The French Revolution and the important changes in Western History
The French revolution marks a before and after in Western history. With it the modern era opens and a period of revolutions and important changes for the policy and societies of that time and those that would follow it. The French Revolution was the most important political change that occurred in Europe, at the end of the 18th century. It was not only important for France, but served as an example for other countries. This revolution meant the triumph of a poor, oppressed and tired of injustices, on the privileges of the feudal and absolutist state, the economy of that country was completely ruined the noblePart of the people, the bourgeoisie wanted to access public office, the peasants were tired of feudal power. It began with the self-proclamation of the third state as a National Assembly in 1789 and ended with the coup d’etat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799.
Although the political organization of France oscillated between the Republic, Empire and Constitutional Monarchy for 71 years after the First Republic fell after the coup d’etat of Napoleon Bonaparte, the truth is that the revolution marked the final end of absolutism and gave birthto a new regime where the bourgeoisie, and sometimes the popular masses, became the dominant political force in the country. The revolution undermined the bases of the monarchical system as such, beyond its rales, to the extent that it overthrew with a speech capable of becoming illegitimate.
The French revolutionary process is undoubtedly the most important within the agitated political scene of the 18th century. It is also one of the most controversial. Historiography has constantly worried about him and there are many writings and books that present the French Revolution as a great deed or, on the contrary, a harmful and even unnecessary event for France and Western culture.
The French State suffers an economic crisis whose causes were several: the expenses for the constant wars and the dispensed disproportionate that the Court performs;And all this happens in a moment of bad harvests. The reforms proposed by the Secretaries of Finance, First Turgot and then Necker, were rejected by the nobles who refused to contribute to public expenses. The bourgeoisie who wanted political reforms from the illustrated principles could not be heard. The peasantry, although free of servitude, was subject to stately taxes and ecclesiastical tithes;He was the one who suffered the most the economic crisis.
To this, we must add another important aspect for their uniqueness: the participation of women during the revolutionary process and the relationships that were established between the sexes, in which sometimes men supported women and other opportunities rejected them;other times they pushed them to act, but finally they condemned them to die or ended in exile. The participation of women was fundamental in the development of the revolution. Already at first the influence of the king’s wife, María Antonieta (21), together with her courtesan party, will have key consequences in the precipitation of events, forcing, for example, the dismissal of Minister Necker.
The French Revolution is a change in the history of women. To date, the woman was a simple object dependent on the ideas of her family or her husband. He should not have his own ideas, since this was poorly considered by society. With the revolution a concern was generated by the relationship between the sexes, and for the role that women played in society and not only in the domestic order. As the revolution progressed, women who claimed equality between sexes and civil rights arose. Despite the fight undertaken, the woman did not experience important changes in her traditional way of life and failed to free themselves from the dependence of men. Some important feminist revolutionary women were Olimpia de Gouces, Mary Wollstonecraft, Marie Jeanne Roland de la Platiere, Charlotte Corday, marath and Claire Lacombe executioner.
Olimpia de Gouges (1748-1793) is the one that best exemplifies the struggle of women to achieve their political rights. She was a theatrical author and revolutionary activist, she was the protagonist of the female protest. In 1791 he published the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Citizen that was in fact a copy of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. She affirmed ‘woman is born free and must remain equal to man in rights’ and that ‘the law must be the expression of the general will that both citizens must contribute, personally or through their representatives to their training.
The Goues Olimpia program was clear: freedom, equality and political rights, especially the right to vote, for women. However, the feminist approach was not shared by the men who directed the revolution. Once Louis XVI was executed, she was persecuted and executed with her family in 1793 during the Jacobin dictatorship symbolized the failure of feminist claims during the revolution. The Napoleonic Civil Code (1804), in which the main social advances of the revolution were collected, denied women the civil rights recognized for men during the revolutionary period (legal equality, property right …), and imposed lawsdiscriminatory, according to which the home was defined as the exclusive scope of female performance.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English writer and one of the feminist thought initiators. He stood out for her great intelligence, she public "the defense of women’s rights", however, her demands for equal rights for all human beings were ignored. Among any of their demands are that education is the same for both men and women and that universities were also free for both sexes. He died in 1797.
