Battle of Saratoga

(American Revolution)

-1st big battle in the revolution

-in New York

-Britain is lost in the forrest and running out of supplies, Washington surrounds them and they surrender. Transforms the revolution into a world war.  Before this point it was colonists against English people. Now this shows the world, that America is in it for the long haul. France was hoping we would win. 

-After what battle in the American Revolution did france declare war on Britain?

-Pretty much everyone against Britain at this point.

-This changes things to a war of Brisish survival

-Britain is now side tracked and cant focus on just us anymore.

-2nd big battle of the American Revolution

-in Virginia

-Lord Cornwallis led the English. Yorktown is on a peninsula(surrounded by 3 sides of water).  An army can barely fit on it but Cornwallis and his army are on it.  Washington closes it up by putting his army on the one side with land. Britain has a navy that we don’t have.  Cornwallis thinks he is saved because he sees sails on the horizon, but it is the French navy, not his.  Washington takes their surrender. The british lose a whole army, and declare peace with us because they are much more worried about the French. We are free.   So now we owe a lot of our freedom to the French.

-After the revolution we needed to figure out what to do with our new indepence. 

-We needed to form a government.

-The 13 colonies got together and wrote what?

-Americans were very scared of a central government withtoo much power.  -So this creates 13 very strong state governments with hardly any central gov at all. 

-The gov is so weak that it cant do what its supposed to: defend the people.

-It falls apart. 

-The radical democrats

-The federalists

-A group of people who want to change the articles of confederation

-The people who want democracy

-they want a free people.

-A group of people who want to change the articles of confederation

-Most of the founding fathers were called this

-they wanted a stronger central government.

-1787

-the groups get together and form this.

 -Most of the first group leaves, so most of the constitution was written by the federalists.

-We are the essentially the first country since ancient Athens to really gamble on a democracy.

-The constitution is an enlightenment document; The state is there to serve you instead of the peoples serving the state.

-One part of the constitution

-your population  decides on how many people you have in it. 

-the south says you should count African americans so the south can have more people in the house of representatives, even though their thought was that African americans aren’t people.

-this is in the constitution and it is a compromise between the north and the south.

-African americans only count as 3/5 of a real person. This is one aspect of non-democracy in the constitution.

-women

-young people

-another non-democratic part of the constitution.

-what does it say about who cant vote?

-are voted by the house of representatives.

-another anti-democratic thing about the constitution

when voting for this person, we are actually voting to make our person in the electoral college to make a vote for us.

-Executive branch

-Legislative branch

-Judicial branch

-branch of government

-the president

-the person who enforces the laws

-branch of government

-congress

-compossed of the senate and the house(bicameral legislature)

-job is to make the laws

-a branch of gov.

-the supreme court.

-9 people on the supreme court

-appointed by the president and approved by the senate

-They are there until they die

-Their job is to interpret the laws, and decide whether a law is constitutional.

who is the commander in chief of the armed forces?

-it’s his most direct power of all. 

-the 10 amendments added to the constitution to have rights for the people in it, not just about the important people of the country.

-The constitution can always have an amendment added;

-the people can add amendments (vote for them);

-people can vote to take amendments out.

-is a great experiment that no one expects to work.

-They are the back water of the world that’s not supposed to work right, but it does. 

-what is the first estate in the French economy?

-about 130,000 of them

-they are powerful

-they own 30% of france

-They don’t pay any taxes, they are above them.

-what is the second estate in the french economy?

-400,000 of them.

 -They own about 40% of France. 

 -They are pretty much above the law. 

 -They pay no taxes.

-what is the 3rd estate of the french economy?

-25 million of them.

 -They own the 30% of France that is left over.

-This is a widely diverse group of people.  Doctors, lawyers, millionaires, and poor people.

-23 million of the 3^rd estate are poor.

 -A huge class of people. Ranges from very wealthy (but not noble), to poor people who wander the streets. 

-this estate is the people who causes things to change. 

-There is lots of them and they want change. 

-The millionaires are the people who lead them. 

-who was the king of the french at the time of the french revolution?

-he is an absolute monarch (he is above the law)

-He was not a good absolute monarch. 

-He attempted to pay his debt off.

-He is a wimp.

-Financial minisiter of king Louis XVI

-gives the king advise

-says you spend way more money than you make

-says you have two options:quit spending so much money, or raise some money. Raising money in france is simple: tax the 70% of people who aren’t being taxed. Louis XVI doesn’t raise money.

In 1787 louis gathers people together he calls the assembly of notables. It is all the representatives of all the nobility and clergy. Louis says to them, im broke can I borrow money, can I tax you? they say no. he has no answer because he thought they would say yes. They say we will consider taxes  if you call something called the

               : French version of congress. This is a tricameral legislature. This hasn’t met in over 200 years before them.  Each estate has a vote; 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd. each estate gets only one votes. The 1^st and 2^nd estate thinks they will have the same vote, so they have 2 votes on everything.  If this happens the rich run the country.  Louis is dumb enough to agree to call the                  . The elections start happening in paris. Louis wises up and realizes they will vote against him and he will lose control.  Theres only one group of people he can ask for support: 3^rd estate. They don’t want what the king wants. The 3^rd estate has a vote but never get what they want.

-June 20, 1789

-Its says we are no longer the 3^rd estate, no longer part of the estates general,  we are the national constituent assembly. They write the constitution (based on how we did it). it doesn’t include a king, clergy, or nobility. The nobility left, the clergy is changing sides, the 3^rd estate is writing a constitution.  The king actually does something for the first time: calls out the army.

