After the French and Indian War was concluded in 1763, England controlled both Canada and the thirteen original colonies of America. England also was in debt and needed to raise money to pay off bonds issued during the war with France. Parliament's point of view was that, because most of the money had been spent to defend the colonists from aggression by the French, the 13 colonies ought to help pay off the debt. Many colonists agreed in principle but felt strongly that they were entitled either to representation in Parliament or to have their colonial legislatures raise the taxes through a process of home rule.
The conservative Tories disagreed and argued that the colonies were run for the benefit of the English government that owned them. This was the basic political reason for the quarrel. The underlying cause was a feeling in America that the English were corrupt and tyrannical. Besides, many had absorbed the lessons of the Enlightenment and wanted to establish a free democracy in the New World.
It was a close run thing because only about a third of the three million Americans at the time were really in favor of war with England. Another third were in favor of a continued tie with England and another third were either neutral or wanted simply to be left alone. The political judgement of the Tories and George III was atrocious and gradually tipped the balance of opinion in the colonies towards independence.
The French played a crucial role in supporting the American war effort and, at the end, were able to disrupt British control over the North Atlantic just long enough to enable George Washington to corner the British Army at Yorktown and force them to surrender. Helping the Americans was a strong sympathy for the American cause in both England and France. Thus, the North American empire of the British lasted only twenty year (1763 to 1783).
The French monarchy emerged from the seven years war (ended 1763) deeply in debt and desperately needing revenues. This financial crisis was made worse by French involvement in the American Revolution and the government teetered on the edge of complete bankruptcy during the mid-1780's. Finall, Louis XVI called the Estates General. It had not be called into session since 1614 (before Louis XIV became the 'Sun King'). The Estates General was a tripartite body each element of which had a vote. The estates were the nobility, the clergy and the commoners. So, the nobility and the clergy could outvote the commoners even though the "Third Estate" represented 90% of the country. From the beginning the Third Estate (which had twice as many members as each of the other two) refused to meet separately. Finally, the Third Estate invited the other two to sit with it. A few nobility and clergy agreed. They then declared the new body the National Assembly. They were locked out of their usual place of meeting one day and moved to a nearby tennis court where they took the famous "Tennis Court Oath" to sit until they had given France a new constitution. The King resisted. The rest of the nobility and clergy gave in and joined the new assembly that then renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly.
The Parisians played a central role in the revolution being far more radical than their countrymen in the provinces. Fearing intervention by the Royal Army, some of the citizens of Paris decided to storm the Bastille. It was a fortress and prison and they thought that it held a cache of arms. After much bloodshed, they entered the fortress only to find few arms and few prisoners.
All throughout this period, popular disturbances occurred all over France including the burning of chateaux, the destruction of records and refusal to pay feudal dues. Finally, the aristocrats and clergy in the National Constituent Assembly rose in session and surrendered all of their special rights. Thus, feudalism ended in France. On August 27, 1989, the assembly issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. This document proclaimed that all men were created equal in rights. These rights were "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. Louis XVI hesitated signing the proclamation and a mob marched to Versailles and forced him to move into the middle of Paris.
The National Constituent Assembly made wholesale changes in the way in which the government of France was organized. The significance of these reforms went way beyond the borders of France as most of western, central and southern Europe adopted many of the reforms enacted in France much later in time.
The Assembly established itself as a unicameral (one house) legislature and France as a constitutional monarchy. Only about 50,000 men in a nation of 26 million people actually could vote for the Assembly. The exclusion of women did not go unnoticed. Olympia de Gouges, who was a major figure in the radical movement in Paris composed a Declaration of the Rights of Women that exactly paralleled the declaration of the rights of Man but added Woman whenever the document referred to men. This did not received recognition but it did become the platform for a feminist movement in the nineteenth century. The assembly abolished the ancient provinces of France and substituted departments that were supposedly more rationally configured. They established the metric system for uniform weights and measures and this has become the world standard. They suppressed the guilds. They forbid worker's associations. In short, they left the peasants and the workers to the mercy of the marketplace. This was a political revolution conducted by and for the middle classes and not an economic revolution. They transformed the Catholic Church into a branch of the secular state. This last reform aroused enormous opposition in the countryside and was to become a major plank in the even more conservative parties of the French countryside.
The King tried to flee but was recognized and brought back to Paris. The Assembly finally recognized that the chief counter-revolutionary sat on the throne of France. Marie Antoinette's brother, Leopold II of Austria and Frederick William II, King of Prussia issued the Declaration of Pillnitz. This manifesto promised to intervene militarily in France to free the King of France and re-impose the autocratic monarchy. England refused to endorse this declaration but it frightened the Assembly some more.
