In the late 1700s, the King of France, Louis XVI, ruled with absolute power over his people.
This was a country in which the rich powerful aristocracy and the church enjoyed endless privileges while the poor worked to keep them in luxury.
Louis, like the monarchs before him, had spent vast fortunes on foreign wars but he hadn’t noticed the revolution brewing on his doorstep.
France was almost bankrupt but the people who mostly had the money - the nobility and the church – mostly didn’t pay tax, and so in desperation, Louis summoned representatives of the common people of France to help him.
Big mistake because for the first time, the seething and put-upon majority had a voice.
In the summer of 1789, simmering anger and resentment exploded into full-blown class war on the streets of Paris.
On the 14th of July hundreds marched on a hated symbol of royal power, a fortress and prison called the Bastille.
The Bastille had just seven prisoners inside, none political.
The crowd really wanted its store of gunpowder.
The besiegers cut off the governor’s head with a pocket knife, and paraded it through the streets. This was much more than simply a mob. The French Revolution would be led by shopkeepers, journalists and lawyers. For the first time the citizens took control and formed their own government.
The king’s powers were stripped away and he was ordered not to leave Paris.
The leaders of this popular revolt had genuinely revolutionary ideas. Very quickly they abolished all the privileges of the aristocracy. They insisted on fair taxes and they took on the incredibly wealthy and powerful Catholic church. Above all, they declared the rights of man, the equality of all citizens, their right to an elected government, free speech and fair courts.
These were the ideals of the early French Revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Louis XVI faced a clear choice.
Could he accept equality and liberty for all, or would he fight to keep absolute power?
His position wasn’t hopeless.
France was surrounded by other absolute rulers with armies who might come to his rescue.
Louis decided to escape with his spectacularly unpopular queen, Marie Antoinette.
On the night of the 21st June 1791, the royal family sneaked away from Paris disguised – not very well – as servants, and they fled for the border.
It should have been easy.
This was a world where few faces were recognisable.
SOLDIER:
Vos papiers, monsieur? Merci.
[Your papers, sir? Thank you]
Andrew:
But just forty miles from the border, a local postmaster who’d served in the royal cavalry recognised the queen.
POSTMASTER:
Attendez un instant. Mais c’est la Reine! C’est la Reine! C’est la Reine! Et regardez, c’est le Roi! Regards, c’est le Roi!
[Wait a moment. But it’s the Queen! It’s the Queen! It’s the Queen! And look, it’s the King. Look, it’s the King!]
Andrew:
He checked his money and there was the king’s face, on a banknote.
POSTMASTER:
C’est le Roi, c’est le Roi et la Reine.
[It’s the King, it’s the King and the Queen]
Andrew:
The king and his family were taken back to Paris in disgrace.
The shift from absolute power to absolute irrelevance was complete. From now on, the king was a pathetic figure. In September 1792, France declared herself a republic and that winter, Louis was put on trial for treason. As to the result, there was never any doubt.
On January 21st 1793, at 9 o‘clock in the morning, Louis XVI was driven through the streets of Paris – to meet his sharpest critic so far.
The guillotine had only been at work here for nine months. It was itself a product of the ideals of the revolution: humane, efficient and fast. It was promoted, not invented, by Dr Joseph Guillotine.
“Now with my machine”, he said, “I can cut off your head in the twinkling of an eye and you never feel it.”
It was also supremely democratic, killing both commoners and nobility in just the same way.
Now this democratic killing machine was about to slice away a thousand years of French monarchy.
Louis may have been born to be a king but he was about to die as a criminal. He announced his innocence and he forgave his enemies.
LOUIS:
Je meurs innocent de tous les crimes qu’on m’impute et je pardonne les auteurs de ma mort et je prie Dieu que le sang que vous allez verser ne retombe pas sur la France.
[I die innocent of all the crimes of which I am accused, and I pardon those who bring about my death, and I pray that the blood you are about to shed may never be required of France.]
Andrew:
But he could have saved his breath.
The execution of Louis XVI horrified the monarchies of Europe, and soon France was encircled by hostile armies.
At home, food prices soared, the mob rioted and in the Assembly, the factions fought each other.
The moderates sat on the right hand side of the chamber, and the extremists on the left which is where today we get our words for left and right from in politics.
Finally, in the summer of 1793, the extreme Jacobin faction seized control.
The Revolution descended into terror. It was driven by a naïve idea that mankind could start again – and slice its way to a better world. The extremists turned the high ideals of the Revolution into a weapon, to destroy their enemies. One lot of revolutionaries denounced the next. Instead of the reign of reason, it felt like the reign of hysteria and paranoia.
All around Paris, people were waiting for the knock on the door and the streets of the city ran with blood.
It’s thought that forty thousand people died in what became known simply as “the terror”.
Finally, in 1799, the army seized control of the country. The leader was an upstart general called Napoleon Bonaparte. His ambition: limitless. In 1804, he invited the Pope to anoint him Emperor of France in an extravagant ceremony in Notre Dame cathedral.
Napoleon left the Pope waiting in the cold for several hours, before crowning himself. He would bow to no one. After all the high ideals, the message was clear: absolute power was back.
With the crowning of Napoleon, the Revolution was over.
The world has seen many revolutions since then and they’ve often followed just the same pattern: idealism, then extremism.
The revolution starts to eat its own children until finally in exhaustion, power lands in the hands of a military hard man.
And yet, despite that ghastly cycle, the revolutions keep coming, often driven by just the same ideals as that first revolution, made and then killed by the people of Paris.
Video summary
Andrew Marr tells the story of the French Revolution.
He explores the causes and events, Louis XVI’s failed escape and execution and Napoleon’s ascent to power.
Warning: There are some violent scenes of execution and riot.
This clip is from the series: Andrew Marr's History of the World.
Teacher Notes
Before viewing this clip the teacher could prepare a check-list of key points for students.
This might be given before the viewing, and might be given to students as a set of separate cards for them to re-sequence in pairs to allow discussion and review.
Students could plan and create a comic book narration of the events of the French Revolution.
Students could be asked to note the causes of the French Revolution and the aims of its proponents.
Pausing at 3 minutes 8 seconds, students could recall these factors and comment on how just the cause of revolution seems to have been.
In the remainder of the extract students might be asked to record the key events of the revolution and its aftermath.
Students could be asked to comment on how successful the revolution was with reference to the causes and aims identified at the beginning.
For more challenging discussions students might assess how far they agree with the narrator's summary of revolutions from 9 minutes 37 seconds to the end.
This clip will be relevant for teaching History at KS3 and KS4/GCSE in England, Northern Ireland and National 5 and Higher in Scotland.
This topic appears in OCR, AQA, in England and CCEA GCSE in Northern Ireland and SQA Scotland.
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