The soilders in the kings army are swiss mercenaries so they don’t choose sides. The constituent assembly knows its going to die. They don’t command anything yet. Only one place they can go to ask for help: the poor people who are hopeless and helpless. All the poor people: the paris mob, go rampaging through the streets of paris.  They are “protecting the constituent assembly”, but are getting even in their eyes. The Bastille is the royal jail in paris. They are going to storm it and kill all the kings supporters of the king on.  but the only thing in there is the janitors(who are also poor) because the king took everyone out the jail.  The janitors are ripped physically limb from limb, put on stakes and paraded through the city. But this means the king doesn’t have much power.  The assembly thinks they run paris, but really the paris mob runs paris; it does what ever it wants to. 

The king has been utterly defeated. 

-The guys writing the constitution are now running the country. 

-They form this to protect themselves.(a bunch of guys carrying pointy sticks). 

-As long as the mob agrees with what they are doing, they are fine; once they cross the mob, the mob will kill them too.

-mob rule has not done that well.

-They cant get things done; no law and order, no food coming in. 

-Hungry people (a bread riot) figure out they can go get the king and take his food from his palace 20 miles outside of paris. 

-His wife(marie Antoinette) says “let them eat cake” the mob gets out of control.  

-they capture the king and bring him back to paris as a prisoner.

-a law the constituent assembly passes.

-It basically gets rid of the first estate(clergy) and says they aren’t so special anymore. 

-It says The clergy must swear loyalty to the constitution, before their loyalty to god.

-The middle class has gone too far. 

-The church doesn’t agree with this. the church is anti-revolution.

-looks like a cross between our constitution and the british constitution.

-1. Louis is still the king but he has no power.

-2. Theres gonna be a legislative branch (bicameral).

-3. theres going to be A supreme court.

-4. To vote you have to be rich;

-whether you can vote is decided by your income and the bar is set very high.

                -now the middle class has seized control (only they can vote and run for office.)

-the mob doesn’t like this at all.

-the church being angry

-the poor people being angry

-The most important part of the constitution

 - Has about 300 representatives

-The representatives of the middle class are conservatives(means doesn’t want change). 

the 1/3 that hates the constitution (the poor people) 

-are called the?

-They are the radicals (the leaders of the mob)(they say get rid of the constitution and lets kill the king; theres no way he supports this.) 

 -are a small radical group;

-they have power because they are a mob but not power in the gov.

-by the Duke of Brunswick

-is head of the german army that is supposed to be headed by Louis XVI but he gets captured.

-He publishes this in the newspaper that says if you harm the king, we will destroy paris.  

-The mob is very unhappy about this.  

-the mob is angry about the Brunswick manifesto

-mob is going through the streets of paris without a leader, killing a bunch of people

 -Anyone who said anything good about the king is murdered

-The leader of the Jacobins

-The jacobins lead the mob.

Jan. 1793, the Jacobins who are now essentially in control, they make a big statement. 

-They put Louis and his wife on trial for treason, they are found guilty, and they are executed.  

-invents the Guillotine

-All over the country the jacobins set up little tiny govs call this

-everyone is encouraged to join and turn in people against the revolution to be guillotined.

-Anyone who is pissed off at another begins get the person who pissed them off killed

-Lasted about two years

-About 75,000 people are guillotined in paris during this time

-The blood is running so thick that they had to make special sewers the blood will run through to the river.

-This worked really well; every country declared war on france

-during this france becomes a nation because of everyone threatening them

-1795

-The middle class trying to murder the Jacobins and mob when they come back

-France's second try and a constitution

-Its just like ours but with one difference.

-They don’t want someone with too much power. they are afraid of the executive branch.

-Instead of one guy, they have five.  5 presidents. called the directory

-becomes a body gaurd for the directory

-saves the directory from the royalists(king supporters) when they have their revolution to try to get rid of the directory. 

-this man kills them all.

-the directory love him

-he is now a budding absolute monarch

-the directory says we appoint you to general and we are going to send you to fight britain.

-gives him the hardest job

this is hard because there is 20 miles of water between them

-1798

-French is sitting in the nile river and the british show up and sink the few French boats in a “battle”

-Nelson was leading the british

-Napoleon get on a “row boat”(not really but a small boat) and goes back to france.

-The important part of this is he invented the modern version of war(nation vs nation; economy vs economy; not just army vs army)

-A battle in Austria ( a long way from france).

-50,000 french soldiers, face 90,000 austrian and Russian soldiers.

-this battle is a very modern battle.

-this battle is very near the Austrian capital of Vienna.

-(Napoleonic system of warfare is the modern system) this is why napoleon wins, because hes modern. 

-Pre-modern militaries don’t do very well. 

-This battle revolutionizes war.

-the Russian/Austrian army gets in their usual line of fighting, and napoleons are in different groups.  One of the groups is small and runs backward so the Russians start pouring over in the hole. And  Napoleon pur to where they just came from, and has people hiding to go fight them from the other side.  So napoleon has them in a big circle.  He kills/captures everyone.

-Napoleon invades spain (1808) because they are the first to go against him when people begin to start hating him.

 -Napoleon takes about 200,000 people there. The Spanish don’t fight, they don’t put their weakness against their strength. Napoleon gets frustrated because no one will fight him, they keep running.

-Napoleon and his few guys are attacked by everyone and napoleon is defeated and captured after most of his troops have frozen to death from the Russian winter.

-You cant kill him, so they exile him to an island called Elba