The French Revolution Essay -- essays research papers

The cut Revolution (1789-99) violently transformed France from a monarchical state with a rigid brotherly hierarchy into a modern demesne in which the social structure was loosened and power passed increasingly to the middle classes. in that location is considerable controversy over the causes of the Revolution. Marxist scholars emphasize material factors as the population increased, food supplies grew short land had become divided into much(prenominal) small parcels that most Frenchmen lived close to the subsistence level and after 1776 agricultural receding forced property owners to exploit their sources of revenue. Marxists also maintain that commercial prosperity had stimulated the growth of a monied middle class that threaten the position of the established landed aristocracy. Other social historians emphasize the splendor of the growing discrepancy between reality and the legally defined social structure, which distinguished men by hereditary or acquired rank and kno w corporate rather than individual rights. They also emphasize, however, the complexity of French ordination and question the importance of capitalism.The first phase of the Revolution was marked by moral and physical violence. The National accumulation established a young legal structure by abolishing privileges, venality, and "feudal" obligations (August 4) formulating a Declaration of Rights (August 26) and specifying sanctioned constitutional principles that left the king as the chief executive incumbent but deprived him of any legislative power except a suspensive veto. In 1789-91, a comparatively peaceful period, the National Assembly did much to modernize France. Despite the Declaration of Rights, the reformed franchise legato excluded the poor but the public maintained its faith in liberty and unity. In 1791 the call for a clerical oath of loyalty crystallised the conflict between the new sovereignty and traditional loyalties and split the full-length count ry. In 1791-92 the hard-won constitution collapsed. On Apr. 20, 1792, the new Legislative Assembly tell war on Austria, which it believed to be instigating counterrevolutionary agitation and thus launched the French Revolutionary Wars. Born of this second revolution and briefly favored by military victory, the National Convention horrified Europe by establishing a republic (Sept. 22, 1792), inaugurating a policy of revolutionary war, and sendin... ...utions were nonetheless steadily eat at until the creation of the First Empire (1804-15) ended the revolutionary period.The most concrete results of the French Revolution were probably achieved in 1789-91, when land was freed from customary burdens and the aged(prenominal) corporate society was destroyed. The great reforms of 1789-91 nevertheless established an enduring administrative and legal arrangement, and much of the revolutionaries work in humanizing the law itself was subsequently incarnate in the Napoleonic Code. Politica lly, the revolution was more significant than successful. Since 1789 the French presidential term has been either parliamentary and constitutional or based on the plebiscitary system that Napoleon inherited and developed. The Revolution nevertheless freed the state from the trammels of its medieval past, evacuant such unprecedented power that the revolutionaries could defy, and Napoleon conquer, the rest of Europe. Moreover, that power adjudge no restraint in 1793 unity was imposed on the nation by the Terror. Europe and the world have ever since been learning what infringements of liberty can issue from the concepts of national sovereignty and the will of the people.