French Revolution

French Revolution, major transformation of the society and political system of France, lasting
from 1789 to 1799. During the course of the Revolution, France was temporarily transformed from
an absolute monarchy, where the king monopolized power, to a republic of theoretically free and
equal citizens. The effects of the French Revolution were widespread, both inside and outside of
France, and the Revolution ranks as one of the most important events in the history of Europe.

During the ten years of the Revolution, France first transformed and then dismantled the Old
Regime, the political and social system that existed in France before 1789, and replaced it with a
series of different governments. Although none of these governments lasted more than four
years, the many initiatives they enacted permanently altered France’s political system. These
initiatives included the drafting of several bills of rights and constitutions, the establishment of
legal equality among all citizens, experiments with representative democracy, the incorporation of
the church into the state, and the reconstruction of state administration and the law code.

Many of these changes were adopted elsewhere in Europe as well. Change was a matter of
choice in some places, but in others it was imposed by the French army during the French
Revolutionary Wars (1792-1797) and the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815). To later generations of
Europeans and non-Europeans who sought to overturn their political and social systems, the
French Revolution provided the most influential model of popular insurrection until the Russian
Revolutions of 1917.

CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION

From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1970s, the French Revolution was most
commonly described as the result of the growing economic and social importance of the
bourgeoisie, or middle class. The bourgeoisie, it was believed, overthrew the Old Regime
because that regime had given power and privilege to other classes—the nobility and the clergy
—who prevented the bourgeoisie from advancing socially and politically. Recently this
interpretation has been replaced by one that relies less on social and economic factors and more
on political ones. Economic recession in the 1770s may have frustrated some bourgeois in their
rise to power and wealth, and rising bread prices just before the Revolution certainly increased
discontent among workers and peasants. Yet it is now commonly believed that the revolutionary
process started with a crisis in the French state.

By 1789 many French people had become critical of the monarchy, even though it had been
largely successful in militarily defending France and in quelling domestic religious and political
violence. They resented the rising and unequal taxes, the persecution of religious minorities, and
government interference in their private lives. These resentments, coupled with an inefficient
government and an antiquated legal system, made the government seem increasingly illegitimate
to the French people. The royal court at Versailles, which had been developed to impress the
French people and Europe generally, came to symbolize the waste and corruption of the entire
Old Regime.

Parlements and Philosophes

During the 18th century, criticism of the French monarchy also came from people who worked for
the Old Regime. Some of the king’s own ministers criticized past practices and proposed reforms,
but a more influential source of dissent was the parlements, 13 regional royal courts led by the
Parlement of Paris. The parlements were empowered to register royal decrees, and all decrees
had to be registered by the parlements before becoming law. In this capacity, the parlements
frequently protested royal initiatives that they believed to threaten the traditional rights and
liberties of the people. In widely distributed publications, they held up the image of a historically
free France and denounced the absolute rule of the crown that in their view threatened traditional
liberties by imposing religious orthodoxy and new taxes.

These protests blended with those of others, most notably an influential group of professional
intellectuals called the philosophes. Like those who supported the parlements, the philosophes
did not advocate violent revolution. Yet, they claimed to speak on behalf of the public, arguing
that people had certain natural rights and that governments existed to guarantee these rights. In a
stream of pamphlets and treatises—many of them printed and circulated illegally—they ridiculed
the Old Regime’s inefficiencies and its abuses of power.

During this time, the parlementaires and the philosophes together crafted a vocabulary that would
be used later to define and debate political issues during the Revolution. They redefined such
terms as despotism, or the oppression of a people by an arbitrary ruler; liberty and rights; and the
nation.

Fiscal Crisis

The discontent of the French people might not have brought about a political revolution if there
had not been a fiscal crisis in the late 1780s. Like so much else in the Old Regime, the
monarchy’s financial system was inefficient and antiquated. France had neither a national bank
nor a centralized national treasury. The nobility and clergy—many of them very wealthy—paid
substantially less in taxes than other groups, notably the much poorer peasantry. Similarly, the
amount of tax charged varied widely from one region to another.

Furthermore, the monarchy almost always spent more each year than it collected in taxes;
consequently, it was forced to borrow, which it did increasingly during the 18th century. Debt grew
in part because France participated in a series of costly wars—the War of the Austrian
Succession (1740-1748), the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and the American Revolution
(1775-1783). Large existing debts and a history of renouncing earlier ones meant that the country
was forced to borrow at higher interest rates than some other countries, further adding to the
already massive debt. By 1789 the state was forced to spend nearly half its yearly revenues
paying the interest it owed.

Attempts at Reform

Financial reform was attempted before 1789. Upon his accession to the throne in 1774, Louis XVI
appointed the reform-minded Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as chief finance minister. Between
1774 and 1776 Turgot sought to cut government expenses and to increase revenues. He
removed government restrictions on the sale and distribution of grain in order to increase grain
sales and, in turn, government revenue. Jacques Necker, director of government finance between
1777 and 1781, reformed the treasury system and published an analysis of the state of
government finance in 1781 as a means to restore confidence in its soundness. But most of these
reforms were soon undone as the result of pressure from a variety of financial groups, and the
government continued to borrow at high rates of interest through the 1780s.

Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed minister of finance in 1783, and three years later
he proposed a new general plan resembling Turgot’s. He wanted to float new loans to cover
immediate expenses, revoke some tax exemptions, replace older taxes with a new universal land
tax and a stamp tax, convene regional assemblies to oversee the new taxes, and remove more
restrictions from the grain trade.

Assembly of Notables and Estates-General

To pressure the parlements into accepting the plan, Calonne decided to gain prior approval of it
from an Assembly of Notables—a group of hand-picked dignitaries he thought would sympathize
with his views. But Calonne had badly miscalculated. Meeting in January 1787, the assembly
refused to believe that a financial crisis really existed. They had been influenced by Necker’s
argument that state finances were sound and suspected that the monarchy was only trying to
squeeze more money from the people. They insisted on examining state accounts. Despite a
public appeal for support, Calonne was fired and replaced by Loménie de Brienne in April 1787.

Brienne was also unable to win the support of the assembly, and in May 1787 it was dismissed.
Over the summer and early fall, Brienne repeatedly tried to strike a compromise with the
Parlement of Paris. But the compromise fell through when the king prevented the Parlement from
voting on proposed loans, an act that was seen as yet more evidence of despotism. In May 1788
the government abolished all the parlements in a general restructuring of the judiciary.

Public response to the actions of the king was strong and even violent. People began to ignore
royal edicts and assault royal officials, and pamphlets denouncing despotism inundated the
country. At the same time, people began to call for an immediate meeting of the Estates-General
to deal with the crisis. The Estates-General was a consultative assembly composed of
representatives from the three French estates, or legally defined social classes: clergy, nobility,
and commoners. It had last been convened in 1614. Under increasing political pressure and
faced with the total collapse of its finances in August 1788, the Old Regime began to unravel.
Brienne was dismissed, Necker reinstated, and the Estates-General was called to meet on May
1, 1789.

BEGINNING OF REVOLUTION

Almost immediately contention arose regarding voting procedures in the upcoming Estates-
General. In its last meeting, voting had been organized by estate, with each of the three estates
meeting separately and each having one vote. In this way the privileged classes had combined to
outvote the third estate, which constituted more than 90 percent of the population. In registering
the edict to convene the Estates-General, the Parlement of Paris, which had been reinstated by
the monarchy on September 23, 1788, ruled in favor of keeping this form of voting. The
Parlement probably did this more to prevent the monarchy from potentially exploiting any new
voting system to its advantage than to preserve noble privilege. However, many observers read
this decision as a betrayal of the third estate. As a result, a flood of pamphlets appeared
demanding a vote by head at the Estates-General—that is, a procedure whereby each deputy
was to cast one vote in a single chamber composed of all three estates. This method would give
each estate a number of votes that more accurately represented its population and would make it
more difficult for the first two estates to routinely outvote the third. Now two battles were being
waged at the same time: one to protect the nation’s liberty against royal despotism, and the other
over how the nation would be represented in the Estates-General.

During the early months of 1789, the three estates prepared for the coming meeting by selecting
deputies and drawing up cahiers des doléances (lists of grievances). These lists reflected
overwhelming agreement in favor of limiting the power of the king and his administrators and
establishing a permanent legislative assembly. In an effort to satisfy the third estate, the
monarchy had agreed to double the number of their representatives but then took no firm stand
on whether the voting would proceed by estate or by head.

When the Estates-General assembled at Versailles in May 1789, the monarchy proposed no
specific financial plan for debate and left the voting issue unsettled. As a result, the estates spent
their time engaged in debate of the voting procedure, and little was accomplished.

National Assembly
Five wasted weeks later, the third estate finally took the initiative by inviting the clergy and nobility
to join them in a single-chambered legislature where the voting would be by head. Some
individual members of the other estates did so, and on June 17, 1789, they together proclaimed
themselves to be the National Assembly (also later called the Constituent Assembly).

When officials locked their regular meeting place to prepare it for a royal address, members of the
National Assembly concluded their initiative was about to be crushed. Regrouping at a nearby
indoor tennis court on June 20, they swore not to disband until France had a constitution. This
pledge became known as the Tennis Court Oath.

Storming of the Bastille

On June 23, 1789, Louis XVI belatedly proposed a major overhaul of the financial system, agreed
to seek the consent of the deputies for all new loans and taxes, and proposed other important
reforms. But he spoiled the effect by refusing to recognize the transformation of the Estates-
General into the National Assembly and by insisting upon voting by estate—already a dying
cause. Moreover, he inspired new fears by surrounding the meeting hall of the deputies with a
large number of soldiers. Faced with stiffening resistance by the third estate and increasing
willingness of deputies from the clergy and nobility to join the third estate in the National
Assembly, the king suddenly changed course and agreed to a vote by head on June 27.

Despite much rejoicing, suspicions of the king’s intentions ran high. Royal troops began to thicken
near Paris, and on July 11 the still-popular Necker was dismissed. To people at the time and to
many later on, these developments were clear signs that the king sought to undo the events of
the previous weeks.

Crowds began to roam Paris looking for arms to fight off a royal attack. On July 14 these crowds
assaulted the Bastille, a large fortress on the eastern edge of the city. They believed that it
contained munitions and many prisoners of despotism, but in fact, the fortress housed only seven
inmates at the time. The storming of the Bastille marked a turning point—attempts at reform had
become a full-scale revolution. Faced with this insurrection, the monarchy backed down. The
troops were withdrawn, and Necker was recalled.

