It can be used without an Internet connection. Reign of Louis XVI. Versailles and the United States of America, Video Once upon a time Versailles Discover the history of the Palace of Versailles and its characters in this illustrated video for young and old alike! All the news. Make an online donation Take part in the history of the palace of Versailles by supporting a project that suits you: adopt a linden tree, contribute to the missions of the Palace or participate in the refurnishing of the royal apartments.
I support Versailles. The official Palace of Versailles app. More information. Liberal Parisians were further enraged by the fear that royal troops would attempt to shut down the National Constituent Assembly, which was meeting in Versailles.
Crowds gathered throughout Paris, including more than ten thousand at the Palais-Royal. Among the troops under the royal authority were foreign mercenaries, most notably Swiss and German regiments, that were seen as less likely to be sympathetic to the popular cause than ordinary French soldiers. By early July, approximately half of the 25, regular troops in Paris and Versailles were drawn from these foreign regiments. The crowd clashed with royal troops and unrest grew. The people of Paris expressed their hostility against state authorities by attacking customs posts blamed for causing increased food and wine prices, and started to plunder any place where food, guns, and supplies could be hoarded.
That night, rumors spread that supplies were being hoarded at Saint-Lazare, a huge property of the clergy, which functioned as convent, hospital, school, and even a jail. An angry crowd broke in and plundered the property, seizing 52 wagons of wheat which were taken to the public market.
That same day, multitudes of people plundered many other places, including weapon arsenals. The royal troops did nothing to stop the spreading of social chaos in Paris during those days. On the morning of July 14, , the city of Paris was in a state of alarm. The commandant at the Invalides had in the previous few days taken the precaution of transferring barrels of gunpowder to the Bastille for safer storage.
At this point, the Bastille was nearly empty, housing only seven prisoners. The cost of maintaining a garrisoned medieval fortress for so limited a purpose led to a decision, made shortly before the disturbances began, to replace it with an open public space.
Amid the tensions of July , the building remained as a symbol of royal tyranny. The crowd gathered outside around mid-morning, calling for the surrender of the prison, the removal of the cannon, and the release of the arms and gunpowder. Two representatives of the crowd outside were invited into the fortress and negotiations began.
Another was admitted around noon with definite demands. The negotiations dragged on while the crowd grew and became impatient. Around p. A small party climbed onto the roof of a building next to the gate to the inner courtyard and broke the chains on the drawbridge. Soldiers of the garrison called to the people to withdraw but in the noise and confusion these shouts were misinterpreted as encouragement to enter.
Gunfire began, apparently spontaneously, turning the crowd into a mob. A analysis of the Bastille dimensions showed that it did not tower over the neighborhood as was depicted in the paintings but was a comparable height. The firing continued and a substantial force of Royal Army troops encamped on the Champs de Mars did not intervene.
With the possibility of mutual carnage suddenly apparent, Governor de Launay ordered a cease-fire at 5 p. A letter offering his terms was handed out to the besiegers through a gap in the inner gate. His demands were refused, but de Launay nonetheless capitulated as he realized that with limited food stocks and no water supply his troops could not hold out much longer.
He accordingly opened the gates to the inner courtyard, and the conquerors swept in to liberate the fortress at p. The king first learned of the storming only the next morning through the Duke of La Rochefoucauld. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen August is a fundamental document of the French Revolution and in the history of human and civil rights. The inspiration and content of the document emerged largely from the ideals of the American Revolution. The Declaration emerged from the tenets of the Enlightenment, including individualism, the social contract as theorized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the separation of powers espoused by Montesquieu.
The spirit of secular natural law rests at the foundations of the Declaration. Unlike traditional natural law theory, secular natural law does not draw from religious doctrine or authority.
The document defines a single set of individual and collective rights for all men. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, these rights are held to be universal and valid in all times and places.
Correspondingly, the role of government, carried on by elected representatives, is to recognize and secure these rights. Thomas Jefferson — the primary author of the U. Declaration of Independence —was in France as a U. In the ratification by the states of the U.
