1625-1689

·         James I:  intelligent; slovenly habits; “wisest fool in Christendom”; didn’t make a good impression on his new subjects; introduced the Divine Right of Kings

·         Charles I:  Believed in Divine Right of Kings; unwilling to compromise with Parliament; narrow minded and aloof; lived an extravagant life; Wife Henrietta Maria and people despised her (Catholic)

·         Charles II: supposed to rule as a constitutional monarch; tried to protect Catholic freedom

·         James II: openly Catholic, believed in Divine Right of Kings; instituted reign of terror due to rebellions against him

·         Louis XIV:  known as the “Sun King”; saw himself as centre of France and forced nobles to live with him; extravagant lifestyle; built Palace of Versailles ($$)

·         Louis XV: great grandson of Louis XIV; only five years old when he became King; continued extravagances of the court and failure of government to reform led France towards disaster

·         Louis XVI; originally wanted to be loved; not interested in governing; did not help middle and lower classes; married Marie Antoinette who people despised (Austrian)

·         Louis allowed critics of government to be imprisoned or killed

·       Raised foreign armies

·       Charles I and Louis XVI both did not like working with Parliament/Estates General

·       Citizens did not like the wives of Charles I (Catholic) and Louis XVI (from Austria)

·       Both Charles I and Louis XVI punished critics of government

·       Charles I did not care to be loved whereas Louis XVI initially wanted to be loved by his people

·       Charles I did not kill people who were against him (he imprisoned or fined them) whereas Louis XVI did

·       Charles I called Lord Strafford,  Archbishop Laud and occasionally Parliament; Louis XVI only called Estates General as he had no advisors

·         Charles refused to accept  Parliament’s conditions

·         Charles tried to rule without parliament and he found unpopular ways to make money.

·         He was very hard on the people because of

·         Parliament made him sign a petition called the “Petition of Right” to protect the people

·          Charles did not agree with parliament and continued to rule without it.

·         He fought and tried to bring the country under royal control. Strafford found many ways to raise money for the king.

·         The Civil War:

·         When Charles raised his standard on a wind moor near Nottingham, he began a conflict that, for 7 years, would tear his country apart.

·         Both sides had to create a fighting force.

·         Charles had the “Royalists” or “Cavaliers” that could fight while riding horses.

·         Parliament had farmers and townspeople with almost no military experience but they also controlled the navy and the richest south and London.

·         Charles was successful at some points but he couldn’t win a decisive victory.

·         Parliament teamed up with the Scots

·         They began  a modern army

·          The leader of the “New Model Army” was Oliver Cromwell

·         The New Model Army defeated the royalists in Marston Moor and Naseby.

·         Charles was made prisoner and handed to the parliament.

• The Brink of Disaster:
• Louis XIV became involved in a number of wars so he could promote his interests and expand French territory but he was unsuccessful.

·         A series of wars with the Dutch did secure some territory in the southeastern of France but also depleted his treasury.

·         Luis involved himself in the politics of the Holy Roman Empire by claiming that the French monarch had special rights within the Roman Catholic Church.

·         His persecution of Calvinist Protestants was so intense that caused a big decline in population in some parts of the country.

·         These conflicts almost ruined the economy.

·         During the reign of Louis XV, the extravagances of the court and the failure of government to reform economic and social life continued push France toward disaster.

• The Beginning of The Revolution:
• During the reign of Louis XVI, France was almost bankrupt.
• Led by the philosophes, many French people openly expressed their displeasure with the government sometimes with riots.
•  The royal court split into two groups, one that supported the king and one that supported Marie Antoinette.
• France’s problems were made worse by a series of famines and other disasters in the 1780s.
• People demanded change.
• The Paris mob was violent and unpredictable.
• Louis responded by allowing critics of the government to be imprisoned or, occasionally killed.
• Desperate for money and ideas, he called together the representatives of the people, the Estates General, to try to find solutions to France’s problems.

• The fall of Bastille:
• Riots broke out in Paris over the high price of bread, attacking prisons to free political citizens.
• Louis send mercenary troops to Paris and Versailles so the riot began to arm themselves.
• They attacked the prison and fortress of the Bastille and they captured it. The mob cut off the governor’s head and paraded with it.
• This frightened Louis so he send his mercenary soldiers away.

·         Citizens determined to keep order in Paris    so they formed a new army called the “National Guard”

• The Great Fear:
• Peasants believed that the king’s soldiers and aristocrats would stop the Revolution, they were scared.
• These feelings resulted in a panic called The Great Fear.
• Peasants stormed through the chateaux of the aristocrats, burned them to the ground and killed hundreds.
• They also invaded offices and burned feudal certificates and papers that recorded the obligations to the lords.