THE MODERATE REVOLUTION

In the year leading up to the storming of the Bastille, the economic problems of many common
people had become steadily worse, largely because poor weather conditions had ruined the
harvest. As a result, the price of bread—the most important food of the poorer classes—
increased. Tensions and violence grew in both the cities and the countryside during the spring
and summer of 1789. While hungry artisans revolted in urban areas, starved peasants scoured
the provinces in search of food and work. These vagrants were rumored to be armed agents of
landlords hired to destroy crops and harass the common people. Many rural peasants were
gripped by a panic, known as the Great Fear. They attacked the residences of their landlords in
hopes of protecting local grain supplies and reducing rents on their land.

Both afraid of and politically benefiting from this wave of popular violence, leaders of the
revolutionary movement in Paris began to massively restructure the state. On the night of August
4, 1789, one nobleman after another renounced his personal privileges. Before the night was
over, the National Assembly declared an end to the feudal system, the traditional system of rights
and obligations that had reinforced inherited inequality under the Old Regime. The exact meaning
of this resolution as it applied to specific privileges, especially economic ones, took years to sort
out. But it provided the legal foundation for gradually scaling back the feudal dues peasants owed
to landlords and for eliminating the last vestiges of serfdom, the system that legally bound the
peasants to live and work on the landlords’ estates.
At the end of August, the National Assembly promulgated the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and of the Citizen. Conceived as the prologue to a new constitution that was not yet drafted, the
declaration was a short, concise document ensuring such basic personal rights as those of
property, free speech, and personal security. It left unresolved the rights of women and the limits
of individual rights in relation to the power of the newly emerging state. But by recognizing the
source of sovereignty in the people, it undermined the idea that the king ruled by divine right (see
Divine Right of Kings).

Restructuring the State

As these developments unfolded, Louis XVI once again failed to act decisively. The queen,
Marie-Antoinette, feared catastrophe if events continued on their current course and advocated a
hard line. But power was quickly slipping away from the king, as revolutionaries began to
organize political clubs and an influential periodical press. Having lost control of events, Louis
was forced to yield to them. He gave in so reluctantly—for example, taking months to approve the
August 4, 1789, decrees and the Declaration of Rights—that hostility to the crown only increased.

When rumors circulated that guests at a royal banquet had trampled on revolutionary insignia, a
crowd of many thousands, most of them women who were also protesting the high cost of bread,
marched to Versailles on October 5. They were accompanied by National Guards, commanded
by the Marquis de Lafayette. The Guards were barely able to prevent wholesale massacre, and
the crowd forced the royal family to leave Versailles for Paris, never to return. The king and his
family were now, in effect, prisoners, forced to inhabit the Tuilerie Palace along with the National
Assembly, which moved there as well. Paris had replaced Versailles as the center of power, and
the government was now more vulnerable than ever to the will of the restless, and occasionally
violent, people of the city.

Political Change: Constitutional Monarchy

The National Assembly next focused on writing a new constitution, a process that took more than
two years. Although it was agreed that France would remain a monarchy, the Assembly decided
almost immediately that the constitution would not simply reform the old order, as the more
moderate deputies wanted. Instead, it transformed the political system of the Old Regime, but
preserved the monarchy.

The new constitution was designed to prevent the return of despotism by making all government
officials subject to the rule of law. It proclaimed France as a united, sovereign kingdom, dissolved
the entire system of royal administration, and adopted a system of federalism that shifted
authority from Paris to the localities. France was divided into 83 districts called departments, each
of which would elect administrators to execute laws, maintain public order, levy taxes, and
oversee education and poor relief.

The powers of the national government were divided among separate, independent branches.
The chief executive was to be the king, who would continue to inherit his office, but his powers
were to be limited, particularly in legislative matters. The king was allowed only a suspensive
veto, whereby he could at most delay the laws passed by the assembly. As the only law-making
body, the single-chambered Legislative Assembly was the heart of the state, enjoying wide
powers. Although the right to vote was extended to more than half the adult male population—
called active citizens—election to the assembly was made a complex process. Very restrictive
qualifications made only about 50,000 men (out of about 26 million French people) eligible to
serve as deputies. Like the administration of the departments, the judiciary was also
decentralized. Legal procedure was streamlined, and torture banned.

Social Change: Equal Rights

In addition to reconstituting the state, the National Assembly made many changes to the existing
social order. Among the most notable changes were the elimination of the nobility as a legally
defined class and the granting of the same civil rights to all citizens; the elimination of guilds and
other organizations that monopolized production, controlled prices and wages, or obstructed
economic activity through strikes; the extension of rights to blacks in France and to mulattoes in
France’s Caribbean colonies, though not the outright abolition of slavery; and the granting of full
civil rights to religious minorities, including Protestants and Jews.

Religious Change: Civil Constitution of the Clergy

Political and social restructuring on this scale raised complicated issues regarding the Catholic
Church. The clergy had enjoyed extensive property rights and special privileges under the Old
Regime and had long been a target of criticism. The National Assembly incorporated the church
within the state, stripping clerics of their property and special rights. In return, the state assumed
the large debts of the church and paid the clergy a salary. Dioceses were redrawn to correspond
to departments. A presiding bishop would administer each diocese, with local priests beneath
him. Since active citizens would elect the bishops and the priests, a Protestant, Jew, or atheist
might be chosen to fill these positions. Finally, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790
required all priests and bishops to swear an oath of loyalty to the new order or face dismissal.

Almost half the parish priests and bishops (called the refractory clergy) refused to take the oath.
This marked an important turn of events. Before the Civil Constitution, opposition to the
Revolution had remained a scattered affair. It had been led by an ineffective group of high nobles
called the émigrés, who had fled the country beginning in July 1789 and had been conspiring
from abroad ever since. More than anything else, the Civil Constitution and the oath solidified
resistance to the Revolution by giving the resistance a religious justification and publicly
designating a group of influential individuals—the refractory clergy—as enemies of the new state.

Although there were many reasons for the Civil Constitution, financial considerations were some
of the most important. The government’s fiscal problems continued well past 1789. The assembly
had assumed the Old Regime’s debts, but tax collections had been interrupted by administrative
disorders and simple refusals to pay. To cover expenditures, the assembly issued bonds, called
assignats; then to repay the assignats, it confiscated and sold the church’s considerable property
holdings. The government justified this practice by saying that church property belonged to the
nation.

Growing Factionalism

All these measures were vigorously debated inside and outside the assembly. The assembly had
been divided from the start into a conservative right that wanted to limit change and a radical left
that wanted major social and political reforms. The assembly therefore lacked a unified voice. As
head of state, the king was expected to provide this unifying influence, even if his power was
formally limited. However, hopes that the king would step in and fill this role were dashed in June
1791 when the royal family fled Paris in disguise, leaving behind a manifesto denouncing nearly
all the Revolution had accomplished since 1789. Poorly planned and executed, the effort ended
with the royal family’s arrest at the border town of Varennes. From there they were returned to
Paris under heavy guard, now more prisoners than ever.

Because so much had been expected of the king, the Varennes fiasco proved more of a shock
than could be absorbed all at once. In an attempt to recover, assembly leaders announced that
the incident had been a case of kidnapping, not an escape, and in mid-July the assembly voted to
clear the king of all responsibility for what had happened. But these fictions were hardly
convincing, and once they collapsed, so did the likelihood of ending the Revolution and
establishing a stable government. On the left, moderate revolutionaries who sought to keep the
monarchy, called Feuillants, split from the more radical revolutionaries, known as the Cordeliers
and the Jacobins, who now began to talk openly about replacing the monarchy with a republic.

The king reluctantly approved the new constitution on September 14, 1791. Alarmed by the
radical direction the Revolution was taking, more nobles began to cross the border to become
émigrés. Pressured by these émigrés and concerned about the potential effects of the Revolution
on their own kingdoms, the Austrian emperor and Prussian king issued the Declaration of Pillnitz
on August 27. In this declaration they announced a rather vague willingness to intervene militarily
on behalf of the French monarchy. Unclear as it was, the declaration provoked fears of an
invasion.

It was under these threatening circumstances that the new constitution took effect and the
Legislative Assembly first met on October 1, 1791. At first, the assembly got along remarkably
well with the king, but this situation changed when the assembly proposed retaliatory actions
against the émigrés and the refractory clergy. On November 9 it passed legislation requiring that
the émigrés return to France or face death and the loss of their estates. On November 29 it
required the refractory clergy to take the oath to the constitution or fall under state surveillance
and lose their pension rights.

RADICAL REVOLUTION

The émigrés and their efforts to mobilize foreign powers against France created the pretext for
France’s entry into war in April 1792. In reality, Austria and Prussia had shown little interest in
intervention on behalf of the French king. However, radical political figures, most notably Jacques
Pierre Brissot, persistently exaggerated the threat of an Austrian invasion of France and the
subversion of the revolutionary government by a conspiracy of Austrian sympathizers called the
Austrian Committee. Expecting that a conflict with Austria would weaken the king to their political
advantage, Brissot and his colleagues pressed for a declaration of war. Many of the king’s
advisors, though at first not the king himself, also advocated the war option. They believed a
victory would strengthen royal power and a defeat would crush the Revolution. Persuaded, the
king appointed a ministry dominated by Brissot’s associates on March 10, 1792, and on April 20
the assembly declared war on Austria, which was soon joined by Prussia. Thus began the series
of conflicts known as the French Revolutionary Wars.

End of the Monarchy

The wars profoundly altered the course of the Revolution, leading to the end of the monarchy and
raising fears of reprisals against the revolutionaries in the event of a defeat. The French had few
successes on the battlefield. The French army was in the middle of a major reorganization and
was not prepared for war. In addition, Brissot’s ministry proved incompetent and disorganized.
During the spring of 1792, the French army lurched from defeat to defeat. Someone, it seemed,
was to blame; and the Brissot faction (called Brissotins) blamed the king, who in turn fired the
Brissotin ministers on June 13.

On June 20 a mob, alarmed at the worsening military situation and rising bread prices caused by
the declining value of the assignats, stormed the Tuilerie Palace. Coached by the Brissotins, the
mob demanded that the king reinstate the Brissotin ministers. Louis courageously refused to do
so. But military disasters continued during the summer, and the political situation deteriorated
further when a Prussian commander, the duke of Brunswick, issued a manifesto in which he
threatened to execute anyone who harmed the royal family.

On August 10 a crowd again stormed the Tuilerie Palace in the Revolution’s bloodiest eruption to
date. This time, however, the mob was not allied with the Brissotins, who still favored a
monarchy. Instead it supported the more radical Jacobins who, under the leadership of the lawyer
Maximilien Robespierre, now demanded the creation of a republic. While the royal family hid in
the Assembly hall, the mob hacked to death some 600 Swiss guards, while itself suffering heavy
losses. More than lives were lost; so was the monarchy. The Legislative Assembly immediately
suspended the king from his duties and voted to hold a convention. The convention, to be elected
by nearly universal manhood suffrage, was to write a new, republican constitution.