Constitution in , critics demanded a written Bill of Rights. Considering the 6 to 8 weeks it took news to cross the Atlantic, it is possible that the French knew of the American text, which emerged from the same shared intellectual heritage.
The same people took part in shaping both documents: Lafayette admired Jefferson, and Jefferson, in turn, found Lafayette an important political and intellectual partner. At the time of writing, the rights contained in the declaration were only awarded to men. Furthermore, the declaration was a statement of vision rather than reality as it was not deeply rooted in the practice of the West or even France at the time. It embodied ideals toward which France aspired to struggle in the future.
The monarchy was restricted and all citizens had the right to take part in the legislative process. Freedom of speech and press were declared and arbitrary arrests outlawed. The Declaration also asserted the principles of popular sovereignty, in contrast to the divine right of kings that characterized the French monarchy, and social equality among citizens, eliminating the special rights of the nobility and clergy. The Declaration is included in the preamble of the constitutions of both the Fourth French Republic and Fifth Republic and is still current.
Inspired by the American Revolution and also by the Enlightenment philosophers, the Declaration was a core statement of the values of the French Revolution and had a major impact on the development of freedom and democracy in Europe and worldwide.
While the French Revolution provided rights to a larger portion of the population, there remained a distinction between those who obtained the political rights in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen and those who did not. Those who were deemed to hold these political rights were called active citizens, a designation granted to men who were French, at least 25 years old paid taxes equal to three days of work, and could not be defined as servants.
This meant that at the time of the Declaration only male property owners held these rights. The category of passive citizens was created to encompass those populations that the Declaration excluded from political rights. In the end, the vote was granted to approximately 4. Women, slaves, youth, and foreigners were excluded.
Modeled on the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, it exposes the failure of the French Revolution, which had been devoted to equality. Thousands of slaves in Saint-Domingue, the most profitable slave colony in the world, engaged in uprisings with critical attempts beginning also in August that would be known as the first successful slave revolt in the New World.
Slavery in the French colonies was abolished by the Convention dominated by the Jacobins in However, Napoleon reinstated it in In , the colony of Saint-Domingue became an independent state, the Republic of Haiti.
It has also influenced and inspired rights-based liberal democracy throughout the world. The most controversial and significant decision remained that of the nature of voting. If the estates voted by order, the nobles and the clergy could together outvote the commons by 2 to 1. If, on the other hand, each delegate was to have one vote, the majority would prevail. The number of delegates elected was about 1,, half of whom formed the Third Estate. The First and Second Estates had each.
But French society had changed since , and these Estates-General were not like those of Members of the nobility were not required to stand for election to the Second Estate and many were elected to the Third Estate.
The total number of nobles in the three Estates was about Noble representatives of the Third Estate were among the most passionate revolutionaries, including Jean Joseph Mounier and the comte de Mirabeau. On May 5, , the Estates-General convened. The following day, the Third Estate discovered that the royal decree granting double representation also upheld the traditional voting by orders. The apparent intent of the King and his advisers was for everyone to get directly to the matter of taxes, but by trying to avoid the issue of representation they had gravely misjudged the situation.
The Third Estate wanted the estates to meet as one body and for each delegate to have one vote. The other two estates, while having their own grievances against royal absolutism, believed — correctly, as history would prove — that they would lose more power to the Third Estate than they stood to gain from the King.
Although Louis XVI granted the Third Estate greater numerical representation, the Parlement of Paris stepped in and invoked an old rule mandating that each estate receive one vote, regardless of size. As a result, though the Third Estate was vastly larger than the clergy and nobility, each estate had the same representation—one vote.
The First and Second Estates—clergy and nobility, respectively—were too closely related in many matters. Both were linked intrinsically to the royalty and shared many similar privileges. As a result, their votes often went the same way, automatically neutralizing any effort by the Third Estate.
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