AQA A-Level History: France in Revolution 1774–1815

Source A — written for this exercise in the style of a private letter from a provincial nobleman of the sword to his cousin at Versailles, March 1789.

You ask whether I shall attend the assembly of the Estates. I confess I am uneasy. The cahiers our bailliage has drawn up speak of nothing but taxes and the price of bread, and the Third Estate grows bold. They demand that we vote by head and not by order, which would drown the two upper estates entirely. My steward tells me the harvest stores are near empty and that the peasants mutter against the seigneurial dues as though they were a fresh imposition rather than the ancient custom of the realm. I do not deny the kingdom wants money; the war in America emptied the treasury, and the parlements will register no new tax. But to surrender the privileges of our order in the name of a so-called nation is another matter. Let the King govern, and let each order keep its place.

Source B — written for this exercise in the style of an article in a Paris pamphlet circulated among the educated public, May 1789.

Who are the men of the Third Estate? They are the nation. They plough the fields, ply the trades, fill the courts and the counting-houses, and carry upon their backs the whole weight of taxation, while the privileged orders contribute next to nothing yet claim to speak for France. We are told the Estates-General will save the kingdom. It will save nothing if the clergy and the nobility, two hundred thousand idle souls, may outvote twenty-five millions. The treasury is bankrupt not because the people are poor but because the rich are exempt. Let the deputies of the Third Estate hold firm: they alone represent the general will, and a constitution founded upon reason and the rights of man must replace the patchwork of privilege we have inherited.

Source C — written for this exercise in the style of a confidential memorandum from a royal finance official to the Controller-General, January 1788.

I set before you the plain figures. The ordinary revenue does not meet the ordinary expenditure, and the gap is met only by fresh loans at ruinous interest. The service of the debt now consumes near half of what we collect. The Assembly of Notables refused the land-tax we proposed; the parlement of Paris insists that only the Estates-General may consent to new taxation, and the provinces echo the cry. We cannot tax the privileged without their consent, and they will not consent. I urge that the Estates be summoned without further delay, for the alternative is a suspension of payments that would shake the throne itself. Reform of the fiscal system is no longer a matter of prudence but of survival.

Question: With reference to these sources and your understanding of the historical context, assess the value of these three sources to a historian studying the causes of the breakdown of the Ancien Régime in France by 1789. [30 marks]

To what extent was the failure of the constitutional monarchy in France between 1789 and 1792 the responsibility of Louis XVI himself? [25 marks]

'The Terror of 1793 to 1794 was driven above all by the practical need to defend the Republic rather than by ideology.' Assess the validity of this view. [25 marks]

How far was the weakness of the Directory responsible for the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to power by 1799? [25 marks]

How significant were Napoleon's domestic reforms between 1799 and 1815 in preserving the principles of the French Revolution? [25 marks]