• Paris and The King:
• The National Assembly met in Versailles and it abolished all feudal rights and privileges and ended serfdom.

·         It also declared all people equal before the law.

• The Revolutionary Wars:

·         The country was about to be invaded by forces that included many European émigrés who wanted to restore the king’s power so France declared war on Austria.

·         Marat, Danton, Robespierre and the others made patriotic speeches, telling people that foreign troops would destroy their country and all their hard earned rights.

• The Reign Of Terror:
• During the “Reign of Terror” the revolutionary government could intimidate or eliminate anyone who disagreed with the radical Jacobins.
• Danton stood up to the government and got beheaded.
• About thirty seven thousand people were guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
•  After Danton’s death, Robespierre ruled as a dictator.

• French had a lot more battles and chaos then the English did.
• French were more brutal and had many more deaths than the English

• The death of Charles II created a problem for the parliament.
• James II took his throne and was openly Catholic
• Titus Oates had caused a wide panic in England, he concocted a story about a Catholic plot to take over the nation.
• James made it very clear that he believed in the Divine Right of Kings and meant to take power away from parliament.
• Rebellions soon broke out and didn’t support James. Following a rebellion in support of Charles’s son, the Duke of Monmouth, James instituted a reign of terror.
• Judge Jeffries conducted courts that ordered the execution of so many people suspected of being rebels that they became known as the “Bloody Assizes”.
• In 1688, parliament invited James’s protestant daughter, Mary and her husband William of Orange, to become queen and king of England.
• James and his supporters left England, abdicating his throne.
•  The monarch was chosen by parliament and not hereditary right for once and the Divine Right was dead.
• Mary and William agreed to the terms of new Bill of Rights.
• Parliament became the real government.

·         The days of equality and the title “Citizen” was over.

·         Many of the advances made by the poor swept away.

·         Both reduced the power of a monarchy.

Was not violent

Results in a charter,

Constitution  with the people

·         Directory-

Bloody

Tyrants emerge

• Oliver Cromwell:
• Was an English military and political leader and later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland.
• He became an independent puritan
• An intensely religious man—a self-styled Puritan Moses—he fervently believed that God was guiding his victories.
• He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short (1640) and Long (1640-1649) Parliaments.
• He entered the English Civil War on the side of the “Roundheads” or Parliamentarians.
• He was quickly promoted from leading a single cavalry troop to become one of the principal commanders of the New Model
•  Army Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles I’s death warrant in 1649
• As a member of the Rump Parliament (1649–53), he dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England.
• He was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–50.
• Cromwell’s forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country – bringing to an end the Irish confederate Wars.
• During this period a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics
• A substantial amount of their land was confiscated.
• Cromwell also led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651.

• Jean-Paul Marat:
• Was a physician, political theorist and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution.
• His journalism became renowned for its fierce tone, uncompromising stance toward the new leaders and institutions of the revolution, and advocacy of basic human rights for the poorest members of society.
• Marat was one of the most radical voices of the French Revolution.

·         He became a vigorous defender of the Sans-culottes, publishing his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers,

·         He was a Friend of the People,

·         He was linked with the radical, republican Jacobin group that came to power after June 1793.

·         Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondist sympathizer,

·         In his death, Marat became an icon to the Jacobins as a revolutionary martyr.

• Jacques Danton:
• Was a leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and

• He was the first President of the Committee of Public Safety.

·         Many historians describe him as “the chief force in the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the First French

• Maximilien Robespierre:
• Was a French lawyer and politician, and one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French revolution and the Reign of Terror.
• As a member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly and the Jacobin club, he opposed the death penalty and advocated the abolition of slavery, while supporting equality of rights,
• He was an important figure during the period of the Revolution commonly known as the Reign of Terror, which ended a few months after his arrest and execution in July 1794 following the Thermidorian reaction.
• The Thermidorians accused him of being the “soul” of the Terror, although his guilt in the brutal excesses of the Terror has not been proven.

