The French Revolution was a 10-year struggle that was marred with bloodshed aimed at improving the quality of life of the French people. It began in 1789 and ended late in the 1790s when Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état and appointed himself France’s “first consul”. The revolution was triggered by the blatant disregard of the monarch to formulate economic policies that were favorable to the people.
The French people became discontent with the way King Louis XVI and even his predecessor extravagantly spent depleting the royal coffers almost to the point of bankruptcy. Moreover, while King Louis XVI lived lavishly the people experienced the worst two decades of their lives; their farms had poor yields, they experienced drought, cattle disease and to top it all, the prices of bread skyrocketed making life unbearable for the peasants and the urban poor.
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Over the years, since 1614, the demography of France had considerably changed with the non-aristocratic members of the Third Estate representing 98% of the population. Despite this glaring fact, this section of the population could still be outvoted by the nobles; a situation that sparked a lot of anger among the people and led to the third estate demanding for equal representation. This anger led to the third estate meeting and forming what they called the national assembly. Consequently, a wave of revolutionary fervor and violence known as the Great fear (La Grande peur) swept over France. Rioters stormed the Bastille fortress with an aim of securing gunpowder and weapons while the people in the countryside looted and burnt the homes that belonged to tax collectors, landlords and the seigniorial elite. Furthermore, the nobles left the country en masse and this led to the National constituent assembly abolishing feudalism.
The national assembly drafted a constitution; a process that proved quite difficult. The constitution established a constitutional monarch and gave the king royal veto powers. This constitution was heavily fought by some people who did not agree with it. This led to the beginning of war that brought a lot of bloodshed until the assembly was replaced by the National convention that abolished the monarchy and established the French republic. The King and the queen were condemned to death for crimes against state which ushered France into one of its most violent phase ever. Suspected anti-revolutionists were killed in the thousands under orders of one Robespierre who also met the same fate later on in 1794. In 1975, the national convention took a more moderate approach and established a bicameral legislature in which executive power lied on a five-member directory. However, their four-year reign was riddled with financial crisis, inefficiency, discontent from the people and corruption.
In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d’état abolishing the unpopular directory and established himself as the “first consul”. The French revolution therefore transformed the French political system but was marred with a lot of bloodshed.
