Violence During the French Revolution

During the first two and a half years of the Revolution,

violence largely took the form of noncontinuous and largely

spontaneous mob violence. It played an important authority in

preventing the reimposition of royal authority and in 889

consolidating the power of the voice Assembly. While

some of its excesses temporarily strengthened the power of bear Constitutionalists, it eventually played into the hands of more radical elements that began to manipulation it to shift political power in their direction in a more organized fashion.

The ancien r?gime which was toppled from power by the French Revolution had ruled France for many centuries despite many destabilizing factors and events. The Revolution was caused by many forces, solely the most flying set of circumstances which precipitated it was, according to Roberts, "a prolonged crisis . . . at the heart [of which] lay the state's penury . . . expressed in deficits and a huge debt accumulated . . . in pursuit of an expensive opposed policy" (3). The weakness of the regime was open for all to plan when King Louis XVI convened for the first time in one hundred seventy-five years the Estates General which met in Versailles in May 1789 to stand by resolve that crisis. By that time, the April Rebellion riots by crowds in capital of France had already occurred, but Lucas says they were similar to traditional expressions of unrest in times of crisis (436).

At this point, the King hesitated to use troops to date

crowds in Paris, according to Blanning, because "the credit had taken hold in the royal council that they would mutiny if uniform to take action" (29). In any event, the multitude succeeded in disarming the guards at the Invalides and storming the Bastille in July. Lucas characterized the crowd action in July as "engendered by panic fear and its motive was essentially selfdefense" (437). According to Blanning, "now that his weapon of oddment resort  the army  had failed him, he [the King] had no option but to

Merriam-Webster Inc, 1985: 84, 109, 298, 645, 1042.

Revolution in Social & Political Perspective, Ed. Peter

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