The French Revolution.Napoleon

France 1788/89

• Ruler: Louis XVI.• State bankruptcy• Intervention by elites, esp.

Nobility, enforce calling of Etats Generales

• Social crisis: rising bread prices, interacts with financial crisis of state

• Etats Generales: clergy, nobility, commoners

• Commoners leave Etats Generales, form „National Assembly“ (June 1789), create constitution

The Revolution

• „National Assembly“

• 14.7.1789 storm on Bastille

• Creation of revolutionary army

• Louis XVI. accepts constitutional monarchy

• New constitution: abolition of privileges, „liberté, fraternité, egalité“

• Rights of Man and the Citizen

The Constitutional

Monarchy

• Fear of restoration of old regime

• Notion of counter-revolutionary conspiracy by foreign powers

• 1791 King tries to escape from France, captured

• After end of Russian-Turkish war 1792 increasing foreign interest in French affairs

Reactions of the

Revolutionaries

• Increasing republican movement

• Execution of the King 1793

• 1792 declaration of war on Austria, later on Britain, Dutch Rep., Spain

• Coalition Wars (until 1815)

• Jacobin Terror, revolution loses legitimacy

Military Dictatorship

• Ongoing warfare: defeats of Dutch, Prussia, Spain, invasion to Italy 1796, Egypt 1798

• Propaganda: export values of revolution

• Militarization of French society, strengthens authority of army

• 1799: coup d‘état by General Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon

• 1799 Consule, 1802 Consul for life, 1804 Emperor

• Efficient government: reorganisation of French administration, Code Civil

• Defeats Austria, Britain (1801/03), loses naval war (Trafalgar 1805), defeats Prussia 1806 (end of HRE), Russia 1807

• Treaty of Tilsit 1807: French hegemony accepted

Napoleon‘s Europe

Napoleon‘s Decline

• Overstretching French potential by invading Russia 1812

• French defeat against coalition of Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia

• October 1813: Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, allied „Liberation Wars“

• 1814 invasion of Paris, Napoleon exiled to Elba

• 1815 returns for 100 days, defeated at Waterloo

• Exiled to St. Helena, dies 1821

• 1815: Congress of Vienna