First French Republic

Between August 10, 1792, and the meeting of the convention on September 20, revolutionary
furor grew. Power shifted from the Legislative Assembly, now a lame duck, to the Paris
Commune. The Commune was a city assembly made up of representatives elected from 48
neighborhood districts called sections. Because nearly universal male suffrage had taken effect
on August 10, the sections and the Commune became increasingly dominated by the sans-
culottes, a group composed mostly of artisans and shopkeepers fiercely devoted to the
Revolution and direct democracy.

In this unstable period, Georges Jacques Danton, who had probably helped organize the
massacre of August 10, became a dominating political figure. Danton, who was appointed
minister of justice by the assembly, encouraged fears that counter-revolutionary forces loyal to
the king were undermining the Revolution. He used these fears to promote further measures
against counter-revolutionaries. On August 17 a special court was created to try political
suspects, but it did not convict enough defendants to satisfy the sans-culottes.

Fearing military defeat and believing that counter-revolutionary prisoners were about to break out
and attack patriots like themselves, sans-culotte mobs attacked Parisian jails from September 2
to 7. They murdered and mutilated more than 1000 inmates—most of whom were guilty of
nothing more than having enjoyed some privilege or committing ordinary crimes. These
September Massacres were so gruesome that no revolutionary leader, not even those with
bloody agendas of their own, claimed responsibility for them.

The National Convention

The National Convention first met on September 20, 1792, the same day the French army won a
major victory against Prussian forces at Valmy in northeastern France. The convention was
composed of three major political groups: the Jacobins, a fairly well disciplined radical minority;
the former Brissotins, now called Girondins, a less disciplined group of moderates; and a large
group of individuals called the Plain who were not associated with either party. On September 21
the convention voted to establish a republic in place of the monarchy. The founding of the first
French Republic represented so important a milestone that, when the convention adopted a new
revolutionary calendar, it made September 22, 1792, the first day of Year I (see French
Republican Calendar).

The convention took much longer to decide the fate of the king, who was now imprisoned with the
royal family in an old fort just outside Paris. The more moderate Girondins maneuvered to keep
Louis a prisoner. The Jacobins, who were allied with the sans-culottes, argued that the people
had already judged Louis guilty of treason when they had stormed the palace on August 10. The
convention compromised, deciding that it would try the king.

On January 15 the convention overwhelmingly found Louis guilty, and then voted (by a margin of
one vote) for immediate execution. Louis was executed on the new invention for beheading called
the guillotine on January 21, 1793, protesting his innocence. If ever there was a point of no return
in the Revolution, this was it, for enemies of the Revolution now sought to avenge the king’s
death more vigorously than they had tried to preserve his life.
Executing the king did little to solve the convention’s other problems, the main one being the war.
The convention declared war on Britain and the Netherlands in early February and on Spain in
March, thus adding to France’s military burdens. The French forces were on the defensive
through most of 1793, and in April France was stunned by the desertion of one of its chief
commanders, General Dumouriez, to the Austrians. Facing loss after loss, the convention voted
to raise an army of 300,000 men. It sought volunteers, but instituted a draft to provide additional
soldiers. The draft touched off rebellion in western rural areas, notably Brittany and the Vendée.
Many people in these areas already opposed the Revolution because of the church
reorganization and the clerical oath. Pacifying them would take years and cost an estimated
100,000 lives.

Revolts also occurred in other areas, particularly the large cities. These revolts protested the
domination of the local affairs by Paris and the Jacobins. Local elites favored federalism, a policy
that would have allowed them to maintain power over their own regions. Meanwhile, prices rose
because of a poor harvest and the declining value of the assignats, which fell to half their stated
value in January and then fell further. Higher bread prices led the sans-culottes and associated
women’s groups to demand state-imposed price controls, a demand that the Jacobins could not
refuse because they depended on the political support of the sans-culottes. In May the
convention fixed maximum prices for grain and bread.

Reign of Terror

In this general crisis, revolutionary leaders began to turn on each other. The Girondins, who
favored federalism, fought a battle to the death with the Jacobins, who denounced the Girondins
for lacking revolutionary zeal and for aiding, intentionally or not, counter-revolutionary forces. The
Jacobins already dominated the convention, but on June 2, pressured by the sans-culottes, they
consolidated their power by arresting 22 Girondin leaders.

During the following months, the government put down the federalist revolts, sometimes with
great severity. A new democratic constitution was drawn up but never implemented: In
Robespierre’s view, constitutional government would have to wait until fear and repression had
eliminated the enemies of the Revolution. The Jacobins operated through the existing convention
and agencies responsible to it. They used the Committee of Public Safety, composed of 12 men
led by Robespierre, to provide executive oversight; the Committee of General Security, to
oversee the police; and the Revolutionary Tribunal to try political cases. Additionally, the Jacobins
sent representatives from the convention with wide-ranging powers to particular areas to enforce
Jacobin policies.

The most urgent government business was the war. On August 17, 1793, the convention voted
the levée en masse (mass conscription), which mobilized all citizens to serve as soldiers or
suppliers in the war effort. To further that effort, the convention quickly enacted more legislation.
On September 5 it approved the Reign of Terror, a policy through which the state used violence
to crush resistance to the government. On September 9 the convention established sans-culotte
paramilitary forces, the so-called revolutionary armies, to force farmers to surrender grain
demanded by the government. On September 17 the Law of Suspects was passed, which
authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined “crimes against liberty.”
On September 29 the convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other essential
goods and fixed wages. On December 4 the national government resumed oversight of local
administration. On February 4, 1794, it abolished slavery in the colonies.

Beyond these measures, the convention and sympathetic groups like the sans-culottes began to
create and spread a revolutionary and republican culture. These groups sponsored the use of
revolutionary and republican propaganda in the arts, public festivals, and modes of dress. In this
way, they gradually began to spread and gain acceptance for their ideals among the common
people.
The most notable achievement of the Reign of Terror was to save the revolutionary government
from military defeat. The government feared invasion, which might have allowed counter-
revolutionary forces to undertake a terror of their own. To preserve the Revolution, it reorganized
and strengthened the army. The Jacobins expanded the size of the army and replaced many
aristocratic officers, who had deserted and fled abroad, with younger soldiers who had
demonstrated their ability and patriotism. The revolutionary army threw back the Austrians,
Prussians, English, and Spanish during the fall of 1793 and expelled the Austrians from Belgium
by the summer of 1794.

The military success of the Jacobin-led government was undeniable. However, the repressive
policies of the Reign of Terror that enabled the government to form and equip its large army did
so at the expense of many French citizens’ security: about 250,000 people were arrested; 17,000
were tried and guillotined, many with little if any means to defend themselves; another 12,000
were executed without trial; and thousands more died in jail. Clergy and nobles composed only
15 percent of the Reign of Terror’s approximately 40,000 victims. The rest were peasants and
bourgeois who had fought against the Revolution or had said or done something to offend the
new order. The Reign of Terror executed not only figures from the Old Regime, like the former
queen Marie-Antoinette, but also many revolutionary leaders. Some victims of the Reign of
Terror, like Georges Danton, seemed too moderate to Robespierre and his colleagues, while
others, like the sans-culotte leader Jacques René Hébert, seemed too extreme.

The Reign of Terror was the most radical phase of the Revolution, and it remains the most
controversial. Some have seen the Reign of Terror as a major advance toward modern
democracy, while others call it a step toward modern dictatorship. Certain defenders of the
Revolution have argued that the Reign of Terror was, under the circumstances, a reasonable
response to the military crisis of 1793. Others have rejected this idea, pointing out that the military
victories of early 1794, far from diminishing the intensity of the Reign of Terror, were followed by
the Great Terror of June and July 1794, in which more than 1300 people were executed in Paris
alone. The Reign of Terror, they have argued, resulted from an ideology already in place by 1789
that put national good above personal rights. To this argument, others have replied that in 1789
no revolutionary leader seriously imagined establishing anything like the Reign of Terror.

SEARCH FOR BALANCE

The Jacobin government lasted barely a year. Although effective in the short term, in the long run
it destroyed itself—in part because no one really controlled it. Victory on the battlefield had
removed the pretext for maintaining the Reign of Terror. At the same time, the killing frenzy of the
Great Terror convinced people—even allies of the Jacobins—they might be next on the guillotine.
Furthermore, by killing off the likes of Danton and Hébert, Robespierre’s faction had narrowed its
base of support and had no one to lean on when challenged. Thus the end was simply a matter of
time.

The Thermidorean Reaction

As it happened, the coup against Robespierre and his associates was led by a group of dissident
Jacobins, including members of the Committee of Public Safety. They had supported the Reign of
Terror but feared Robespierre would turn on them next. On July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, Year II, in
the revolutionary calendar), Robespierre and his close followers were arrested on the convention
floor. During the next two days, Robespierre and 82 of his associates were guillotined.

Although the conspirators of 9 Thermidor, who came to be known as Thermidoreans, could hardly
have known it, the removal of the 83 Robespierrists represented a major turning point in the
Revolution. Ever since 1789, counter-revolutionaries, who enjoyed support from many peasants,
had tried to reverse the Revolution. But it had continued to become more and more extreme in
nature, due to the increasing participation of urban radicals with whom the Jacobins had formed
political alliances. Only after 9 Thermidor did the Revolution reverse its radical direction, and
more moderate politicians came to dominate the government.

While these moderates wanted to preserve the Revolution’s achievements and tried to repress
counter-revolutionaries, they also feared and repressed the radical groups on whose backs the
Jacobins had ridden to power. In order to maintain control over both the radical left and the
counter-revolutionary right, the Thermidoreans consolidated their power and began to limit
democracy. These limitations led eventually to the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte (see
Napoleon I).

Immediately after 9 Thermidor an assortment of political groups began to use their influence to
dismantle all vestiges of the Reign of Terror. Although the convention continued in power until
October 1795, the teeth of the Reign of Terror were pulled one by one. To limit their power, the
committees of Public Safety and General Security were restructured; the operations of the
Revolutionary Tribunal were curtailed; thousands of prisoners were released; and in November
1794 the Paris Jacobin club was closed. People associated with the Reign of Terror were
harassed in Paris by reactionary youth groups known as the jeunesse d’orée (French for “the
gilded youth”) and even killed in strongly counter-revolutionary regions.

The last major popular rising of the Revolution occurred in the spring of 1795, when the near-total
devaluation of the assignats produced a price rise that devastated the poor. But this rising was
put down so effectively that the counter-revolutionaries imagined the monarchy might soon be
restored, and their activities escalated. In response, the Thermidoreans now struck against the
counter-revolutionaries, defeating and executing a group of émigré soldiers landed by the English
at Quiberon Bay in Brittany during the summer of 1795.

The Directory

To avoid a revival of either democracy or dictatorship, the Thermidoreans put together and
ratified a new constitution that limited the right to vote to the wealthiest 30,000 male citizens and
dispersed power among three main bodies. Legislative authority was vested in two legislative
assemblies, the Council of Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred. Executive power was
lodged in a five-man Directory to be chosen by the Council of Ancients from a list of candidates
presented by the Council of Five Hundred.

