, an almost certain death sentence if confirmed. The second stream is those writers who celebrated the democratic republican values of the revolution. Scholars such as Michel-Rolph Traillot and Anthony Hurley have emphasised the cultural traditions of colonial slaves, arguing that the Haitian revolution was not a derivative of the French revolution.[279]. [269][271], Alfred Cobban challenged Jacobin-Marxist social and economic explanations of the revolution in two important works, The Myth of the French Revolution (1955) and Social Interpretation of the French Revolution (1964). [31] The lifting of press censorship allowed widespread distribution of political writings, mostly written by liberal members of the aristocracy and upper middle-class. The Reign of Terror - French Revolution While the convention was evenly divided on the question of his guilt, members were increasingly influenced by radicals centred in the Jacobin clubs and Paris Commune. His success in that role resulted in promotion to the Army of Italy in April 1794, and the beginning of his rise to military and political power. Camille Desmoulins asked his followers to wear green cockades on 12 July 1789. The Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, a militant group on the far left, demanded a law in 1793 that would compel all women to wear the tricolour cockade to demonstrate their loyalty to the Republic. [6] Antiquated farming methods and transportation networks failed to keep up with these numbers. Both territories experienced revolutions in 1789. At first it brought liberal and democratic ideas, the end of guilds, serfdom and the Jewish ghetto. The new government enforced new reforms, incorporating the region into France itself. Belgian men were drafted into the French wars and heavily taxed. His fall in first 1814 and then 1815 saw the return of the French monarchy, clearly a national return to pre-revolutionary times, even if France could not return to that era.