·         Both wanted more power for the people

·         Both Cromwell and Robespierre did not serve as kings

• The parliament did not have a large permanent role in the English system of government. Instead, Parliament functioned as a temporary advisory committee and was only summoned if, and when, the monarch saw fit to summon it.
• Parliament’s most indispensable power was its ability to raise tax revenues far in excess of all other sources of revenue at the Crown’s disposal.
• Many concerns were raised over Charles’s marriage to a Roman Catholic, French Princess Henrietta Maria, in 1625. The Parliament refused to assign him the traditional right to collect customs duties for his entire reign, deciding instead to grant it only on a provisional basis and negotiate with him.
• Unable to raise revenue without Parliament, and unwilling to convene it, Charles resorted to other means.
• One method was reviving certain conventions, often long-outdated.
• Established law supported this policy, but authorities had ignored it for centuries, and many regarded it as yet another extra-Parliamentary (and therefore illegal) tax.

• France had the “Estates General”, which met only as a result of royal command.

• The Estates General Included representatives the three estates of France.
• The First Estate were the clergy.
• The Second Estate was formed by the aristocrats.
• The middle class made up the Third Estate.
• Although the Third Estate had twice as many delegates as either of the other two estates, each estate worked as a bloc. This meant that the privileged classes, the aristocrats and the clergy had twice as much as voting power than the middle class.
• Louis XVI called the Estates General only when his government was in serious crisis.
• A.R. Turgot, had tried to reform the economy but had been forced out of office by Marie Antoinette. Now the country was bankrupt.
• He and his new director of treasury, Jacques Necker. Hoped that the meeting king Louis had made would help raise money and end to widespread rioting.
• Louis was not prepared to surrender his power to the people.
• He planned to give his Estates some small, token responsibilities.
• When the Estates General finally met in May, its members would not bound to the king’s wishes.
• Despite some internal conflicts, there was still great hope that progress would be made toward democracy in France.

·         The estates general had given the king the ability to levy taxes. Parliament never gave the king that authority.

• Henrietta Maria:
• Was queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland as the wife of King Charles I
• Her Roman Catholicism made her unpopular in England.
• Was the wife of King Charles I.
• She began to immerse herself in national affairs as civil war loomed on the horizon, and was compelled to seek refuge in France in 1644.
• The execution of King Charles in 1649 left her impoverished.
• She settled in Paris, and then returned to England after the Restoration of her eldest son, Charles, to the throne.
• In 1665, she moved back to Paris, where she died four years later.

• Catherine of Braganza:

·         Was queen of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1662 to 1685,

·         The wife of King Charles II.

• Catherine was born into the House of Braganza.
• Catherine was an unpopular consort for Charles II.
• She was a special object of attack by the inventors of the Popish Plot.
• In 1678 the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey was ascribed to her servants.

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• Titus Oates accused her of an intention to poison the king.
• These charges, placed the queen for some time in great danger.
• On 28 November Oates accused her of High Treason, and the Commons passed an order for her removal and that of all Roman Catholics from Whitehall.
• June 1679 it was decided that she must stand trial; but she was protected by the king, who in this instance showed unusual chivalry, for which he earned her gratitude.

• Titus Oates accused her of an intention to poison the king.
• These charges, the absurdity of which were soon shown by cross-examination, nevertheless placed the queen for some time in great danger.
• On 28 November Oates accused her of High Treason, and the Commons passed an order for her removal and that of all Roman Catholics from Whitehall.
• A series of fresh depositions were made against her, and in June 1679 it was decided that she must stand trial; but she was protected by the king, who in this instance showed unusual chivalry, for which he earned her gratitude.

• The execution of King Charles in 1649 left her impoverished. She settled in Paris, and then returned to England after the Restoration of her eldest son, Charles, to the throne. In 1665, she moved back to Paris, where she died four years later.

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• Marie Antoinette: An Archduchess of Austria.
• Was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor and Empress Maria Theresa.
• When her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI, she became Queen of France and Navarre, when at that time of the French Revolution, she became Queen of the French.
• Despite her initial popularity, a growing number of the population eventually came to dislike her of being profligate, promiscuous and of harbouring sympathies for France’s enemies, particularly her native Austria.
• During the Revolution, she became known as Madame Deficit  because the country’s financial crisis was blamed on her lavish spending and her opposition to the social and financial reforms of Turgot and Necker
• During the Revolution, after the government had placed the royal family under house arrest in the Tuileries Palace in October 1789, several events linked to Marie Antoinette, in particular the June 1791, and her role attempt to flee  in the war of the First Coalition, had disastrous effects on French popular opinion.
• Marie Antoinette was convicted by the Revolutionary Tribunal of high treason, and executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793.

·         Catherine, Henrietta and Antoinette were unpopular.

·         Unlike all the queens of the English civil war, people hated Marie Antoinette for what she did to them.