Bonjour Bloggers!

What is the deal with the women?

• In Paris, great numbers of women worked for wages within the putting out system. Yet, after the fall of the Bastille, which prompted many nobles to leave Versailles for foreign lands, France experienced a decrease in the demand for luxuries, and increase in unemployment and hunger among the peasants ...yet again.

• so....In October 1789, once the feudal privileges had been abolished and Louis 16 refused to the sign the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the hangry Parisian crowds, consisting mainly of women, marched on Versailles to confront their king and demand bread (they thought Marie Antoinette had a secret grain stash somewhere at Versailles)

• The king promised the crowd grain and approved the revolutionary legislation of the National Assembly. The crowd then removed the king from Versailles and took him to Paris, shifting France’s political capital from aristocratic Versailles to revolutionary Paris (foreshadowing the breakdown of the aristocracy and rise of a new revolutionary republic).
• In Paris, the king remained the head of the state, while the national assembly maintained all lawmaking power. New laws broadened women’s independence in their new abilities to: seek divorce, inherit property, and obtain financial support from the fathers of their illegitimate children.

• Of course, during the time most believed women were to remain in the domestic sphere as (1) their charms could pollute political life and (2) their presence in the home and absence from politics would help create civic virtue

• Mary Wollstonecraft set high standards for women’s behavior and achievement, she advocated coeducation, and believed women’s entrance into politics would be mutually beneficial for the two sexes which “mutually corrupt and improve each other”.
• Once the Republic, sans culottes, and Robespierre had gained power and attempted to secularize French life, the rural women of France worked to defend culture and religion, they brought back the catholic church.

Short Summary of the Saddening Second Revolution (a Perversion of the Ideals that originally Catalyzed the French revolution):

• First came the fall of the monarchy with the rapid radicalization of the revolution (note the assonance going on there) with Louis’ imprisonment and the September massacres.
• Next, France was proclaimed a republic in September 1729, with a new revolutionary calendar and democratic festivals (reflects shift in allegiance from the religious to the secular).
• The convention consisted mostly of republican members of the Jacobin club (political club of 3rd estate deputies influenced by Rousseau), but was split between the more conservative Girondists and more radical Mountain led by our good friend Robespierre.

• They convict Louis 16 of treason, and he meets the guillotine.
• France then declares war on other European countries, including Britain and Holland, leading to an unending saga of “coalitions” of enemies.
• The sans culottes, the laboring poor, emerge as a major force. Their interests were mainly economic and they were demanding radical political action to guarantee their bread—> the Mountain joins with this group to engineer a popular uprising handing all power over to the Mountain and catalyzing Robespierre’s creation of the Committee of Public Safety.
• This dictatorial, 1984-esque government also known as “the terror” (think planned economy, draft, unfair trials for enemies of the state) provoked the peasants yet again.

International Involvement:

Why were other leaders foes to the republic of France? 

France is stressing them out

• These leaders, including Leopoldo II of the HRE and King William Frederick of Prussia worried about the French republic becoming too strong and spreading its revolutionary ideas throughout Europe.

Who wanted war and why:

• the republic wanted war to spread its ideals; in fact, the war was often viewed as “a crusade for secular theology”. Also, the republic wanted war for its beneficial side effect of unifying the people.
• the people, with common language and tradition reinforced by popular sovereignty and democracy were pro-war, stirred by common loyalty.
• Louis wanted war because if France lost, the European rulers would likely restore him to his throne as promised in the Declaration of Pillnitz, issued by Austria and Prussia.

us trying to figure out why Louis supported the war

So… is Louis’ execution when they jump the shark?
Or…the split of the national convention and subsequent creation of the Committee of Public Safety?

• “But as the essence of the republic or of democracy is equality, it follows that the love of country necessarily includes the love of equality.”~ Robespierre, as he makes Republic the religion of the state-couldn’t this sound religious, if you replaced republic, country and equality with church, god, and faith?
• “Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny.” ~ Robespierre, confused, in  need of Caroline for definitions of the above terms and Franny for an exact summary of the initial intent of the French Revolution

• “Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.”
• ― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities