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French Revolution


He tried intimidating them with his army, then he tried coaxing them down and recognized their representative claims, and eventually fell silent and just sat back and watched. As the nobility and aristocracy, realizing the threat this rebellion posed to their lives, fled France, the National Assembly began reforming. It did away with all special privileges in landed property, abolished feudalism, and vastly improved the conditions of the working class. The also took it upon themselves to draft a new constitution relative to the English Bill of Rights. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, a precursor to the full constitution meant to be drafted, put emphasis on the "general will" of the people. This document showed the romantic views of French-Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as the Enlightenment's rationalism. .
             A split slowly opened up between the moderate and radical revolutionaries. When Louis XVI is tried by the National Convention for high crimes and misdemeanors against the state for attempting to flee France and the vote to execute him was passed by a narrow margin, the split became a full fledged gap. This regicide marked the second stage of the French Revolution and the first appearance of the National Convention which was headed by the radical Jacobin Society. This society gained a great deal of power as moderates drew back from their participation, and a period of distrust and conflict ensued as the nations surrounding France became more and more alarmed at the revolution. Maximilien Robespierre, the "guiding spirit" of the radical revolutionaries, ruled over the chaos until he was overcome by the moderates, who came back with a fury and finally drove a republican constitution to approval by the National Convention. The bourgeois (mainly the men of property) was well satisfied by their Directory as they called it, because it granted them more economic freedom and leading political powers, but could they handle the responsibilities they had won at so great a cost of life?.


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