Marie Jeanne Roland de la Platiere (1754-1793) was a heroine during the French Revolution. He was born in Paris, France. Daughter of an engraver, carefully educated and read Plutarch and Jean-Jacques Rousseau extensively. He married Jean Marie Roland in 1780 and belonged to the Girondinos Party during the French Revolution- Madame Roland maintained prolific correspondence and founded a famous intellectual activity hall during that period of history. Her husband was elected Minister of the Interior in 1792 and her wife helped him actively in her functions. Although Danton and Robespierre attended their meetings, Madame Roland felt deep disgust towards the two Jacobin politicians. When her husband was accused and expelled from her position, Madame Roland heroically appeared before her accusers in order to defend him, being made prisoner and forced to live for 5 months amid abandonment and disguise;However, she distinguished herself during all that time by her neatness and virtue in her behavior. During those five months in prison he wrote his ‘memoirs and called to impartial posterity’ exposing in them his principles and the unfair of his sentence. The work became famous in a short time. In November 1793 she was sentenced to the guillotine and faced her death in a courageous and dignified way;When he was already in front of the guillotine, in the middle of the today called Plaza de la Concordia, and in front of the statue that represented freedom, Madame Roland pointed out the statue and said the famous words: ‘Freedom, how many crimes are committed inyour name!’.
Charlotte Corday was born in the French town of Saint Saturnin des Ligneries on July 27, 1768. After the early death of his mother he was forced to enter, along with his two sisters, in a convent. After the suppression of the monasteries in December 1790, Charlotte was welcomed by his aunt, Madame de Bretteville, at his home in Caen. The pro-government ideas of Charlotte Corday and their persecution led her to plan and execute the murder of Jean-Paul Marath. On July 9, 1793 he went to Paris, where he stayed at Hotel de la Providence. On July 11, he went to Marath’s home late in the afternoon, where he found Marath, giving one of his frequent bathrooms to alleviate his health problems. Charlotte Corday killed marath of an accurate knife in the heart. After being arrested, he had to be protected from an attempt to lynch and was transferred to the prison of "Abbaye" where she was hard questioned. Six days later, on July 17, 1793, Charlotte Corday died in the guillotine.
Claire Lacombe was born on August 4, 1765 in the French town of Pamiers. Claire dedicated himself during his youth to theatrical interpretation, until he arrived in Paris in 1792. Pympathizer of the Sans Culottes movement, Claire took part in the insurrection of August 10 in the taking of the Tubleías, resulting in a Balza wound in the arm. Claire Lacombe frequently attended the meetings of the Cordeliers Club, and in February 1793 he founded, together with Pauline Léon, the "Militant Society of Republican and Revolutionary Women", a club mostly composed of working women of working class. His revolutionary and political activity was stopped a year later, in 1794. In April of that same year, Claire was arrested a night in which he headed to the theater, and spent the next sixteen months arrested in different Parisian prisons. Claire Lacombe was released on August 18, 1795, returning to resume her profession as theater actress. Claire Lacombe disappeared some time later without a trace, not knowing anything about her since 1798.
Likewise, before the revolution there were women who from an individual position raised claims for female equality, such as the Spanish enlightened Josefa Amar with her books importance of the instruction that should be given to women (1784) or the discourse on educationPhysics and moral of women (1769). Although it was also necessary to wait for the French revolution so that the voice of women would express itself collectively. There are also French enlightened who recognize the importance of women’s role in society, such as Condorcet (1743-1794): this in his work sketches of a historical table of the progress of the human spirit (1743) demanded the recognition of the social role of the social role ofThe woman, comparing the social status of women of the time with that of slaves.
Women present a list of rights at the National Assembly. Considering that ignorance, oblivion or contempt for women’s rights are the only causes of public misfortunes and corruption of governments, they have resolved to present in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of women. Consequently, women recognize and declare, in the presence and under the auspices of the supreme being, the following rights of women and citizen:
- The woman is born free and remains the same man in rights. Social distinctions can only be based on common utility.
- The purpose of any political association is the conservation of natural and inalienable rights of women and men: these rights are freedom, property, security and, above all, oppression resistance.
- The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the nation, which is nothing more than the meeting of women and men: no body, no individual can exercise authority that does not expressly emanate from it. IV. Freedom and justice consist of returning everything that belongs to another: thus, the exercise of women’s natural rights has no more limit than the tyranny that man opposes him;These limits must be reformed by the laws of nature and reason.
- The law must be the expression of the general will;All citizens must contribute, personally or through their representatives, to their training, which must be the same for all: being all citizens and citizens before their eyes, they must be equally admissible in all dignities, places and places andpublic jobs, according to their capacities and without other distinction than their talent and virtues.
