In June , the Jacobins seized control of the National Convention from the more moderate Girondins and instituted a series of radical measures, including the establishment of a new calendar and the eradication of Christianity. They also unleashed the bloody Reign of Terror la Terreur , a month period in which suspected enemies of the revolution were guillotined by the thousands.
Many of the killings were carried out under orders from Robespierre, who dominated the draconian Committee of Public Safety until his own execution on July 28, Executive power would lie in the hands of a five-member Directory Directoire appointed by parliament.
Royalists and Jacobins protested the new regime but were swiftly silenced by the army, now led by a young and successful general named Napoleon Bonaparte. By the late s, the directors relied almost entirely on the military to maintain their authority and had ceded much of their power to the generals in the field.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Fact: The key meeting to plan the French Revolution took place on a tennis court. Tired of being The Louisiana city of New Orleans still retains much of its French-infused heritage, and The young couple soon came to symbolize all of the excesses of the reviled French monarchy, and Marie Antoinette herself became the target of a great deal When American colonists won independence from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, the French, who participated in the war themselves, were both close allies and key participants.
Several years after the revolt in America, French reformers faced political, social and The Russian Revolution of was one of the most explosive political events of the twentieth century.
The violent revolution marked the end of the Romanov dynasty and centuries of Russian Imperial rule. During the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks, led by leftist In that time, he transformed the monarchy, ushered in a golden age of art and literature, presided over a dazzling royal court at On January 21, , the king was executed. The queen and thousands more followed him to the guillotine.
A month later, Maximilien Robespierre, the austere, moralizing leader of the French government, vowed to save the Republic from its enemies at any cost. The Revolution turned into the Terror. Wanting to make his voice heard, Bonaparte wrote in support of Robespierre. He hated the Terror, but he hated chaos even more. It is necessary to suspend liberties in the name of liberty, in order to save liberty.
By , Napoleon got himself elected as the lieutenant colonel of the National Guard. But there was a problem. Napoleon and the Bonaparte family clashed with Pasquale Paoli, the leading Corsican politician. Paoli had led independent Corsica back in the day, from to They were more tightly allied with the pro-French factions, and Paoli increasingly resented and mistrusted France.
The politics were extremely messy, but a couple of points stand out. Watch it now, Wondrium. First, Paoli broke with France and kicked out the Bonapartes. He targeted them as enemies, pro-French, and anti-Corsican. In response, Napoleon packed up his mother, his three sisters, and three of his brothers. They fled as refugees across the Mediterranean to southern France to make a new start. A second key point stands out: Napoleon came of age politically in Corsican politics.
After all, he was only 20 in He was headlong in his approach and he underestimated resistance to radical, revolutionary reforms. But then he grew savvier, more cynical, and more pragmatic. Learn more about the famous Corsican who would one day crown himself emperor of France, Young Napolean. One more point on the Corsican experience. Some historians see his flight from Corsica as the moment when Bonaparte became French.
But in a way, this moment cemented his status as an outsider. This status as an outsider drove him and enabled him to reinvent himself continuously, and so strikingly, as an outsider who could become more than French.
He would later claim, with stunning success, that as a self-created outsider, he stood above politics. By chance, he happened to be in Paris in the summer of and witnessed the August 10 uprising and the fall of the king. An old classmate who was with him that day recounted that Bonaparte walked the streets, angry at the violence of the crowd.
He became a Jacobin and a backer of Robespierre. In , he wrote a pro-Jacobin pamphlet attacking the Federalists of Marseille. Learn more about how Napoleon seized power in France in What appealed to him about the French Revolution? Its energy and its forcefulness; its ideology of possibility; the toughness and hardcore style of the Jacobins. The Revolution glorified war and honored successful soldiers, but it also made it possible, as never before, for a bold soldier to rise through the ranks based on merit.
Lots of elite officers had emigrated, leaving openings in the officer corps. The army had a new structure—more open and egalitarian. In the fall of , Napoleon got his chance to make his name in this new system. On the Mediterranean coast sat the town of Toulon. In August , the inhabitants had surrendered the town to the British. The French then laid siege to Toulon and its British occupiers. Napoleon had the backing of a Corsican patron who had power, so he was put in charge of the artillery of the French siege of Toulon.
0コメント