The Society of 1789
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So we left off last time with the National Constituent Assembly moving forward with its plans to nationalize the French Catholic Church. Today, that process will take another huge step forward. But the Church was not the only thing on the table in the spring and early summer of 1790. […]
Birth of the Jacobins
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. The Women’s March on Versailles fundamentally changed the course of the French Revolution. By dragging the King back to Paris, the political dynamic is about to shift dramatically. For one thing, no one was quite sure whether the King was there of his own free will or whether he was […]
The Women’s March on Versailles
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So last time we talked about the conservative-ish reaction in the National Assembly to the chaos of the Summer 1789. The Declaration of the Rights of Man had been passed, sure, but as France’s new political constitution began to take shape, the moderately conservative Monarchian, led by Jean Joseph Mounier, […]
The Rights of Man
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. On the morning of August 5, 1789, the delegates of the National Assembly woke up with a bit of a legislative hangover. The night before had turned into a raucous orgy of bold and far reaching declarations, denunciations, and renunciations. But now that it was morning and whatever the Bretton […]
The The Great Fear
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So we left off last time with Paris rising up in armed revolt and then storming the Bastille. But as I hinted at the end of last week’s episode, it was the response to this unexpected turn of events that puts the Fall of the Bastille at the center of […]
The Fall of the Bastille
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Okay, so we are back from vacation and ready to plunge into the thick chaos that was France in July 1789. Hopefully everyone downloaded the tour announcement while I was gone, and if you didn’t, please go check it out. There is a brand new American Revolutions Tour and another […]
The Tennis Court Oath
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. So here we are, ten episodes into this thing, and we’re finally getting to the start of the French Revolution. With the convening of the Estates General, and then the immediate grinding to a halt of the Estates General, events would begin to slip out of everyone’s control. But those […]
What is the Third Estate
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. We left off last time with the de facto bankruptcy of the French monarchy in August 1788. The short term consequences of this bankruptcy was that it forced Principal Minister Brienne to suspend his attempts at financial and judicial reform, officially call for the convening of the Estates General, and […]