Movement that shook France between 1787 and 1799, reaching its first climax in 1789, and ended the ancien régime .
Causes included the loss of peasant support for the feudal system, broad acceptance of the reformist writings of the philosophes , an expanding bourgeoisie that was excluded from political power, a fiscal crisis worsened by participation in the American Revolution , and crop failures in 1788. The efforts of the regime in 1787 to increase taxes levied on the privileged classes initiated a crisis. In response, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General , made up of clergy, nobility, and the Third Estate (commoners), in 1789. Trying to pass reforms, it swore the Tennis Court Oath not to disperse until France had a new constitution. The king grudgingly concurred in the formation of the National Assembly , but rumours of an "aristocratic conspiracy" led to the Great Fear of July 1789, and Parisians seized the Bastille on July 14. The assembly drafted a new constitution that introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen , proclaiming liberty, equality, and fraternity. The Constitution of 1791 also established a short-lived constitutional monarchy. The assembly nationalized church lands to pay off the public debt and reorganized the church (see Civil Constitution of the Clergy ). The king tried to flee the country but was apprehended at Varennes. France, newly nationalistic, declared war on Austria and Prussia in 1792, beginning the French Revolutionary Wars . Revolutionaries imprisoned the royal family and massacred nobles and clergy at the Tuileries in 1792. A new assembly, the National Convention
divided between Girondins and the extremist Montagnards
abolished the monarchy and established the First Republic in September 1792. Louis XVI was judged by the National Convention and executed for treason on Jan. 21, 1793. The Montagnards seized power and adopted radical economic and social policies that provoked violent reactions, including the Wars of the Vendée and citizen revolts. Opposition was broken by the Reign of Terror . Military victories in 1794 brought a change in the public mood, and Maximilien Robespierre was overthrown in the Convention on 9 Thermidor, year II (in 1794 in the French republican calendar ), and executed the next day (see Thermidorian Reaction ). Royalists tried to seize power in Paris but were crushed by Napoleon on 13 Vendémaire, year IV (in 1795). A new constitution placed executive power in a Directory of five members. The war and schisms in the Directory led to disputes that were settled by coups d'état, chiefly those of 18 Fructidor , Year V (in 1797), and 1819 Brumaire , Year VIII (in 1799), in which Napoleon abolished the Directory and declared himself leader of France. See also Committee of Public Safety ; Constitution of 1795 ; Constitution of the Year VIII ; Charlotte Corday ; Cordeliers Club ; Georges J. Danton ; Feuillants Club ; Jacobin Club ; J.-P. Marat ; Marie-Antoinette ; Louis de Saint-Just ; E.-J. Sieyès.