Fearing the results of a true referendum, moderate republicans decreed that two-thirds of the first
legislature had to be made up of members of the former convention. As it turned out, the
constitution, which was ratified by popular vote and took effect in late October 1795, neither
protected the government from unfriendly popular forces nor prevented the concentration of
power.

Did the Directory have good reason to fear that open elections would bring down the republic?
Historians have disagreed on this matter. Some argue that the Directory eventually failed
because it could not generate loyalty from either the left or the right. Other historians believe the
Directory failed because it distrusted democracy and did not develop a strong centrist party.

Whatever the reason, for the next four years the Directory lurched from making concessions to
the right and intimidating the left to making concessions to the left and intimidating the right. In
May 1796 the Directory easily crushed a conspiracy of former Jacobins and agrarian radicals who
intended to seize power and redistribute property. The right triumphed at the elections in 1797
and was slowly preparing to take power. Then in September, three members of the Directory, the
triumvirate, eliminated the two other members who had counter-revolutionary sympathies and
purged the legislature of nearly 200 opposition deputies. They did all this with the backing of the
army. The triumvirate was then joined by two new associates. This new Directory proceeded to
close down counter-revolutionary publications, exile returning émigrés and uncooperative clergy,
and execute many political opponents.

This coup of Fructidor (the month of the revolutionary calendar in which it occurred) allowed the
Directory to consolidate its power. As a result, it was able to take some bold new financial
initiatives, such as establishing a new metal-based currency and imposing a new system of taxes
on luxury goods and real estate. The coup also destroyed whatever hopes counter-
revolutionaries had to gain power through legal means.

But Fructidor also unleashed the radical left, which won an important electoral victory in May
1798. To neutralize this threat, the Directory once again tampered with polling results by
eliminating more than 100 elected left-wing deputies in what became known as the coup of
Floréal. Whatever the short-term gains for the Directory, its continuing rejection of election results
stripped it of its last remaining shreds of authority, as few could respect a regime that so routinely
violated its own constitution.

Foundations of Dictatorship

The end came in 1799. Military reverses, a domestic political crisis, and the ambitions of a military
hero, Napoleon Bonaparte, combined to give rise to the Revolution’s last major coup and the
creation of a dictatorship.

The military reverses occurred after French armies had enjoyed five years of considerable
success. Following the victories of the Reign of Terror, the first coalition of European powers
fighting revolutionary France crumbled in 1795 and 1796. Prussia, Spain, the Dutch Netherlands,
and Tuscany (Toscana) signed peace treaties with France, leaving England and Austria to fight
alone. In October 1795 France annexed the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium). The Dutch
Netherlands became the first of many so-called French sister republics. France fitted it with a
new, relatively democratic constitution closely patterned on the Directory. France also forced the
Dutch Netherlands to pay it a large indemnity. In 1796 and 1797 French armies swept into Italy
and western Germany.

Napoleon

It was in the course of the Italian campaign that Napoleon Bonaparte first made himself known to
the general public. Born in 1769 to a poor but noble Corsican family, Bonaparte was trained as an
artillery officer and quickly advanced through the ranks during the early years of the Revolution. A
Jacobin associate during the Reign of Terror, Bonaparte was briefly imprisoned after Thermidor,
but once released, he made himself useful to the new Directory by crushing a counter-
revolutionary uprising in October 1795. As commander of French forces in Italy, he won a series
of brilliant victories, established a new north Italian sister republic called the Cisalpine Republic,
and in October 1797 negotiated a treaty with Austria of his own design.

With a number of important secret provisions that ceded almost two-thirds of Austrian territory
along the Rhine River to France, this Treaty of Campo Formio so expanded the French sphere of
influence that it did less to create peace than to provoke a new war. Imagining themselves to be
liberating Europe, French forces proceeded to impose new political arrangements in western
Germany; to establish additional sister republics in Switzerland and Italy; to assist,
unsuccessfully, an Irish revolt against England; and to send an army under Bonaparte to Egypt to
attack the Ottoman Empire. Successful at first in Egypt, the French army was isolated after the
English navy won a victory at Abū Qīr Bay in August 1798, whereupon Bonaparte left his troops
and returned to France. He was welcomed as a great hero despite his failure to capture Egypt
and his loss to the English.
End of the Directory

Perceiving in the French position both weakness and a continuing threat, England, Russia, the
Ottoman Empire, and Austria formed a new anti-French coalition. By the spring of 1799 the
armies of this second coalition forced France to retreat on all fronts, most dramatically in Italy
where they dislodged the French altogether and dismantled the sister republics. Although the
coalition was pushed back in September and began to disintegrate, the French military position
remained uncertain. Suddenly on the defensive and rudely reminded of their vulnerability, the
French nation lost still more respect for the Directory. Gradually during 1799 the Directory lost its
political grip.

As the military situation darkened and Austria threatened France, opponents of the Directory won
an election and, for once, were able to purge the Directory, rather than vice versa. The purge
enabled newly elected deputies to take radical measures to advance the war effort. They
imposed forced loans on the wealthy and persecuted the relatives of émigrés, recalling the Reign
of Terror. The primary beneficiary of the purge, however, was Emmanuel Sieyès, who was
appointed director. He began plotting to radically revise the constitution to protect the regime from
any further threats from the radical left or the counter-revolutionary right. Needing a charismatic,
popular figure to lead the charge, Sieyès joined forces with Bonaparte.

At this point, fresh counter-revolutionary uprisings occurred in the provinces and a radical
movement to take over the republic became apparent. The plotters then persuaded members of
the Directory to resign. On November 9 (18 Brumaire) they asked the legislature to vest power in
a provisional government made up of Sieyès, Bonaparte, and Roger Ducos. When the legislature
resisted, soldiers loyal to Bonaparte chased resistors from the legislature and persuaded the
remaining deputies to approve the plan.

The Directory was dead, and with it went the last revolutionary regime that could make any
pretense to embody the liberal parliamentary government intended by the revolutionaries of 1789.
Under Bonaparte, the Revolution, if it could be said to have remained alive at all, did so in the
form of a military dictatorship that had far more power than any French king had ever possessed.

The Ambiguous Legacy of the Revolution

At its core, the French Revolution was a political movement devoted to liberty. But what that
liberty actually was and what was required to realize it remained open questions during the
Revolution, as they have ever since. Some historians have suggested that what the
revolutionaries’ liberty meant in practice was violence and a loss of personal security that pointed
to the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. This negative view had its roots in the ideas of
many counter-revolutionaries, who criticized the Revolution from its beginning. These ideas
gained new popularity during the period of reaction that set in after Napoleon’s final defeat in
1815, when the monarchy and its counter-revolutionary allies were restored to power.

However, the majority of Europeans and non-Europeans came to see the Revolution as much
more than a bloody tragedy. These people were more impressed by what the Revolution
accomplished than by what it failed to do. They recalled the Revolution’s abolition of serfdom,
slavery, inherited privilege, and judicial torture; its experiments with democracy; and its opening
of opportunities to those who, for reasons of social status or religion, had been traditionally
excluded.

One of the most important contributions of the French Revolution was to make revolution part of
the world’s political tradition. The French Revolution continued to provide instruction for
revolutionaries in the 19th and 20th centuries, as peoples in Europe and around the world sought
to realize their different versions of freedom. Karl Marx would, at least at the outset, pattern his
notion of a proletarian revolution on the French Revolution of 1789. And 200 years later Chinese
students, who weeks before had fought their government in Tiananmen Square, confirmed the
contemporary relevance of the French Revolution when they led the revolutionary bicentennial
parade in Paris on July 14, 1989.

Along with offering lessons about liberty and democracy, the Revolution also promoted
nationalism. Napoleon’s occupation provoked nationalist groups to organize in Italy and
Germany. Also influential was the revolutionaries’ belief that a nation was not a group of royal
subjects but a society of equal citizens. The fact that most European countries are or are
becoming parliamentary democracies, along the lines set out by the French Revolution, suggests
its enduring influence.

Socially, the Revolution was also important. Clearly, society in France and to a lesser extent in
other parts of Europe would never be the same. Once the ancient structure of privilege was
smashed, it could not be pieced together again. The Revolution did not fundamentally alter the
distribution of wealth, but that had not been the intention of most of the revolutionaries. Insofar as
legal equality gradually became the norm in France and Europe, the revolutionaries succeeded.

The cultural impact is harder to assess. The Revolution did not succeed in establishing the
national school system it envisioned, but it did found some of France’s elite educational
institutions that have produced some of that nation’s greatest leaders. Its attack on the church
had profound repercussions, making the status of the church a central political issue, which even
today divides France politically and culturally.

As for economic development, the Revolution probably hurt more than it helped. In the long term,
the liberation of the economy from royal controls, the standardization of weights and measures,
and the development of a uniform civil law code helped pave the way for the Industrial
Revolution. But the disruptive effects of war on the French economy offset the positive effects of
these changes. In terms of total output, the economy was probably set back a generation.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

INTRODUCTION

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), French philosopher, social and political theorist, musician,
botanist, and one of the most eloquent writers of the Age of Enlightenment.

Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva on June 28, 1712, and was raised by an aunt and
uncle following the death of his mother a few days after his birth. He was apprenticed at the age
of 13 to an engraver, but after three years he ran away and became secretary and companion to
Madame Louise de Warens, a wealthy and charitable woman who had a profound influence on
Rousseau’s life and writings. In 1742 Rousseau went to Paris, where he earned his living as a
music teacher, music copyist, and political secretary. He became a close friend of the French
philosopher Denis Diderot, who commissioned him to write articles on music for the French
Encyclopédie.

PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS

In 1750 Rousseau won the Academy of Dijon award for his Discours sur les sciences et les arts
(Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, 1750), and in 1752 his opera Le devin du village (The
Village Sage) was first performed. In his prize-winning discourse and in his Discourse on the
Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind (1755; trans. 1761), he expounded the view
that science, art, and social institutions have corrupted humankind and that the natural, or
primitive, state is morally superior to the civilized state (see Naturalism). The persuasive rhetoric
of these writings provoked derisive comments from the French philosopher Voltaire, who attacked
Rousseau’s views, and subsequently the two philosophers became bitter enemies.

Rousseau left Paris in 1756 and secluded himself at Montmorency, where he wrote the romance
The New Heloise (1761). In his famous political treatise The Social Contract (1762; trans. 1797)
he developed a case for civil liberty and helped prepare the ideological background of the French
Revolution by defending the popular will against divine right.

LATER WORKS

In the influential novel Émile (1762; trans. 1763) Rousseau expounded a new theory of education
emphasizing the importance of expression rather than repression to produce a well-balanced,
freethinking child.

