Monday, August 8, 2011

The French Revolution

When Britain's Thirteen colonies were fighting for freedom ...all was well in France when William Locke a philosopher in Britain wrote a little pamphlet called rights of man. This changed many French citizen minds about having a monarchy. France's main job is agriculture and when a huge hailstorm struck All the agriculture died and now the French citizens were starving and a huge famine spread. There was no back-up food and all the other food was with the king and queen and all the other people in the royal hierarchy, and these guys didn't even care about what was happening. They had their royal feasts and enjoyed spending their wealth. The citizens then asked the King for a meeting that they could do in the royal palace the king Louis 16th agreed and the citizens on June 20th came to the palace and the king locked the door and did not let them in...so they went to an indoor tennis court and took and oath. This was called the Tennis Court Oath . Then the French stormed Bastille in July 14th 1789 and got weapons from there. Now the king could not threat them with his soldiers. The king now decided not to get into the French people's way cause he saw the writing the walls and when ever he said something it lead to even worse things. The national assembly decided to write a constitution after what the Americans did in their will of freedom. And by 1790 they did their version of the declaration of independence which is the rights of man. Now that all the citizens were hungry and waiting for their constitution a lot of pheasant women did a march up to Versailles and demanded bread cause that was the part of the French's staple diet and these women were armed. The women also demanded that King Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette moved to Paris. And they were able to get their demands too. Now the king and queen couldn't hoard grain anymore. Rumors spread that King Louis-xvi was showing disrespect to the new assembly. Remember a lot of this was caused by hunger. Now many people are not liking this revolution and are plotting against each other and they think i am just gonna grab all my money and everything i can and get out of this country. This is called nobility. Now in 1791 this idea popped into the Monarch's but they didn't trust great Britain. A general taking pity on the monarchs told them to come to his estate. So the King and Queen dressed as servants and made their servants dress as nobilities too make the monarch's servants the targets. But eventually people caught the monarchs and took them back to Paris. Now you can imagine people did not like kings or even the idea of having a king and these people were called jacobins. After the king and queen got back to Paris they were like what is the point of even having a king or queen why cant we form a republic (republics don't have a king or queen) the assembly were writing a constitution that gives power to a king so the king and queen want a republic. The fact that king Louis was running away was a sign that he left the thrown. So the king and queen went to a park called the Champ de Mars where they started taking signatures of people who don't want a king or queen. But then things went wrong and troops were sent in to calm people down and then the people where throwing rocks at people and the troops started firing into the air and some of them lost their cool and fired into the crowd! And eventually 50 people died. This was called the massacre of Champ de Mars. But still now people where starving and everyone where suspicious of the fact that the King and Queen were trying to come back to power. And in the Holy Roman empire the most dominant was Austria which was ruled by Leopold the II and he was give the name Holy emperor of Rome. Leopold the II wan also Mary Antoinette's brother! And Fredrick William the II of another Germanic state made the deceleration of Pillnitz which is a declaration to bring the French monarchy back in power.