Browse

Social Structure

Source

Lamoignon, "The Principles of the French Monarchy" (1787)

On 19 November 1787, the King convoked the Parlement of Paris to enforce registration of an edict allowing the indebted royal treasury to borrow an additional 420 million livres. When the King appeared before the magistrates, his Keeper of the Seals, Chrétien–François de Lamoignon spoke for him.

Source

The "Session of the Scourging" (3 March 1766)

The twelve highest royal courts, known as parlements, not only heard civil and criminal suits; they also had the responsibility of discussing and registering royal edicts before their enactment.

Source

Parlement of Brittany

Particularly vocal in its resistance to the financial edicts of 1763 was the Parlement of Rennes, which had jurisdiction in the province of Brittany. A series of "remonstrances," issued by this court between 1763 and 1765, reveal the conflict between the parlementarians and the crown.

Source

Père Duchesne Idealizes the Sans–culottes

The sans–culotte [without the breeches of the wealthy] became the symbol of the committed, patriotic revolutionary everyman.

Source

Historical, Political, and Moral Essay on Revolutions, Ancient and Modern

The French novelist and essayist François–René Chateaubriand (1768–1848) was a royalist who for a time admired Napoleon. Like Burke, he denounced the revolutionary reliance on reason and advocated a return to Christian principles.

Source

Historical Essays on the Life of Marie–Antoinette, of Austria (1783)

Although by law, political power could not pass through the Queen’s body (only male heirs could succeed to the throne in France), there was great political interest in the body of Louis XVI’s Queen, Marie Antoinette, a Habsburg princess whose marriage into the Bourbon household solidified a diplo

Source

Edict of Toleration, November 1787

Calvinists had a long and tumultuous history in France. They first gained the right to worship according to their creed in 1598 when King Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes to end the wars of religion between Catholics and Calvinists.

Source

Diary of a Woman at Fifty

Born in 1770 and married to the only surviving son of one of the greatest noble families in France, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin endured humiliation, emigration, and Terror during the first part of the revolutionary decade.

an icon of a document. beneath it are the words view document.
Source

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, 26 August 1789

Once they had agreed on the necessity of drafting a declaration of rights, the deputies of the National Assembly still faced the daunting task of composing one that a majority could accept.

Source

Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from the Constitution of the Year I (1793)

The National Convention drew up this new declaration of rights to attach to the republican constitution of 1793. The constitution was ratified in a referendum, but never put into operation. It was suspended for the duration of the war and then replaced by a new constitution in 1795.