Rousseau’s unconventional views antagonized French and Swiss authorities and alienated many
of his friends, and in 1762 he fled first to Prussia and then to England. There he was befriended
by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, but they soon quarreled and denounced each other in
public letters. During his stay in England he prepared the manuscript for his posthumously
published treatise on botany, La botanique (Botany, 1802). Rousseau returned to France in 1768
under the assumed name Renou. In 1770 he completed the manuscript of his most remarkable
work, the autobiographical Confessions (1782; trans. 1783, 1790), which contained a penetrating
self-examination and revealed the intense emotional and moral conflicts in his life. He died July 2,
1778, in Ermenonville, France.

INFLUENCE

Although Rousseau contributed greatly to the movement in Western Europe for individual
freedom and against the absolutism of church and state, his conception of the state as the
embodiment of the abstract will of the people and his arguments for strict enforcement of political
and religious conformity are regarded by some historians as a source of totalitarian ideology.
Rousseau’s theory of education led to more permissive and more psychologically oriented
methods of child care, and influenced the German educator Friedrich Froebel, the Swiss
educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, and other pioneers of modern education. The
New Heloise and Confessions introduced a new style of extreme emotional expression, concern
with intense personal experience, and exploration of the conflicts between moral and sensual
values. In these writings Rousseau profoundly influenced romanticism in literature and philosophy
in the early 19th century. He also affected the development of the psychological literature,
psychoanalytic theory, and philosophy of existentialism of the 20th century, particularly in his
insistence on free will, his rejection of the doctrine of original sin, and his defense of learning
through experience rather than analysis. The spirit and ideas of Rousseau’s work stand midway
between the 18th-century Enlightenment, with its passionate defense of reason and individual
rights, and early 19th-century romanticism, which defended intense subjective experience against
rational thought.

Baron de Montesquieu

Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), French writer and jurist. Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron
de la Brède et de Montesquieu, was born in the Château of la Brède and educated at the
Oratorian school at Juilly and later at Bordeaux. He became counselor of the Bordeaux
parliament in 1714 and was its president from 1716 to 1728. Montesquieu first became prominent
as a writer with his Persian Letters (1721; trans. 1961); in this work, through the device of letters
written to and by two aristocratic Persian travelers in Europe, Montesquieu satirized
contemporary French politics, social conditions, ecclesiastical matters, and literature. the book
won immediate and wide popularity; it was one of the earliest works of the movement known as
the Enlightenment, which, by its criticism of French institutions under the Bourbon monarchy,
helped bring about the French Revolution. The reputation acquired by Montesquieu through this
work and several others of lesser importance led to his election to the French Academy in 1728.
His second significant work was Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur et de la décadence
des Romains (Thoughts on the Causes of the Greatness and the Downfall of the Romans, 1734),
one of the first important works in the philosophy of history. His masterpiece was The Spirit of
Laws (1748; trans. 1750), in which he examined the three main types of government (republic,
monarchy, and despotism) and states that a relationship does exist between an area's climate,
geography, and general circumstances and the form of government that evolves. Montesquieu
also held that governmental powers should be separated and balanced to guarantee individual
rights and freedom.

Voltaire

Voltaire, assumed name of François Marie Arouet (1694-1778), French writer and philosopher,
who was one of the leaders of the Enlightenment.

Voltaire was born in Paris, November 21, 1694, the son of a notary. He was educated by the
Jesuits at the College Louis-le-Grand.

EARLY BRILLIANCE

Voltaire quickly chose literature as a career. He began moving in aristocratic circles and soon
became known in Paris salons as a brilliant and sarcastic wit. A number of his writings,
particularly a lampoon accusing the French regent Philippe II, duc d'Orléans of heinous crimes,
resulted in his imprisonment in the Bastille. During his 11-month detention, Voltaire completed his
first tragedy, Œdipe, which was based upon the Œdipus tyrannus of the ancient Greek dramatist
Sophocles, and commenced an epic poem on Henry IV of France. Œdipe was given its initial
performance at the Théâtre-Français in 1718 and received with great enthusiasm. The work on
Henry IV was printed anonymously in Geneva under the title of Poème de la ligue (Poem of the
League, 1723). In his first philosophical poem, Le pour et le contre (For and Against), Voltaire
gave eloquent expression to both his anti-Christian views and his rationalist, deist creed.

A quarrel with a member of an illustrious French family, the chevalier de Rohan, resulted in
Voltaire's second incarceration in the Bastille, from which he was released within two weeks on
his promise to quit France and proceed to England. Accordingly he spent about two years in
London. Voltaire soon mastered the English language, and in order to prepare the British public
for an enlarged edition of his Poème de la ligue, he wrote in English two remarkable essays, one
on epic poetry and the other on the history of civil wars in France. For a few years the Catholic,
autocratic French government prevented the publication of the enlarged edition of Poème de la
ligue, which was retitled La Henriade (The Henriad). The government finally allowed the poem to
be published in 1728. This work, an eloquent defense of religious toleration, achieved an almost
unprecedented success, not only in Voltaire's native France but throughout all of the continent of
Europe as well.

POPULARITY AT COURT

In 1728 Voltaire returned to France. During the next four years he resided in Paris and devoted
most of his time to literary composition. The chief work of this period is the Lettres philosophiques
(The Philosophical Letters, 1734). A covert attack upon the political and ecclesiastical institutions
of France, this work brought Voltaire into conflict with the authorities, and he was once more
forced to quit Paris. He found refuge at the Château de Cirey in the independent duchy of
Lorraine. There he formed an intimate relationship with the aristocratic and learned Gabrielle
Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet, who exerted a strong intellectual influence
upon him.

Voltaire's sojourn at Cirey in companionship with the marquise du Châtelet was a period of
intense literary activity. In addition to an imposing number of plays, he wrote the Élements de la
philosophie de Newton (Elements of the Philosophy of Newton), and produced novels, tales,
satires, and light verses.

Voltaire's stay at Cirey was not without interruptions. He often traveled to Paris and to Versailles,
where, through the influence of the marquise de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, he
became a court favorite. He was first appointed historiographer of France, and then a gentleman
of the king's bedchamber; finally, in 1746, he was elected to the French Academy. His Poème de
Fontenoy (1745), describing a battle won by the French over the English during the War of the
Austrian Succession, and his Précis du siècle de Louis XV (Epitome of the Age of Louis XV), in
addition to his dramas La princesse de Navarre and Le triomphe de Trajan, were the outcome of
Voltaire's connection with the court of Louis XV.

Following the death of Madame du Châtelet in 1749, Voltaire finally accepted a long-standing
invitation from Frederick II of Prussia to become a permanent resident at the Prussian court. He
journeyed to Berlin in 1750 but did not remain there more than two years, because his acidulous
wit clashed with the king's autocratic temper and led to frequent disputes. While at Berlin he
completed his Siècle de Louis XIV, a historical study of the period of Louis XIV (1638-1715).

ATTACKS ON RELIGION

For some years Voltaire led a migratory existence, but he finally settled in 1758 at Ferney, where
he spent the remaining 20 years of his life. In the interval between his return from Berlin and his
establishment at Ferney, he completed his most ambitious work, the Essai sur l'histoire générale
et sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations (Essay on General History and on the Customs and the
Character of Nations, 1756). In this work, a study of human progress, Voltaire decries
supernaturalism and denounces religion and the power of the clergy, although he makes evident
his own belief in the existence of God.

After settling in Ferney, Voltaire wrote several philosophical poems, such as Le désastre de
Lisbonne (The Lisbon Disaster, 1756); a number of satirical and philosophical novels, of which
the most brilliant is Candide (1759); the tragedy Tancrède (1760); and the Dictionnaire
philosophique (1764). Feeling secure in his sequestered retreat, he sent forth hundreds of short
squibs and broadsides satirizing abuses that he desired to expose. Those who suffered
persecution because of their beliefs found in Voltaire an eloquent and powerful defender. The
flavor of Voltaire's activities could be summarized in the phrase he often used: écrasons l'infâme
(“let us crush the infamous one”). With this phrase, he referred to any form of religion that
persecutes nonadherents or that constitutes fanaticism. For Christianity he would substitute
deism, a purely rational religion. Candide, in which Voltaire analyzes the problem of evil in the
world, depicts the woes heaped upon the world in the name of religion. He died in Paris, May 30,
1778.

CRITICISM

Voltaire's contradictions of character are reflected in his writings as well as in the impressions of
others. He seemed able to defend either side in any debate, and to some of his contemporaries
he appeared distrustful, avaricious and sardonic; others considered him generous, enthusiastic,
and sentimental. Essentially, he rejected everything irrational and incomprehensible and called
upon his contemporaries to act against intolerance, tyranny, and superstition. His morality was
founded on a belief in freedom of thought and respect for all individuals, and he maintained that
literature should be useful and concerned with the problems of the day. These views made
Voltaire a central figure in the 18th-century philosophical movement typified by the writers of the
famous French Encyclopédie. Because he pleaded for a socially involved type of literature,
Voltaire is considered a forerunner of such 20th-century writers as Jean-Paul Sartre and other
French existentialists.

All of Voltaire's works contain memorable passages distinguished by elegance, perspicuity, and
wit. His poetic and dramatic works, however, are marred often by too great a concentration on
historical matter and philosophical propaganda. His other writings include the tragedies Brutus
(1730), Zaïre (1732), Alzire (1736), Mahomet (1741), and Mérope (1743); the philosophical
romance Zadig (1747); the philosophical poem Discours sur l'homme (Discourse on Man, 1738);
and the historical study Charles XII (1730).

Prince Metternich

Prince Metternich (1773-1859), Austrian statesman and diplomat, who was the dominant figure in
European politics between 1814 and 1848.

Prince Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich was born into an aristocratic family on
May 15, 1773, in Koblenz, Germany, and attended the universities of Strasbourg and Mainz. His
family fled the revolutionary French armies to Vienna in 1794, and Metternich there married
Countess Eleanor Kaunitz, whose family was prominent at the Austrian court. He served the
Habsburgs first as an envoy to the Congress of Rastadt (1797) and then as ambassador to
Saxony (1801), Prussia (1803), and Napoleonic France (1806).

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS

In 1809 Metternich was appointed minister of foreign affairs for the Habsburg state, then in
disarray following several defeats by the French army. He arranged the marriage of the Austrian
archduchess Marie Louise to Napoleon, but he planned to renew the war with France when the
opportunity arose. After Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign in 1812, Metternich played a
leading role in the formation of a new European coalition that two years later defeated the French
emperor. At the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), which redrew the map of Europe after Napoleon's
downfall, he blocked Russian plans for the annexation of the whole of Poland and Prussia's
attempt to absorb Saxony. He succeeded in creating a German Confederation under Austrian
leadership but failed to achieve a similar arrangement for Italy. His attempt to make the postwar
Quadruple Alliance (Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria) into an instrument for preventing
revolution in Europe also failed. As chancellor of the Habsburg Empire (1821-48) he was,
however, able to maintain the status quo in Germany and Italy, and he remained Europe's leading
statesman until driven from power by the Revolution of 1848. He died in Vienna on June 11,
1859.

