The collapse of Bourbon monarchy, popular mobilisation, terror and the remaking of political citizenship.
The French Revolution began in a fiscal and political crisis in 1789 and destroyed the institutions of Bourbon absolute monarchy. It opened radical arguments about rights, sovereignty and citizenship while generating civil war, terror and international conflict.
No single social class or ideology controlled the whole process. Popular action, war and counter-revolution repeatedly changed what revolution meant.
War debt, unequal taxation and disputes over representation forced Louis XVI to summon the Estates-General. The Third Estate declared a National Assembly.
The fall of the Bastille, rural revolt and October Days accelerated change. Declarations ended legal privilege and defined rights while excluding many women, enslaved people and colonial subjects.
War and the king's overthrow produced a republic. Emergency government and political violence intensified under the Terror before Thermidor and the Directory.
Enslaved people in Saint-Domingue made universal rights revolutionary in ways metropolitan legislators did not control. European war spread institutions and conquest together.
The Brumaire coup ended the Directory in 1799. Napoleon consolidated property and legal reforms while replacing republican politics with authoritarian rule.
A fiscal crisis opened a constitutional conflict.
Parisian crowds seized the fortress and weapons.
The Assembly proclaimed natural and political rights.
Monarchy was abolished during war.
Regicide intensified conflict.
Emergency government and executions peaked.
Napoleon Bonaparte seized power.
Why did fiscal crisis become social revolution?
Who was excluded from universal rights?
Did Napoleon end or preserve the Revolution?
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