- The properties are for the two sexes, gathered or separated, and have, for each one, an inviolable and sacred right;No one can be deprived of them as the true heritage of nature, unless the public need, legally verified, requires it in a obvious way and with the condition of a fair and previous compensation.
The atmosphere of this era was constituted by a group of women emancipated from their role as mother and wife, whom they crossed out of adventurers, did not fulfill the role that the "natural order" had entrusted to them. In fact, their public appearances were considered a dangerous invasion of male space. Everywhere came clubs and associations fought to participate and raise their voice against the restrictions and limited role that tradition reserved as the central axis of families. There was also a marked male rejection regarding changes in the condition of women since the revolutionaries thought that the family change would be much more drastic than what they wanted, a fact that could undermine the foundations of the State and society.
After the triumph of the revolution in 1789, an obvious contradiction soon emerged: a revolution that based its justification on the universal idea of the natural and political equality of human beings (‘Liberté, Egalité, Fterernité’), denied the access of women, half of the population, to political rights, which actually meant denying their freedom and their equality regarding the rest of the individuals. The women of the time argued that it was a violation of the principle of equality and freedom to deprive half of the human race to contribute to the formation of laws, that is, they excluded women from the right of citizenship. They also said that ignorance, oblivion and contempt for women’s rights are the only causes of public misfortunes and corruption of governments. They sought social and political equality in their fullness.
It is important to highlight that women developed an intense militant activity in grassroots organizations, in general assemblies, popular mass demonstrations;An example of this is the march of women about Versailles where it took place between October 5 and 6, 1789. Also known as "Women’s March on Versailles", it began encouraged among the women of the Paris market positions that, on the morning of the 5th, had begun a series of protest acts against the Bread’s CageAnd of his scarcity. These protests, made in the middle of a revolutionary Paris, soon congregated thousands of people. After assaulting Arsenal de Armas of the city, the thousands of citizens led by women in the Paris market began the march towards the Versailles Palace. Once the march arrived in Versailles, the crowd proceeded to besiege the Palace of Versailles, achieving in just a few hours impose its demands on King Louis XVI and forcing the royal family to return with them until Paris.
In the same way, most women’s demands were related to the opportunity to have a better education and quality of life. The most intense Parisian female participation was between the fall of 1793 until September 30 of the same year with the prohibition of women’s clubs. Women’s patriotic clubs had a short life, but nevertheless they had a great influence on the revolution. These revolutionary women’s clubs were used by women to meet, exchange opinions and information, discuss political issues, read newspapers and news of the day, etc … Among the most dynamic clubs of the time, the “Republican Club can be citedRevolutionary ", the" National Amazon Club ", the" Club of the Ladies of the Fraternity ", the" Club of the Friends of the Law ", the" Patriotic Society of Decency and of the Friends of Truth ",and the "Society of the friends of consolation". Before 1789, date that marks the beginning of the first revolutionary period, women were already actively participating in social and political events related to the French Revolution, and many of them got to obtain great notoriety. These women elaborated a large number of theoretical and political documents that highlighted the conscience they had about their own situation and their willingness to emancipation.
However, in May 1795 the Convention prohibited the assistance of women to the political assemblies, and prescribed them to retire to their respective addresses under order of arrest and thus the woman was sent to her traditional role within the family, ofwife and mother. At this time the subaltern condition of women was evident and resounding. Anyway, social claims are considered to be awakened by female consciousness for the future.
In conclusion, in the old regime the legal inequality of the members of the company was the norm. Noble and clergy enjoyed privileges that did not enjoy the vast majority of the population. In the case of women (half of the population), all of the above should be joined by their social function limited to the domestic, to the work of the house, the procreation and care of the children;and his legal subordination regarding man, father or husband. The French Revolution (1789) and the other liberal-bourgeois revolutions raised as a central objective the achievement of legal equality and freedoms and political rights and rights. But these freedoms, these rights and this legal equality that had been the great conquests of the liberal revolutions did not affect the woman. The ‘rights of man and citizen’ that proclaimed the French revolution referred exclusively to ‘man’ not to the whole of human beings. From that moment, in Western Europe and North America a movement began, feminism, which fought for the equality of women and their liberation. During that period, the main objective of the women’s movement was the achievement of the right to vote. Thus the suffragist movement was born. Therefore, from the French Revolution the voice of women began to express itself collectively.
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