Questions set by John Dunne, ext 8955
APPROVED
EXAMINATION PAPER: ACADEMIC SESSION 2005/2006
CAMPUS Maritime Greenwich
SCHOOL Humanities
DEPARTMENT History, Philosophy and Politics
LEVEL Three
COURSE CODE HIST1003
COURSE TITLE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
DURATION 3 hrs 15 mins
(including reading time)
DATE May 2006
INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES AND INVIGILATORS
Date and time: May 2006
Course title: The French Revolution
Course code: HIST1993 Page 1 of 5
SECTION A
Comment on THREE of the following. You are advised not to spend more than an
hour plus reading time on this section of the paper.
1. All of your subjects, Sire, are divided into as many different corps as there are
different estates of the realm: the Clergy, the Nobility, the sovereign courts;
the inferior courts, the officers attached to these tribunals, the universities, the
academies, the companies of finance and of commerce; all present and
existing throughout the State, these corps may be regarded as the links in a
great chain of which the first is in the hands of Your Majesty, as chief and
sovereign administrator of all that constitutes the corps of the Nation.
(Remonstrance of the Parlement of Paris, 12 March 1776)
2. That all monopolies, and particularly that of the wine press, be abolished; or,
at least, that owners of vines be allowed to have their own presses as in the
case of territories belonging to the king, in return for a payment to the
seigneurial overlord of 2 francs per jour of vines; this abolition would prevent
the spoiling or loss of a large quantity of wine.
(Cahier de doléances of the bourg of Chaumont-sur-Moselle, 1789)
3. IV. Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure
another. The exercise of the natural rights of every man has no other limits
than those which are necessary to secure to every other man the free exercise
of the same rights; and these limits are determinable only by the law.
V. The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful to society. What is not
prohibited by the law should not be hindered; nor should any one be
compelled to do that which the law does not require.
(Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, August 1789)
4. It is important for the happiness of mankind that the conduct of France
towards the man it too long called its king be the final step in curing other
nations of whatever superstitions they may still hold which favour a monarchy.
Above all, we should beware lest we increase that superstition among those
still ruled by a monarch. . . . Thus, it is to the laws of universal justice,
common to all constitutions and unalterable in the midst of clashing opinions
and the revolutions of empires, that we must subject our decisions.
(Condorcet’s speech, 3 December 1792)
Date and time: May 2006
Course title: The French Revolution
Course code: HIST1993 Page 2 of 5
5. That all rents be cancelled and reduced to the level that obtained during the
common years chosen to fix the prices of all products and articles of primary
necessity and to give them an invariable maximum.
8. That private fortunes shall also be subject to a maximum.
9. That no individual may possess more than one such maximum.
10. That no individual may be a tenant of more land than is needed for a
specified number of ploughs.
11. That the same citizen may not own more than one workshop or one shop.
(Petition of the Section des Sans-Culottes to the Convention, 2 September 1793)
6. If the spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of
popular government in revolution are at once virtue and terror: virtue, without
which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is
nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an
emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence
of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent
needs.
(Robespierre’s speech, 5 February 1794)
7. But seditious men ceaselessly attacked with audacity the weak parts of your
constitution; they skillfully seized upon those parts which might provoke new
disorders; the constitutional regime was soon only a succession of revolutions
in every sense, in which the different parties successively gained power; even
those who most sincerely desired the maintenance of that constitution were
forced to violate it constantly in order to preserve it. From such a state of
instability in legislation …the most sacred rights of social man have been
exposed to all the caprices of factions and events.
It is time to put an end to these disorders; it is time to give substantial
guarantees to the liberty of citizens to the sovereignty of the people, to the
independence of the constitutional powers, and, finally, to the Republic, whose
name has served only too often to sanction the violation of all principles. It is
time that this great nation had a government worthy of it, a firm and wise
government, which could give you a prompt and enduring peace, and enable
you to enjoy real happiness.
(Resolution of the Council of 500, 10 November 1799)
Date and time: May 2006
Course title: The French Revolution
Course code: HIST1993 Page 3 of 5
8. 375. A father who shall have cause of grievous dissatisfaction at the conduct
of a child, shall have the following means of correction.
376. If the child has not commenced his sixteenth year, the father may cause
him to be confined for a period which shall not exceed one month; and to this
effect the president of the court of the circle shall be bound, on his petition, to
deliver an order of arrest.
377. From the age of sixteen years commenced to the majority or
emancipation, the father is only empowered to require the confinement of his
child during six months at the most; he shall apply to the president of the
aforesaid court, who, after having conferred thereon with the commissioner of
government, shall deliver an order of arrest or refuse the same, and may in the
first case abridge the time of confinement required by the father
(The French Civil Code published March 1804)
9. After prolonged consideration, repeated conferences with the members of the
Senate, discussion in the councils, and the suggestions of the most prudent
advisers, a series of provisions was drawn up which regulate the succession to
the imperial throne. These provisions were decreed by a senatus consultus of
the 28th Floreal last. The French people, by a free and independent expression,
then manifested its desire that the imperial dignity should pass down in a
direct line through the legitimate or adopted descendants of Napoleon
Bonaparte, or through the legitimate descendants of Joseph Bonaparte, or of
Louis Bonaparte.
(Napoleon's Account of the Internal Situation of France in 1804, 31 December
1804)
SECTION B
Answer TWO of the following questions.
1. Account for the failure of the French monarchy to accomplish thorough-going
reform during the last two decades of the Ancien Regime?
2. ‘A revolution had occurred in the minds of the French people even before the
meeting of the Estates-General in May 1789’. What is meant by this claim? Do
you agree?
3. How important was the personality of the king as a factor in the failure of the
Revolution’s experiment in constitutional monarchy?
Date and time: May 2006
Course title: The French Revolution
Course code: HIST1993 Page 4 of 5
4. ‘Let us be terrible so that the people may not be’ (Danton). Consider the notion
that Terror represented the substitution of state violence for popular or crowd
violence.
5. ‘Anti-revolutionary rather than counter-revolutionary’. How far do you consider
this to be true of EITHER the Vendeé uprising OR the Federalist revolt of
1793 OR both?
6. EITHER
a) Assess Goodwin’s claim that the Directory’s reputation for political
incompetence and failure is undeserved.
OR
b) What did Madame de Stäel mean by her claim that if the Counter-
Revolution had not existed Napoleon would have invented it? Answer in
relation to Napoleon’s rule up to the end of 1804.
7. What impact did the French Revolution have on the role and position of women
in society?
Date and time: May 2006
Course title: The French Revolution
Course code: HIST1993 Page 5 of 5