EVALUATION

Metternich equally resented liberalism, nationalism, and revolution. His ideal was a monarchy that
shared power with the traditional privileged classes of society. He was a man of order in an
increasingly disorganized world of rapidly changing values. Vain and indolent by nature, he often
assumed responsibility for policies he had not himself formulated. Some have judged him a
reactionary who tried to stem the tide of democratic progress. To others he was a constructive
force, misunderstood by contemporaries and historians alike.
Napoleon I

Napoleon I (1769-1821), emperor of the French, whose imperial dictatorship ended the French
Revolution (1789-1799) while consolidating the reforms it had brought about. One of the greatest
military commanders of all time, he conquered much of Europe.

Napoleon was born on August 15, 1769, in Ajaccio, Corsica, and was given the name Napoleone
(in French his name became Napoleon Bonaparte). He was the second of eight children of Carlo
(Charles) Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino Buonaparte, both of the Corsican-Italian gentry. No
Buonaparte had ever been a professional soldier. Carlo was a lawyer who had fought for
Corsican independence, but after the French occupied the island in 1768, he served as a
prosecutor and judge and entered the French aristocracy as a count. Through his father’s
influence, Napoleon was educated at the expense of King Louis XVI, at Brienne and the École
Militaire, in Paris. Napoleon graduated in 1785, at the age of 16, and joined the artillery as a
second lieutenant.

After the Revolution began in 1789, Napoleon became a lieutenant colonel (1791) in the Corsican
National Guard. In 1793, however, Corsica declared independence, and Bonaparte, a French
patriot and a Republican, fled to France with his family. He was assigned, as a captain, to an
army besieging Toulon, a naval base that, aided by a British fleet, was in revolt against the
republic. Replacing a wounded artillery general, he seized ground where his guns could drive the
British fleet from the harbor, and Toulon fell. As a result Bonaparte was promoted to brigadier
general at the age of 24. In 1795 he saved the revolutionary government by dispersing an
insurgent mob in Paris. In 1796 he married Joséphine de Beauharnais, the widow of an aristocrat
guillotined in the Revolution and the mother of two children.

EARLY CAMPAIGNS

Bonaparte was made commander of the French army in Italy in 1796. He defeated four Austrian
generals in succession, each with superior numbers, and forced Austria and its allies to make
peace. The Treaty of Campo Formio provided that France keep most of its conquests. In northern
Italy he founded the Cisalpine Republic (later known as the kingdom of Italy) and strengthened
his position in France by sending millions of francs worth of treasure to the government.

In 1798, to strike at British trade with the East, Napoleon led an expedition to Ottoman-ruled
Egypt, which he conquered. His fleet, however, was destroyed by British admiral Horatio Nelson
in the Battle of the Nile, leaving him stranded. Undaunted, Napoleon reformed the Egyptian
government and law, abolishing serfdom and feudalism and guaranteeing basic rights. The
French scholars he had brought with him began the scientific study of ancient Egyptian history. In
1799 he failed to capture Syria, but he won a smashing victory over the Ottomans at Abū Qīr
(Abukir). France, meanwhile, faced a new coalition; Austria, Russia, and lesser powers had allied
with Britain.

NAPOLEONIC RULE IN FRANCE

Bonaparte, no modest soul, decided to leave his army and return to save France. In Paris, he
joined a conspiracy against the government. In the coup d’etat of November 9-10, 1799 (18-19
Brumaire), he and his colleagues seized power and established a new regime—the Consulate.
Under its constitution, Bonaparte, as first consul, had almost dictatorial powers. The constitution
was revised in 1802 to make Bonaparte consul for life and in 1804 to create him emperor. Each
change received the overwhelming assent of the electorate.

In 1800, Napoleon assured his power by crossing the Alps and defeating the Austrians at
Marengo. He then negotiated a general European peace that established the Rhine River as the
eastern border of France. He also concluded an agreement with the pope (the Concordat of
1801), which contributed to French domestic tranquility by ending the quarrel with the Roman
Catholic Church that had arisen during the French Revolution.

In France the administration was reorganized, the court system was simplified, and all schools
were put under centralized control. French law was standardized in the Code Napoléon, or civil
code, and six other codes. They guaranteed the rights and liberties won in the Revolution,
including equality before the law and freedom of religion.

WARS OF CONQUEST

In April 1803 Britain, provoked by Napoleon’s aggressive behavior, resumed war with France on
the seas; two years later Russia and Austria joined the British in a new coalition. Napoleon then
abandoned plans to invade England and turned his armies against the Austro-Russian forces,
defeating them at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805. In 1806 he seized the kingdom of
Naples and made his elder brother Joseph Bonaparte king, converted the Dutch Republic into the
kingdom of Holland for his brother Louis, and established the Confederation of the Rhine (most of
the German states) of which he was protector. Prussia then allied itself with Russia and attacked
the confederation. Napoleon destroyed the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstädt (1806) and the
Russian army at Friedland. At Tilsit (July 1807), Napoleon made an ally of Russian tsar
Alexander I and greatly reduced the size of Prussia (see Tilsit, Treaty of). He also added new
states to the empire: the kingdom of Westphalia, under his brother Jérôme, the duchy of Warsaw,
and others.

Napoleon had meanwhile established the Continental System, a French-imposed blockade of

Europe against British goods, designed to bankrupt what he called the “nation of shopkeepers.” In
1807 Napoleon seized Portugal. In 1808, he made his brother Joseph king of Spain, awarding
Naples to his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat. Joseph’s arrival in Spain touched off a rebellion
there, which became known as the Peninsular War. Napoleon appeared briefly and scored
victories, but after his departure the fighting continued for five years, with the British backing
Spanish armies and guerrillas. The Peninsular War cost France 300,000 casualties and untold
sums of money and contributed to the eventual weakening of the Napoleonic empire.

In 1809 Napoleon beat the Austrians again at Wagram, annexed the Illyrian Provinces (now part
of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro), and abolished the Papal
States. He also divorced Joséphine, and in 1810 he married the Habsburg archduchess Marie
Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor. By thus linking his dynasty with the oldest ruling house
in Europe, he hoped that his son, who was born in 1811, would be more readily accepted by
established monarchs. In 1810 also, the empire reached its widest extension with the annexation
of Bremen, Lübeck, and other parts of north Germany, together with the entire kingdom of
Holland, following the forced abdication of Louis Bonaparte.

NAPOLEONIC RULE IN EUROPE

In all the new kingdoms created by the emperor, the Code Napoléon was established as law.
Feudalism and serfdom were abolished, and freedom of religion established (except in Spain).
Each state was granted a constitution, providing for universal male suffrage (voting rights) and a
parliament and containing a bill of rights. French-style administrative and judicial systems were
required. Schools were put under centralized administration, and free public schools were
envisioned. Higher education was opened to all who qualified, regardless of class or religion.
Every state had an academy or institute for the promotion of the arts and sciences. Incomes were
provided for eminent scholars, especially scientists. Constitutional government remained only a
promise, but progress and increased efficiency were widely realized. Not until after Napoleon’s
fall did the common people of Europe, alienated from his governments by war taxes and military
conscription, fully appreciate the benefits he had given them.

NAPOLEON’S DOWNFALL

In 1812 Napoleon, whose alliance with Alexander I had disintegrated, launched an invasion of
Russia that ended in a disastrous retreat from Moscow. Thereafter all Europe united against him,
and although he fought on, and brilliantly, the odds were impossible. In April 1814, his marshals
refused to continue the struggle. After the allies had rejected his stepping down in favor of his
son, Napoleon abdicated unconditionally and was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba.
Marie Louise and his son were put in the custody of her father, the emperor of Austria. Napoleon
never saw either of them again. Napoleon himself, however, soon made a dramatic comeback.

In March 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba, reached France, and marched on Paris, winning
over the troops sent to capture him. In Paris, he promulgated a new and more democratic
constitution, and veterans of his old campaigns flocked to his support. Napoleon asked peace of
the allies, but they outlawed him, and he decided to strike first. The result was a campaign into
Belgium, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. In Paris, crowds
begged him to fight on, but the politicians withdrew their support. Napoleon fled to Rochefort,
where he surrendered to the captain of the British battleship Bellerophon. He was then exiled to
Saint Helena, a remote island in the south Atlantic Ocean, where he remained until his death on
May 5, 1821.

THE NAPOLEONIC LEGEND

The cult of Napoleon as the “man of destiny” began during his lifetime. In fact, he had begun to
cultivate it during his first Italian campaign by systematically publicizing his victories. As first
consul and emperor, he had engaged the best writers and artists of France and Europe to glorify
his deeds and had contributed to the cult himself by the elaborate ceremonies with which he
celebrated his rule, picturing himself as the architect of France’s greatest glory. He maintained
that he had preserved the achievements of the Revolution in France and offered their benefits to
Europe. His goal, he said, was to found a European state—a “federation of free peoples.”
Whatever the truth of this, he became the arch-hero of the French and a martyr to the world. In
1840 his remains were returned to Paris at the request of King Louis Philippe and interred with
great pomp and ceremony in the Invalides, where they still lie.

EVALUATION

Napoleon’s influence is evident in France even today. Reminders of him dot Paris—the most
obvious being the Arc de Triomphe, the centerpiece of the city, which was built to commemorate
his victories. His spirit pervades the constitution of the Fifth Republic; the country’s basic law is
still the Code Napoléon, and the administrative and judicial systems are essentially Napoleonic. A
uniform state-regulated system of education persists. Napoleon’s radical reforms in all parts of
Europe cultivated the ground for the revolutions of the 19th century. Today, the impact of the
Code Napoléon is apparent in the law of all European countries.

Napoleon was a driven man, never secure, never satisfied. “Power is my mistress,” he said. His
life was work-centered; even his social activities had a purpose. He could bear amusements or
vacations only briefly. His tastes were for coarse food, bad wine, cheap snuff. He could be
charming—hypnotically so—for a purpose. He had intense loyalties—to his family and old
associates. Nothing and no one, however, were allowed to interfere with his work.

Napoleon was sometimes a tyrant and always an authoritarian, but one who believed in ruling by
mandate of the people, expressed in plebiscites. He was also a great enlightened monarch—a
civil executive of enormous capacity who changed French institutions and tried to reform the
institutions of Europe and give the Continent a common law. Few deny that he was a military
genius. At Saint Helena, he said, “Waterloo will erase the memory of all my victories.” He was
wrong; for better or worse, he is best remembered as a general, not for his enlightened
government, but the latter must be counted if he is justly to be called Napoleon the Great.

