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The Council of State was created with the fall of the directory in 1799. It’s members were appointed by the state and it would propose legislation. The Tribunate would discuss the proposed legislation, and a Legislative body would vote on the laws.
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The Jacobin’s instituted a new calendar in October 1793. The old calendar gave way to a new republican calendar based upon “weeks,” or cycles of ten days, and “months” taking their names from more secular notions of the changing of the seasons. September 22, 1792, the first year of the republic, became, retroactively, day one of the “year I”.
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| Jacques Necker was the kings Swiss minister of Finance. The financial support France had provided the rebel colonists in the American War of Independence against Britain had been underwritten by loans arranged by him.He was seen as the savior of France when they were on the brink of ruin. His actions, however, did not stop the French Revolution. |
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| A list of grievances that Louis XVI asked the local assemblies, along with the first two estates, to draw up. There were thousands of grievances such as concrete suggestions for reform to the considered opinion that the foul breath of sheep was ruining pastureland in Lorraine. Cahiers asked for a more consistent and equitable tax structure, called for the creation of a new national representative body, and criticized monarchial absolutism and the intransigence of seigneurs. |
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| The assembly of notables in medieval times was a significant constraint to the authority of rulers. Rulers had convoked authority of notable subjects in the thirteenth century to explain their policies and to ask for help. Due to the fact that they depended on those whom they assembled to provide military assistance when they required it, they also heard grievances. This allowed parliaments, assemblies, diets, and Estates to develop, representing (depending on the place) nobles, clergy, towns, and, in several cases, commoners. |
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| Louis XVI’s new minister, Anne-Robert Turgot, undertook ambitious reforms in an attempt to cut away some of the web of privileges, thus making the monarchy more efficient. Despite the opposition of the Parliament of Paris, Turgot convinced the young king to issue royal edicts. These ended noble and clerical tax exemptions, abolished the guilds, freed the internal commerce of grain (the price of which had been first set free in the 1760’s), and exempted peasants from having to work a certain number of days each year repairing roads. |
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| Louis XVI and his family tried to flee France in June 1791 due to his fear of the growing violence of the Revolution and counting on the support of the other monarchs of Europe. The king’s goal was to throw his support behind the foreign enemies of the Revolution and return to France to revoke the concessions that he had made. Apprehended by the National Guard in Varennes, the royal family was prevented from continuing their journey into exile and freedom. |
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In May 1793 The Convention imposed the “Maximum”--- a maximum price on grain. Measures such as this led to an irreversible break between the Jacobins, who believed in state controls, and the Girondins, who believed in economic freedom. |
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| The Jacobins arrested the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) for alleged counter-revolutionary activity. Condorcet, an influential philosophe of the late Enlightenment, had been elected to the Assembly in 1791. Condorcet died in his cell in the spring of 1794, shortly before he was to be executed. |
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Due to the fact that the war was costing the British government huge sums (between 60 and 90 percent of the state’s annual revenue), in November 1806 Napoleon announced his continental system. It prohibited trade with Britain, which he hoped would strangle the British economy by closing all continental ports to British ships. The Continental System failed to work and British merchants continued to find American markets for their goods.
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| Departments are one of the levels of government. Departments are defined areas of land , similar to a city state. During of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars many of these territories were conquered and added to the Napoleonic Empire |
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| The Mountain was a term that was used to describe the left of parliament which sat on the top benches of the Asembly. The more conservative of parliament that sat on the bottom benches was called the “Swamp”. It was comprised of uncompromising men of action rather than philosophers. It was later split by the Committee of Public Safety in several distinct factions. |
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| the “tragedy” of the German Enlightenment |
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| The tragedy of the German Enlightenment was the narrowness of German middle class life and values. This is represented in Lessing’s play Emilia Galotti. |
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| knowledge in I. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason |
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| In Kant’s work Critique of Pure Reason he examined the relationship of knowledge to reality. If our concepts are not given in experience but are formed by the mind, can they, he asked, still be valid for things which are entirely independent of us? On the other hand, if experience is our only source of knowledge, as Locke and the French materialists had maintained, how was the mind able to form concepts, like causality, which seemed to transcend experience? |
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| The national assembly passed the Le Chapelier Law on June 14, 1791, prohibiting workmen from joining together to refuse work for a master. This law was a victory for proponents of free trade. |
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| Committee of Public Safety |
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| During the revolution the Jacobin-dominated Convention established a Committee of Public Safety of nine and then twelve members, which gradually assumed more and more power as it oversaw the Terror. Between 11,000 and 18,000 people perished at the hands of the Committee of Public Safety. |
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| Herder and Romantic nationalism |
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| Herder inspired much early romantic nationalism in Europe. Herder Argued that geography reformed the national economy of a people, and that their customs and society would develop along the lines that their basic environment favored. |
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| The Noblesse De Robe was the French Bourgeois nobility who were given their titles. Since the French monarchy considered the French old nobility to be unreliable he gave these titles to many among the bourgeoisie. |
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| The French term for mass conscription during the French Revolution. It is the similar to a modern day draft. Any unmarried man between 18-25 were summoned for military service. This greatly increased the strength of the French Army. This method was not popular with high levels of desertion. |
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To raise funds immediately, the Assembly issued paper money (assignats), which was backed by the value of the Church lands. Although the law required everyone to accept assignats in payment of debts, their value fell dramatically because of a lack of public confidence, and those who used the assignats to purchase Church lands or pay debts received a windfall. Even poor peasants were thus able to reduce their debts with inflated currency.
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The “Law of Suspects” promulgated by the Convention in September deprived those accused of crimes against the nation of most of their remaining rights. These laws were enacted by the Committee of Public Safety
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| In 1801 Napoleon signed a Concordat with the papacy that helped solidify some of the changes brought by the Revolution, declaring Catholicism “the religion of the majority of citizens” in France. A majority of bishops refused to accept the Concordat. The pope would henceforth appoint new bishops, but on the recommendation of the first consul, that is, Napoleon. |
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| At Austerliz on December 2, 1805, Napoleon tricked his opponents into an attack on his intentionally weakened right flank. He then divided the two armies with a crushing attack at their venerable center. When the dust cleared after the battle, the Russians and their Austrian allies had suffered 30,000 casualties, the French fewer than 9,000. |
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| Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), Louis XVI’s wife and Queen of France was one of the wealthiest people in the world. She was immensely unpopular, which accentuated the public’s lack of confidence in the throne. The daughter of the Austrian queen Maria Theresa, Marie-Antoinette was married to Louis to strengthen dynastic ties between Austria and France |
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