6:40 am The first step, before making notes for chapters 6 - 7, is to do a short review without recourse to any notes.

Key people:

• Louis XVI
• Marie Antoinette
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Lafayette
• Talleyrand
• Turgot - Controller-General
• Vergennes - Foreign Affairs
• Necker - Controller-General
• Malesherbes
• Beaumarches
• Calonne - Controller-General
• Robespierre

Key events:

• Seven Years War 1758 - 1765 1756 - 1763
• American War of Independence 1775 - 1783
• Coronation of Louis XVI 1775 1765
• French Revolution 1789 - 1799

Key terms

• ancien regime
• Estates-General
• Farmers-General
• Parlements
• noblisse oblige

Now to compare this with my notes. I am getting better at this. It is clear to me that knowing the dates of various events is critical to understanding the sequencing and unfolding of events. It might be possible to remember the three major causes of the French Revolution by memorizing a short list but to genuinely understand this one needs to also know the key people and the roles that they played.

Now to copy my temporal table and make some additions based on chapters 6 - 7.

"The Parlements were 13 sovereign courts of law, sitting in Paris and provincial centers, each comprising a body of noble judges that, in different Parlements, numbered from 50 to 130."

They handled both criminal and civil cases and acted as censors of theatre and literature and as guardians of social and moral propriety. "they also shared with the King's bureaucrats ... administrative responsibility for provisioning cities, setting prices in times of dearth and policing markets and fairs."

The robins (the judicial nobility of the 'robe') `were intensely self-concious of their collective dignity and jealous of any attempts to encroach on their local authority.'

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indecisive and unpopular

his fiscal policies became more aggressive following each of his major wars

"Since the 1750's the tone of Parlementaire resistance to royal policy had been irate vehemence. ... it represented a concerted effort to replace the unconfined absolutism of Louis XIV with a more 'constitutional' monarchy."

"As the disputes with the Parlements over religious and tax policies at the end of his reign became more acrimonious, so the King became more adamantly absolutist."

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103

Malesherbes and Turgot were 2 of the most powerful men in France.

He was very popular.

he tried to constrain rather then enforce the authority of absolutism and supported fundamental liberties such as freedom of the press and unfair taxation

"Much of Malesherbes' urging that the King should give public demonstrations of a new candor and public-spiritedness fell on deaf ears, or was defeated by the claims of traditional decorum..."

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102

Privilege was defined as various forms of tax exemption.

Under Louis XVI "the crown's own position with regard to privilege was deeply ambiguous" On one hand it wanted to extend its control over the bureaucrats but on the other it wanted to extend the number of privileges because of the money it received.

"Privilege was not a monopoly of the nobility."

"the reasons for promotion were service, talent and merit. ... At the very heart of the French elite, then, was a capitalist nobility of immense significance to the future of the national economy."

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Venality was the sale and purchase of office. This was "more deeply and broadly rooted in France than in any other major power in Europe."

emphasized the value of the spoken word over that of the printed word and this became highly prized during the Revolution.

the Revolutionaries emulated the great Roman orators (Cicero, Senaca, Cato)

"... the costs of Vergennes global strategy policy brought on the terminal crisis of the French monarchy"

"No other European power attempted to support both a major continental army and a transcontinental navy at the same time."

"More than any inequity in a society based on priviledge, or the violent cycles of famine that visited France in the 1780's, the Revolution was occasioned by these decisions of state."

Calonne assumed that his policies would be imposed on the people rather than proposed to them (as did Necker). He also revelled in appearances and costly luxuries.

The notables began to display their independence and failed to follow Calonne's or Louis XVI's ideas, often going beyond them to more extreme measures of equality.

rather than being the tail-end of the ancien regime, they were more like the first revolutionaries

the first urban insurrection. The citizens threw tiles down on the soldiers who had been called out to maintain order.

• it signified the breakdown of royal authority
• it warned the elite beneficiaries of the disorder of the unpredictable consequences of encouraging a riot
• it delivered the initiative for further political action into the hands of younger, more radical, groups

Mounier begins to organize opinion more systematically. The assembly prepared a list of statements that:

• identified anyone who opposed them as a traitor
• the new political order should pay attention to the material grievancences of the people who had empowered it
• they appealed to the entire region to meet and prepare for their new representation

"The causes of the French Revolution were located deep within the structure of the society that preceded it."

It is at the top, rather than in any imaginary middle of French society, that the cultured roots of the revolution should be sought."

The revolution did not create French patriotism, rather it gave the patriotism an opportunity to define itself in terms of 'liberty'."

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