Italian Unification

INTRODUCTION

Italian Unification or Italian Risorgimento, series of political and military events that resulted in a
unified kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Italy was left completely fragmented by the settlements reached at the Congress of Vienna in
1815. The Congress divided territory among the victors of the Napoleonic Wars, a conflict from
1799 to 1815 between France, led by Napoleon I, and a number of European nations. Many
Italians had admired Napoleon for his victories over the Austrians, whom the Italians disliked, and
for the republican ideas that took root in the parts of Italy controlled by the French during the
Napoleonic Wars. The settlements reached at Vienna, however, restored Austrian domination of
the peninsula, although the Kingdom of Sardinia recovered Piedmont (Piemonte), Nice, and
Savoy and acquired Genoa.

Italy in 1815 faced three obstacles to unity. The first was the Austrian occupation of Lombardy
(Lombardia) and Venice in the north and northeast of the Italian peninsula. The second was the
Papal States, the principality under the sovereignty of the pope; the Papal States straddled the
center of the peninsula, cutting the north off from the south. The third obstacle was formed by the
existence of several independent states. On the French border was the Kingdom of Sardinia, also
called Piedmont-Sardinia, which had slowly expanded since the Middle Ages and was the most
advanced state in Italy. The Kingdom of Sardinia consisted of the region called Piedmont in
northwestern Italy and the island of Sardinia. The Kingdom of the two Sicilies occupied the
southern half of the peninsula and the island of Sicily. Other small states were the duchies of
Tuscany (Toscana), Parma, and Modena, all governed by relatives of the Habsburgs, the family
that ruled Austria. In each of these states, the monarch exercised absolute powers of
government.

THE REVOLUTIONARY PHASE

Before 1848, a desire for the unity, or even the independence, of Italy was limited to a small
section of the aristocracy and the middle class. Among the latter were many retired army officers
who had fought with Napoleon. By 1820 these groups had formed secret societies, the largest of
which was the Carbonari. They were perhaps more concerned with securing constitutions from
their absolutist sovereigns than with any national aim, but some of them certainly wrote of a
single country they called Italy. In 1820 the Carbonari spearheaded revolutions in the Kingdom of
the two Sicilies and in the Kingdom of Sardinia. More serious revolutions broke out in Bologna in
1831 against Pope Gregory XVI, and in the small duchies of Parma and Modena. All of these
uprisings were put down by Austrian armed intervention.

The revolutionary movement acquired its nationalist character through the work of the Italian
patriot Giuseppe Mazzini. He believed that Italy should be not only independent, but also an
integrated republic. In 1831 he organized Young Italy to spread the ideals of nationalism and
republicanism to the Italian people. Its goals were education and insurrection, and revolutionary
cells were formed all over the peninsula. In the Papal States, a liberal Pope, Pius IX, was elected
in 1846. He immediately began an extensive program of reforms. An amnesty was proclaimed for
political offenders, political exiles were permitted to return, freedom of the press was introduced,
the highest government offices were opened to laypeople, and a consultative chamber was
created to suggest new reforms. The pope's example was followed by the rulers of Lucca,
Tuscany, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. Instead of slowing the revolutionary movement, however,
the reforms of 1846 and 1847 only intensified it, culminating in the Revolutions of 1848, a series
of uprisings in France, Germany, the Austrian Empire, and parts of northern Italy. These
revolutions were generally attempts either to establish constitutional government or to gain
independence for a particular nationality.

The first of these revolutions on Italian soil took place in the Kingdom of the two Sicilies, where
the King was forced to grant a constitution for the whole of his kingdom. In the Papal States, Pius
IX was denounced by radicals for failing to join the war of national liberation. A popular
insurrection in Rome caused the pope to flee the city in November 1848. In his absence, the
temporal power of the pontiff was abolished and a republic was proclaimed. In the Kingdom of
Sardinia the nationalists called for a war of liberation to drive the Austrians from Italian soil. After
some hesitation, King Charles Albert of Sardinia mobilized his army and marched to the
assistance of Lombardy, which he entered on March 26.

In the spring of 1848 it looked as if the independence, if not the unity, of Italy was an immediate
possibility. However, the Piedmontese were defeated by the Austrians, and Charles Albert
abdicated; he was succeeded by his son, Victor Emmanuel II, in 1849. In spite of a heroic
defense by the Italian nationalist revolutionary leader Giuseppe Garibaldi, the new republic in
Rome was destroyed by French intervention in July 1849. Only in Sardinia did constitutional
government survive the pressures in the region to restore monarchical governments. In 1852
Count Camillo di Cavour became prime minister of the Kingdom of Sardinia. His subtle,
opportunistic, and flexible policy led to the unification of Italy in little more than a decade.

THE DIPLOMATIC AND MILITARY PHASE

Cavour's policy was to secure for the Kingdom of Sardinia the diplomatic and military support of
Napoleon III, the French emperor. Napoleon and Cavour secretly planned a war against Austria.
By the spring of 1859, Cavour had created a crisis that led the Austrians to send an ultimatum
demanding Piedmontese disarmament. Cavour rejected the ultimatum and, in the subsequent
war, the French came to the aid of the Piedmontese. The Austrians were defeated in the two
battles of Magenta and Solferino and were forced to surrender Lombardy, with its great city of
Milan, to Napoleon III. Then in 1859 Napoleon placed Lombardy under the sovereignty of Victor
Emmanuel II.

In a series of elections during 1859 and 1860, all the states in the northern part of the Italian
peninsula, with the exception of Venetia, which still belonged to Austria, voted to join the Kingdom
of Sardinia. In the space of less than two years, the Kingdom of Sardinia under Victor Emmanuel
II had more than doubled its size. Napoleon III was alarmed by the size of France's new neighbor.
Napoleon's unease was soothed by Cavour's decision in 1860 to cede to France the Sardinian
provinces of Savoy, near the Alps, and Nice, on the Mediterranean coast. This decision was
unpopular in Italy, and it enraged Garibaldi, who was born in Nice. After 1860, the only French
presence on the Italian peninsula was in the city of Rome, where French troops remained at the
request of the pope.

Garibaldi was the hero of the next phase of Italian unification. In May 1860, he sailed for Sicily in
two small ships with a force of just over 1000 volunteers. Their campaign was successful in Sicily
first, and then in Naples, which Garibaldi triumphantly entered on September 7, 1860. The
Kingdom of Sardinia was sympathetic toward Garibaldi but maintained a policy of neutrality until it
appeared that Garibaldi was about to send his army into Rome, which was protected by French
troops. Cavour did not want to antagonize Napoleon III. To regain the initiative, Cavour went to
war against Pope Pius IX, who had abandoned his liberal views. With Napoleon's consent,
Cavour moved his forces into the Papal States. Soon afterward, in late 1860, two-thirds of the
Papal States voted to join the Kingdom of Sardinia. The Papal States were reduced to Rome and
its immediate environs still under the protection of France. The provinces of Naples and Sicily,
which Garibaldi had conquered, also voted to join Sardinia. Victor Emmanuel's government
controlled the whole peninsula except for Rome and for Venice, which was still part of the
Austrian Empire. On March 17, 1861, an all-Italian parliament proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy,
with Victor Emmanuel as the first king and Cavour as the first prime minister.

Venice was added to Italy in 1866 after Prussia defeated Austria in the Seven Weeks' War, in
which Italy sided with Prussia; Venice was its reward. Then, in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian
War, Napoleon III withdrew his troops from Rome. With the city of Rome and the remaining Papal
States left unprotected, Italian troops moved into Rome without opposition. Rome voted for union
with Italy in October 1870 and, in July 1871, Rome became the capital of a united Italy.

German Unification (1871)

INTRODUCTION

German Unification (1871), merging of the states in the North German Confederation and other
German states to form the German Empire. Before unification, Germany had been divided into
many small states, which were unified in a process that began in 1849 and ended in 1871.
However, unification did not include millions of people who thought of themselves as German. For
example, the Germans of Bohemia (modern Czech Republic) and Austria remained outside the
German Empire.

German unification was a turning point in European history. The state that emerged in 1871
challenged Europe and the world in 1914 and again in 1939, and Germany's defeat on both
occasions affected the course of international relations in the 20th century.

A number of forces favored unification. German identity was important to German intellectuals in
particular, who argued that German history and myths made Germany distinctive. German
businessmen saw the chance for larger markets in a united country. German Protestants
dreamed of a state to balance the Catholic Habsburg regime that ruled Austria. German liberals
wanted a modern, centralized political system, a representative government similar to that
established in the United States in 1787.

German unification also faced powerful obstacles. A unified Germany had never before existed;
states such as Hannover, Bavaria, and Prussia had developed their own identities. Proud of their
independence, they were unwilling to abandon it. Moreover, the Habsburg Empire in Austria had
a vested interest in a status quo that made it the primary power in central Europe. The idea of
unification was not universally popular among the German people. Thousands of officials,
merchants, and intellectuals had built lives as part of the existing order. Millions of ordinary men
and women were indifferent to the question of who collected taxes and conscripted their sons for
combat. Conservatives feared that destroying the traditional structure of small states would open
the door to revolution and intervention by Europe's great powers.

OTTO VON BISMARCK

The principal architect of unification was Prince Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, who was not
a German nationalist, but a Prussian patriot. In 1851 Bismarck was appointed as Prussia's
representative to the German Confederation, a loose organization of 39 German states. In 1859
he was transferred to Saint Petersburg as the ambassador to Russia because of his hostility to
Austria and the small states composing the Confederation.

Bismarck returned to Prussia in 1862 to become prime minister. He was appointed to the post by
Prussian King William I who hoped that Bismarck could handle a constitutional crisis. In 1849
Prussia had introduced a constitution creating a parliament that shared power with the crown in
lawmaking. However, it did not specify how Parliament and the crown should resolve fundamental
disagreements. Such a disagreement occurred in 1860 when the administration proposed a
budget including significant increases in military spending. The lower house of Parliament was
dominated by liberals who argued that this reform would further militarize Prussian society. The
real issue, however, was Parliament's desire to control Prussia's purse and eventually Prussia's
government as well. The budget was never approved. William, supported by the officer corps and
the aristocracy, refused to compromise. Efforts to resolve the dispute proved futile, and by 1862
no senior official was willing to take on the task.

Prussian liberals accepted Bismarck's appointment as prime minister. His career had shown a
tendency to inflammatory rhetoric and provocative behavior. Bismarck seemed just the man to
drive the administration into a corner from which it could not escape. Bismarck's initial
performance in office did not dispel that impression. He continued to collect taxes, justifying this
behavior by arguing that a “gap” existed in the constitution and, pending its resolution, the
machinery of government must be maintained. It was a clever idea, but no better than a
temporary solution.

SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN QUESTION

To break the deadlock, Bismarck sought to expand Prussia at the expense of its neighbors,
believing that expansion would rally most Prussians to the king and isolate the liberals. He found
an opportunity in the dispute over Schleswig-Holstein. Since the late 15th century, Schleswig-
Holstein had been controlled by the king of Denmark. As recently as 1852, the great powers had
agreed to continue this status, but in 1863 the Danish king, Christian IX, acting under pressure
from Danish nationalists, annexed Schleswig-Holstein and integrated it more closely into
Denmark.

This was a violation of international law, which provoked an outburst of nationalist rhetoric in the
German states and serious diplomatic reactions in Prussia and Austria. Bismarck feared the
Schleswig-Holstein question might become the focal point of a sustained German nationalist
movement that would strengthen liberal and parliamentary forces in Prussia. At the same time, he
saw the risk that Prussia and Austria, paralyzed by mutual suspicion, might allow the issue to
become the subject of an international conference in which the fate of the German states would
once again be determined by outsiders. Bismarck took the lead in denouncing Denmark's
behavior. He also turned to Austria and stressed the merits of Austrian-Prussian cooperation both
to preempt the German nationalists and to forestall possible action by Britain, France, and
Russia.

The Austrian foreign office was sufficiently impressed by Bismarck's arguments to issue a joint
demand with Prussia in January 1864 that Denmark restore the status quo. When Christian
refused, a joint Austrian-Prussian expeditionary force occupied Holstein, then invaded Schleswig.
The Danish army was overmatched by its much larger adversaries. Denmark's refusal to
compromise, combined with the fact that its position was probably not legal, kept the rest of
Europe from intervening. By midsummer 1864 the fighting was over.
The Prussian Parliament remained quiet during the entire affair, believing that Bismarck lacked
the skill to succeed. Instead, the liberals expected him to create the kind of disaster that would
force the government to turn to parliament out of sheer desperation. They were surprised and
impressed by the fighting power of the newly reformed Prussian army. Despite Prussia's military
success in Schleswig-Holstein, Bismarck was unable to resolve the impasse with parliament.

Austria did not have a direct interest in Schleswig-Holstein and was uncertain about what to do
with the two duchies. A minor German prince, Frederick of Augustenburg, appeared to have a
reasonable claim to be the ruler of the conquered territories, but Austria feared he would, by
virtue of geography, fall under the influence of Prussia. Accordingly, Austria was prepared to
consider Bismarck's proposal to administer the duchies directly, with Schleswig going to Prussia
and Holstein to Austria. This proposal became the Gastein Convention, signed in August 1865.
Austria expected Schleswig, with its large Danish population, to create serious domestic
problems for Prussia, problems that might tie Bismarck's hands in foreign affairs.

THE SEVEN WEEKS’ WAR

This was not the case, however; Bismarck proceeded to focus on a wider goal: forcing Austria to
relinquish its traditional influence in northern Germany. To this end, Bismarck courted Napoleon
III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. Napoleon wanted to establish France as the primary
power in Europe, but he was indecisive and lacked a clear vision of how to realize his goals for
France. Throughout 1865, Bismarck encouraged Napoleon to accept Prussian dominance in
northern Germany. In return, Bismarck hinted that Prussia would support French ambitions in
Belgium, Luxembourg, and perhaps even the Rhineland. Without French cooperation, Bismarck
suggested that Prussia would have to turn to Austria, France's traditional enemy, and Russia,
long France's rival for the position of power broker among the European great powers.

Napoleon saw Bismarck's friendship as a means of enhancing French influence at no risk.

Prussia and Austria appeared to be on a collision course. The adversaries seemed to be matched
evenly enough to produce a diplomatic and military stalemate. Napoleon saw himself as a
possible mediator between the two powers. In October 1865 he met with Bismarck at Biarritz in
southwestern France. When Bismarck returned to Berlin, he was convinced that France probably
would not oppose Prussian initiatives in the near future.

Bismarck's friendship with Napoleon was not lost on the Austrians. In January 1866 Austria
responded by permitting public demonstrations in Holstein supporting the Prince of Augustenburg
as ruler of the duchies. Bismarck promptly raised the stakes, calling in April 1866 for the creation
of a parliament of the German Confederation elected by universal male suffrage. This proposal
appeared to align conservative Prussia not only with the burgeoning German nationalist
movement in the duchies, but with liberal, democratic sentiments held in check since the late
1840s.

Austria then moved forward with a series of military and diplomatic initiatives. Austria lined up
support in the Confederation. Baden-Württemberg, Hannover, Hessen-Kassel and Bavaria, even
Saxony (Sachsen), decided with varying degrees of enthusiasm that supporting the Habsburgs
was the best way to preserve a system that Bismarck appeared willing to destroy. Austria began
moving troops towards the Prussian frontier.

The Prussian chief of the general staff, Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke, insisted that Prussia
must respond or risk being overrun. William, reluctant to risk what he called a “brother's war,”
temporized until May 3, when he ordered partial mobilization as well.

The mutual movement of troops created its own dynamic. The Austrian government saw the
military option as its best remaining chance for success. It was clear to the Austrians that
Bismarck wanted a resolution on his terms. In April Bismarck had concluded an anti-Austrian
alliance with Italy, an agreement that was good for only 90 days, largely because the Italians did
not trust Bismarck. Bismarck was willing to let Austria provoke the hostilities. On June 1, 1866,
the Habsburgs obliged by turning over the Schleswig-Holstein issue to the German
Confederation. This was a technical, but clear, violation of the Gastein Convention's terms.
Prussia declared war.

The resulting conflict, known as the Seven Weeks' War, was resolved quickly. Prussia's army
defeated its foes in a series of battles culminating on July 3 with a decisive triumph over the main
Austro-Saxon force at Königgrätz. By mid-July Prussian troops had reached Vienna.

William and his generals wanted a triumphal march into Austria's capital, but Bismarck insisted on
generous terms of peace. He had achieved Prussian dominance of northern Germany. To
humiliate Austria further meant creating a permanent, implacable rival. It also meant alarming the
rest of a Europe uncertain about what Prussia would do with its newly acquired power. Finally,
humiliating Austria would alienate elements in Germany that Bismarck wanted to conciliate.

THE NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION

Bismarck now finally had the opportunity to resolve the domestic political impasse he inherited in
1862. In the aftermath of Königgrätz, he offered Prussia's liberals a compromise. As he went
about setting up the new North German Confederation, Bismarck proposed to admit he had
governed illegally, provided parliament would agree to forgive him. Pleased with the victory over
Austria, the liberals in parliament believed their political and economic goals could best be
achieved in the context of a national state. Thus, Bismarck received from the parliament
indemnity for the years in which he governed without authority. Parliament's liberals also feared
being outflanked by Bismarck's surprising proposal for universal male suffrage in the North
German Confederation. Many liberals believed that ultimately Bismarck would be unable to
control the confederation by himself. Sooner or later, they reasoned, he would need help. Then
they would be able to move the new North German Confederation in liberal directions.

The North German Confederation included a Prussia enlarged by territorial annexations,

Hannover, and Saxony, plus a few nominally independent states. It was a constitutional system.
The conservative upper house, representing the states, had extensive control over foreign policy
and economic affairs. The lower house was elected through free and universal male suffrage by
secret ballot—the most liberal franchise in Europe. The lower house also controlled the
confederation's budget, a provision liberals had long sought.

The new confederation pursued a policy of economic freedom, congenial to the business
community. A unified criminal law code, religious freedom, federal post and telegraph services—
these and other long-standing liberal aims were put in place in a matter of months. It seemed the
confederation was well on its way to becoming a centralized nation-state on the liberal model.

Bismarck did not attempt to annex or coerce the south German states of Bavaria, Baden, and
Württemberg to join the confederation in 1866. Instead, he chose to make his new confederation
so attractive that the southern states would seek to join voluntarily. However, they kept their
distance from a system that seemed too liberal, too Protestant, and above all too Prussian.

FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

Prussia's international position was not yet secure. Austria made no secret of its desire to revise
the results of 1866, but the principal challenge came from France. Confronted with domestic
unrest and burdened by foreign-policy failures such as the French intervention in Mexico from
1864 to 1867, Napoleon's government sought new territory on the Rhine and in Belgium.
Bismarck's refusal to cooperate contributed to France's sense of decline. Some of Napoleon's
advisers began to see war as a way to improve France's stature.

Four years of tension between France and Prussia peaked in 1870, when the Spanish Parliament
offered its throne, vacant since 1868, to a member of the Catholic branch of the House of
Hohenzollern, whose Protestant head was the king of Prussia. The candidate, Prince Leopold,
had only nominal connections with Prussia. Nevertheless, Napoleon's government saw the
Hohenzollern candidacy as a threat, sandwiching France between a potentially hostile coalition
that would challenge France's position in Europe. William, who opposed the candidacy from the
beginning, responded to French initiatives by persuading his relative to withdraw.

France then overplayed its hand by asking William to forbid any future revival of the project—if he
did not, France would go to war against Prussia. Buttonholed by the French ambassador while
taking a vacation at the German resort of Bad Ems, William politely declined to make such a
commitment and sent a message to Bismarck, informing him of the exchange.

Bismarck for his part saw conflict with France as a means of rallying nationalists in Germany
under Prussian leadership and establishing Prussia as the primary power in a new European
order. He attempted a diplomatic solution, but when France refused to concede the point,
Bismarck decided that the Hohenzollern candidacy was grounds for war. He edited Williams's
message to remove all conciliatory phrasing, then released it to the press. Liberals and
nationalists in the North German Confederation, as well as in the south, insisted France be taught
a lesson.

The Germans enthusiastically supported the war effort. The Prussian army destroyed its French
opponents and captured the emperor himself at Sedan on September 2, 1870. Bismarck had
defeated his enemy so completely that he had no one with whom to negotiate. A Government of
National Defense was formed in Paris to carry on the war until mid-January of 1871, when Paris
fell to the Prussians, and the war ended.

Fearing great-power intervention if the war dragged on, Bismarck moved quickly to end the
conflict on terms most suitable to Prussia. Believing France would remain irreconcilably hostile,
he insisted on annexation of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, a 5-billion-franc indemnity, and
a victory march through Paris.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE

As the war ended, Bismarck took advantage of the military situation to transform the North
German Confederation into the German Empire. Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria saw no
alternative to accepting William as German emperor—particularly since treaties guaranteed them
a significant degree of autonomy. For Bismarck, the empire was a compromise with what he
regarded as the irresistible forces of liberalism and nationalism. The German Empire had one of
the most liberal constitutions in Europe. The government's parliament, elected by universal
suffrage, was paired with a conservative emperor, William I, and Chancellor Bismarck, who ruled
with an iron hand and was responsible only to the emperor. If Prussia could not dominate the new
German order, it could exercise supervision and control, at least as long as Otto von Bismarck
was in power. On January 18, 1871, the German Empire was formally proclaimed and William
was crowned emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, France.