8 C. Louis XVI and the French Revolution

1789's cascade: the Third Estate proclaims itself the National Assembly (June 17) — the Tennis Court Oath (not to disband till France has a constitution); the Bastille stormed (14 July — the absolute state's prison-fortress falling to the people: the modern revolution's birthday); the Great Fear and feudalism's abolition (August 4); the Declaration of the Rights of Man and ofthe Citizen (August 26 — natural rights, popular sovereignty, legality, liberty: the Enlightenment's statutes — Jefferson's Declaration's French child, your Legal English Unit 6's lineage); the women's march on Versailles (October — the king returned to Paris); the CivilConstitution of the Clergy splitting the church. From constitution to terror (the phases toknow): the constitutional monarchy (1791 — the flight to Varennes first discrediting it); the republic (Sept 1792 — Valmy; the king tried and guillotined (Jan 1793); the Terror (1793–94 — Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety, the Law of Suspects, thousands executed: revolutionary tribunals — justice weaponised — the permanent lesson); Thermidor (1794 — Robespierre to his own blade); the Directory (1795–99 — corrupt, wobbly) — and the general from Italy waiting (1799's coup of 18 Brumaire). For law students: 1789's constitutional legacy — rights declarations, national sovereignty, codification's mandate, and the terror's warning: revolutionary legality without the rule of law devours its children (Robespierre as jurisprudence's negative exemplar).