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France in Revolution 1774–1799

France in Revolution 1774-1799 is Edexcel A Level History Paper 2, option 2C.1. It runs from the financial crisis of Louis XVI's monarchy through the Estates-General, the fall of the Bastille, the failure of constitutional monarchy, the Terror and Thermidor to the Directory and Napoleon Bonaparte's coup of Brumaire. Every section is written for A Level: precise, argued and alert to how historians disagree.

The Edexcel paper has two sections: Section A asks how the historian can use two sources together to investigate an enquiry, and Section B asks you to argue a judgement across the period ('How far do you agree...?'). Practice is built around one paragraph at a time, so you can rehearse the skill without writing a full essay each time.

A question you will meetHow far do you agree that the financial crisis was the main reason the monarchy fell in 1792?

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The Origins of Revolution

1774-1789

Why did the strongest monarchy in Europe run out of money, authority and consent?

The France Louis XVI Inherited

• Absolutism in theory and in practice
• The three estates: privilege, exemption and status
• The rural economy, the peasantry and seigneurial dues
• Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the court at Versailles

The Financial Crisis, 1774-1788

• Debt, the tax system and the cost of war
• Turgot and Necker: reform attempted and abandoned, 1774-1781
• Calonne and the Assembly of Notables, 1786-1787
• Brienne, the parlements and the revolt of the nobility, 1787-1788

Ideas, Print and Public Opinion

• The Enlightenment and the philosophes
• Print, pamphlets, salons and the public sphere
• The American war and its French consequences

The Revolution of 1789

• The cahiers de doleances and the Estates-General
• From Third Estate to National Assembly: the Tennis Court Oath
• The Bastille, the Great Fear and the August Decrees
• The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the October Days

Revolution and the Failure of Constitutional Monarchy

1789-1793

A kingdom rebuilt on paper, and a king who would not live inside it.

Remaking France, 1789-1791

• Administrative and legal reconstruction: departments, courts and careers open to talent
• Church lands, the assignat and the revolutionary economy
• The Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the oath of 1791
• The Constitution of 1791: active and passive citizens

The King and the Revolution

• The political clubs and the revolutionary press: Jacobins, Cordeliers and Feuillants
• The Flight to Varennes, June 1791
• The Champ de Mars and the split among the patriots

War and the Fall of the Monarchy, 1791-1793

• The drift to war: Brissot, the emigres and the Girondin gamble
• War, the Brunswick Manifesto and the journee of 10 August 1792
• The September Massacres and the election of the Convention
• The trial and execution of Louis XVI

Enemies of the Republic, 1793

• The Vendee and the federalist revolt
• Girondins against Montagnards: the purge of June 1793

The Terror and the Republic of Year II

1793-1795

Emergency rule until the peace, and the problem of deciding when the emergency has ended.

Government by Emergency, 1793

• The sans-culottes and the sections of Paris
• The Constitution of 1793 and the journees of September
• The Committee of Public Safety and revolutionary government
• The Law of Suspects and the Revolutionary Tribunal

The Terror in Practice

• The Maximum, the revolutionary armies and the controlled economy
• The Terror in the provinces: Lyon, Nantes and the Vendee
• De-christianisation and the revolutionary calendar

Virtue and Faction, 1794

• The destruction of the factions: Hebertists and Dantonists
• The Ventose decrees and the social programme of Year II
• Robespierre, virtue and the Cult of the Supreme Being
• The Law of 22 Prairial and the Great Terror

Thermidor and Reaction, 1794-1795

• The fall of Robespierre: 9 Thermidor Year II
• The Thermidorian reaction and the white terror
• Germinal, Prairial and the Constitution of the Year III

From Directory to Brumaire

1795-1799

A republic built to prevent another Robespierre, and what it had to break to keep itself alive.

The Republic of the Year III, 1795-1796

• The Constitution of the Year III and the Two Thirds Decree
• Vendemiaire and the soldier in politics
• The Directory at work: five directors and two councils
• Babeuf and the Conspiracy of the Equals

Money, Belief and Order under the Directory

• The death of the assignat and the return to coin
• Ramel, the two thirds bankruptcy and the search for solvency
• Religion after the Terror: schism, Theophilanthropy and the decadi
• Brigandage, chouannerie and the reach of the Republic

Government by Coup, 1797-1799

• The royalist revival and the elections of 1797
• Fructidor and the purge of the councils
• Floreal, Prairial and the collapse of constitutional politics

War, Bonaparte and Brumaire

• Italy, Campo Formio and the making of a general
• Egypt, the Second Coalition and the crisis of 1799
• Brumaire and the Constitution of the Year VIII

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