Professor Brophy
History 102

French Revolution, 1792-99

I. The Decline of Constitutional Monarchy
-achievements of National Assembly
-limitations
-weak royal leadership
-real and imagined enemies
-the Flight to Varennes (June 1791)
-radicalization: Declaration of Pillnitz, Aug. ’91;  fear of counterrevolution; declaration of war, April 1792
-war losses; National Assembly’s loss of legitimacy
-Storming of Tuileries, 10 Aug 1792
-power passes to Jacobins   

II. Radical Phase of Revolution
-Paris Commune, Sept. Massacres,  election of National Convention
-republic declared (Sept. 1792); abolition of slavery
-execution of king (Jan. 1793)
-attacks on Church; land reform for peasantry
-foreign war and its intensification of domestic factionalization
-civil war: factions and radicalism

III. Revolutionary Dictatorship, 1793-95
-Jacobin Purge of National Convention
-the “emergency” Committee of Public Safety:
    Robespierre and St. Juste
-The Terror: suspension of civil liberties; execution and imprisonment
-wars of liberation: the levee en masse and the new citizen-soldier
-rev. culture: new time, festivals, rational religion, etc.
-the execution of Robespierre (July 1794)
-interpreting the terror

IV. The Directory and the Rise of Napoleon
-the excesses of radical period and the search for moderate gov.: the Thermidorean reaction
-the new constitution: five-man Directory as executive branch
-elimination of  both royalism and Jacobinism
-failure: corrupt and unstable government; inflation
-the rise of Napoleon

Summary: A Decade of Revolution
-the range of political development
-the expansion of revolution from French to world event
-revolution and the birth of political nationalism
-Napoleon’s stamp on revolution and his subsequent legacy