The Assembly declared war on Austria that was allied to Prussia. The war went badly. A group of radicals seized control of the Assembly. A large mob invaded the Tuilleries. The King and Queen escaped to the hall of the Assembly. The Assembly provided comfortable space for the monarchs but also removed them from power and, in effect, imprisoned them. The Paris Commune compelled the legislative assembly to call a national convention to write another constitution. The convention met and declared France a republic. The convention leaders were even more radical than the Girondists and were called Jacobins. The Jacobins were republicans who sought representative government. They represented the poorer people of Paris but had less support in the countryside. The convention put Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette on trial, declared them guilt of treason and beheaded both. They then proceeded to conduct a reign of terror that lasted from 1793 to 1794 and was characterized by the shedding of a lot of blood. Finally, the terror ended when it went too far and the national assembly seized control of the government back from the Jacobins and executed many of them.
By 1795, the Thermidorean Reaction (so-called after the month in which the reaction took place on the revolutionary calendar of twelve months of 30 days) had suppressed the radical elements in Paris and concluded a peace with Prussia and Spain. Napoleon Bonaparte, a son of petty nobility in Corsica which was an island in the Mediterranean Sea, defended the Thermidoreans and won a number of crucial battles in the 1793 to 1795 period. He was rewarded with rapid promotion over the heads of more senior generals. In 1797, Bonaparte defeated Austrian forces in Italy and forced them to conclude a treaty that took Austria out of the war. That left only Britain at war with France. Bonaparte hoped for more success and landed an army in Egypt in an attempt to cut British communication with its empire in India. This led to a great naval battle in which Admiral Horatio Nelson of England decisively defeated the French fleet and secured British domination of the high seas.
Napoleon was stranded with his army in Egypt. Russia and Austria seized the opportunity to attack French forces in Italy and Switzerland and this time they won. Napoleon abandoned his troops and returned to France in October, 1799. He overthrew the Directory (the group running the government for the Thermidoreans) and established himself as First Consul with very broad powers.
Restoring peace at home, Napoleon used bribery and flattery to disarm his most powerful opponents. If he could not bride, flattery or coercion, he ruthlessly used deadly force to eliminate his rivals and opponents. He suppressed the royalists. He appeased the hostility of French Catholics by concluding a concordat with Pope Pius VII (shocking his anti-clerical supporters). The concordat maintained French control of the Catholic hierarchy in France but allowed for freedom of Catholic worship and education. In 1804, he seized upon a bomb attack on his life to declare himself Emperor of France. He promulgated a rather liberal civil code for its day that was ever after called the Napoleonic Code.
Napoleon won every battle in which he participated until the disastrous defeat in Russia in 1814. As he became victorious in battle after battle, he cemented his gains by marrying off various relatives to existing royal families and by establishing puppet states that were dependent upon the French for their continued existence. There are many events of substantial political importance during this period of ten years but we do not have the time to dwell on them. Generally, Napoleon came to be seen by the royal houses of Austria, Russia, Prussia and England as a mortal threat and France as a potential hegemonic power in Europe. One by one, they drew together in self-defense. In many cases, the royal families had the enthusiastic support of the aristocracy, the clergy and the property oriented urban middle classes.
While Napoleon aspired to create an imperial family that ruled most of Europe, he based his support on the principles of the French Revolution. This was extremely threatening to the establishments all over Europe. Finally, the Russians withdrew from the 'Continental System' (an economic alliance designed to thwart English blockade of Europe) and prepared for war. Determined to eliminate the Russian threat, Napoleon organized an enormous army of 600,000 men. Two-thirds of the army was not French. The Russians had only about 160,000 men. Napoleon tried to force the Russians into a decisive battle. They declined and retreated eastward. Finally, in September 1812, Russian public opinion forced the Russian command to stand and fight. It was a stand-off with the French losing 30,000 men and the Russians 60,000. Yet, the French had not won and the Russian army continued to exist. A very bad winter came early and Napoleon could not supply his troops. Many died of frostbite and hunger and the rest were discouraged. By December, Napoleon realized that he was going to have major trouble at home and rushed back to secure his base. Most of the Napoleonic army was destroyed in its retreat from Moscow. In 1813, the most powerful coalition of forces assembled against Napoleon and, in 1814, they defeated his forces and captured Napoleon himself. He was sent into exile on the island of Elba off of the coast of Italy.
Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia formed the quadruple alliance in 1814 and held a Congress in Vienna from Sept. 1814 to November 1815. They restored the French Bourbon monarchy to the throne of France. The Alliance set up states on the northern border of France (the Netherlands which included Belgium until 1830) and added Genoa to Piedmont in the south. Prussia was given important new territories to secure Prussian dominance along the Rhine. The Holy Roman Empire was allowed to lapse. Austria was given control of most of northern Italy to prevent French expansion in that direction. Overall, the Congress of Vienna tried to re-establish the legitimacy of traditional monarchies in most of Europe.
Napoleon escaped Elba in March, 1815 and the French rose in revolt and supported him. Once again, the Grand Alliance marshaled its forces and met Napoleon at Waterloo in June 1814. The French were defeated by the Alliance. Napoleon was then exiled to Saint Helena (is a tiny island in the mid-Atlantic controlled by the English). The Quadruple Alliance was renewed in 1815 (England, Prussia, Austria and Russia). The Vienna settlement prevailed in Europe for nearly a century and was broken only in 1914 (World War I).
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