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French Revolution
An Analysis of the Radical Phase of the French Revolution
The French Revolution was almost extinguished in 1792. The economic reforms prompted by the Cahier of the Third Estate of Dourdan (29 March 1789) had only appeared to benefit the middle and upper classes of the Third Estate. Meanwhile, fearing the spread of revolt throughout all Europe, Prussian and Austrian forces were marching towards Paris to cut it off at its source. However, the determination of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to put down the Revolution and flee the city combined with the approaching army of her brother, Leopold II, sparked a chain of events that pushed the Revolution into a radical phase. This paper will examine the causes of that radical phase, what it accomplished, and what role the Reign of Terror played in the Revolution.
Several personages had influenced Western philosophy prior to the outbreak of the Revolution. They ranged from Immanuel Kant to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and the writings of the Marquis de Sade. From Kant and such claims as, "Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity," (410) the Revolution found its foothold. Yet, its radical elements (embodied by Robespierre and Danton) would find inspiration in Rousseau, who made claims such as, "Nature, not man, is [our] schoolmaster" (432). Nature, would be defined, however, by people like de Sade, who judged man's nature to be brutal, bloodthirsty, and animalistic (Jones 50).
When a French mob attacked the Royal Palace, and Louis "fled to the Legislative Assembly for asylum," the radical phase had begun. The lower classes were frustrated with the...
The Girondists had had little success in keeping up the Revolution. By declaring war on virtually all of Europe, Paris was soon at war with itself. The Jacobins, a political club and "strict equalitarians" had risen to power in 1791, calling for a new convention to "dismantle the constitution" (Hooker). The new convention also saw the rise of the most radical group, the sans culottes:
The sans-culottes (so named because they didn't wear upper class breeches or culottes ) were the common people of Paris…They, like the poor, were among the prominent losers of the first, more moderate revolution…[They] saw their livelihoods disappearing and inflation driving them to bare subsistence. Of all the groups of France, it is the hopes, dreams, and views of the sans-culottes that drove the radical revolution from 1792 to 1794. (Hooker)
It was the desire of the sans culottes and the more radical Jacobins to see monarchy abolished and property made communal. Indeed, the Paris municipal government would be sacked and redubbed the Paris Commune. From there, the radicals would demand that the king and queen be given to them for punishment.
The radical phase of the Revolution accomplished several things: 1) it effected the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as well as thousands of other "criminals" who were condemned as counter-revolutionaries; 2) it effected the dissemination of radical propaganda from men like Robespierre, the Marquis de Sade, to women like Mary Wollstonecraft, who had…
Works Cited
Hooker, Richard. "Radical Revolution." Revolution and After: Tragedies and Farce. 6
June 1999. Web. 29 Mar 2011.
Jones, E. Michael. Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2000.
Kant, Immanuel. "What is Enlightenment?" Sources of the Western Tradition. Ed.
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