David's Paintings (and some other things)

Who started the French Revolution?

The Nobility?

• Nobility
• Really?!?!

•  First to revolt

But why did they revolt?

• They were used to Special privileges
• They don't want taxes because they've never had them before.

But there was a compromise:

• If they are taxed, they say where the money goes

This seems unprecedented for France

• Where did they get the idea that nobility could control finances of state?
• England's Parliament

So when did Nobility go from being hunted to the hunter.

• They address their own unhappiness with the government (the monarch) and then get associated with the problem

How is French Revolution about money if its slogan is "Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality?"

• Taxes insanely high but going to all the wrong places:
• 50% to debts
• 25% to military
• 6% to the king
• About 20% to run all the rest of the functions of the government
• All the money was helping no one

Peasants' response to where the $$ was going

• Who did the government owe?
• Private creditors --> own citizens

Why is this an ISSUE?

• Economic problem -- When government borrows money from own country, it makes it harder for citizens to borrow (crowds out citizens)

• Problem with bankruptcy
• It ruins credibility
• Creditors are out of money too

What the king says when people tell him he's bankrupt

• Why the government could not avoid bankruptcy
• Government had no tricks to manipulate economy or lower debt
• No central bank
• No paper currency
• No means of creating credit

• What other ways to explain the French Revolution 
• Other than just the 3rd Estate vs the 1st and 2nd Estates
• Many similarities between the nobles and bourgeois (middle-class)
• Both have factions -- conflict of interest (conservatives vs. liberals)
• Parallel social ladders

What the Estates wished they could say to each other

How did the Estates General change into the National Assembly?

• Third estate did not like separation of three Estates 
• Voting by majority among the three Estates almost always worked against the Third Estate
• Wanted single body to have fairer representation for the 3rd Estate 
• AKA National Assembly

• Oath of the Tennis Courts?
• The people of the National Assembly refused to end the meeting until they had made a proper constitution

Being stuck in the Tennis Courts for days

If the constitution was being made, why were the peasants revolting?

• Those representing Third Estate did NOT represent everyone in the Estate

Revolt of the poor connected with the Tennis Courts?

• Different 
• Peasants were afraid of being manipulated by landowners and the king.
• The peasants wanted someone to fix their economic issues and someone to blame
• Educated cared more about symbolic issues rather than basic food.
• The rich did not care about poor

• Both events were born from dissatisfaction but had different motivations

said the Peasants

The Great Fear?

• A violent way to get rid of feudalism in an effort to replace it with constitutional monarchy

• Now for the good part: Jacques-Louis David
• 1) 



Oath of the Tennis Court

• 
  2) 



Oath of the Horatii

• 
  3) 



Death of Socrates

• 
  4) 



Death of Marat

• 
  5)



 Napoleon Crossing the Saint Bernard