A Social Change Revolution (An Interactive 5-Day Lesson Plan) Widely Regarded as One of the Most Important Events in Human History

Policies Designed to Reinforce Authority - During a period of world history three countries governments dominated all human endeavors - Cultural, Economic, and legislative. The three countries were England, France, and Spain. Caught in the cross hairs were the suppressed citizens with nowhere to turn to address any grievances. The French Revolution broke out 15 years later. The values and institutions of the French Revolution dominate world politics to this day. The Revolution rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and the Americas and Russia and beyond. Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history

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GRADE LEVEL: Collegiate

STUDENTS: Teaching to support students in collegiate Bachelor’s Degree, Master’s Degree and/or Doctorate Degree Programs

ACADEMIC SUBJECT: The French Revolution

LEARNING OBJECTIVES & GOALS: The French Revolution differed from other revolutions in being not merely national, for it aimed at benefiting all humanity. Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and democracies. It became the focal point for the development of all modern political ideologies, leading to the spread liberalism, radicalism, socialism, feminism, secularism, and nationalism among many others. Some of its central documents, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man, expanded the arena human rights of to include women and slaves, leading to movements for abolitionism and universal suffrage in the next century. Evidence for this is provided by passage of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution giving civil rights to Blacks and ending Slavery in America 70 years later.

ACTIVATING PRIOR KNOWLEDGE: Students Will Read the Following Article Published on LinkedIn:

Policies Designed to Reinforce Authority: During this period of world history three countries dominated all human endeavors (Cultural, Economic and Legislative) England, France & Spain. The three countries had policies that emulated each other in multiple aspects of these endeavors the most telling of which was to “enhance industry and commerce; but limit individualism” and the rest of the civilized world followed suit. A passage in a book on the subject states, “Enlightened governments everywhere (imitating a French model) implemented policies designed to reinforce authority of the state. The revitalization of state authority extended in all directions. On the one hand, it meant the subjugation of representative (legislative) bodies and on the other hand it meant combating the aspirations of the intermediate (judicial) bodies.” Caught in the cross hairs were the suppressed citizens with nowhere to turn to address any grievances - widely known as Feudalism.

Broadly defined, feudalism was a way of structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. France was ruled by Louis XV and French culture and influence were at their height in this the first half of the eighteenth century. However, many scholars believe that Louis XV's decisions damaged the power of France, weakened the treasury, discredited the absolute monarchy, and made it more vulnerable to distrust and destruction. Evidence for this view is provided by the French Revolution, which broke out 15 years after his death during the reign of his successor Louis XVI.

The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France that lasted from 1789 until 1799, and was partially carried forward by Napoleon during the later expansion of the First French Empire which ruled over 70 million subjects. The Revolution overthrew the monarchy, established a republic, experienced violent periods of political turmoil, and finally culminated in a dictatorship under Napoleon in 1804 that rapidly brought many of its principles to Western Europe and beyond. Inspired by liberal and radical ideas, the French Revolution profoundly altered the course of modern history triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies while replacing them with republics and liberal democracies. Through the Revolutionary Wars, it unleashed a wave of global conflicts that extended from the Caribbean to the Middle East.

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TECHNOLOGY (Interactive Communications Technology)

ICT Technology is defined as "learning across multiple contexts, through social and content interactions, using personal electronic devices. Mobile devices are essential in that they are portable and have internet access and includes, tablets, smart phones, cell phones, e-book readers, and mp3 players. As mobile devices become increasingly common personal devices of students, some educators seek to utilize ICT downloadable applications and interactive applications to help facilitate learning.

Students with Disabilities learn alongside general education with Classroom Clickers or Audience Response Keypads – which are hand-held devices that Students with Disabilities use to Submit Answers in a variety of formats, and permit instructors Instant Assessment.

RESOURCES

The Instructor will be equipped with the following technological resources for a Multimedia Classroom:

1.    WebQuest, an activity designed by teachers in which some or all of the information with which students interact comes from the internet, URL: https://webquest.org. Instructors can import material and relay it to students in many forms such as Whiteboard and PowerPoint.

2.     Access to the Internet URL of Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia,

            https://www.wikipedia.org/

MATERIALS

Students are required to have the following peripheral materials:

1.    Computers, Tablets, Laptops, and Smartphones e/w Internet access.

2.    The multimedia classroom is equipped with a big screen, an overhead projector and a master control computer which is connected with campus network and Internet.

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For this lesson students will need to have read the following Online Journal Articles exemplified by the “links” and answer the Guiding Questions each day of a 5-day teaching & learning exercise.

DAY 1

A) The Estates General of the French Revolution (1788): https://www.thoughtco.com/french-revolution-estates-general-1789-1221879

B) Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789): https://www.historyguide.org/intellect/declaration.html

C) A History of the Women’s March on Versailles (1789): https://www.thoughtco.com/womens-march-on-versailles-3529107

The causes of the French Revolution are complex and are still debated among historians. Following the Seven Years War the French military and political participation in the American Revolutionary War, the French government was deeply in debt and attempted to restore its financial status through unpopular taxation schemes. Years of bad harvests leading up to the Revolution also inflamed popular resentment of the privileges enjoyed by the clergy and the aristocracy. Demands for change were formulated in terms of Enlightenment Ideals of and contributed to the convocation of the Estates General in 1788.

At the time of the revolution, the First Estate comprised 10,000 Catholic clergy and owned 5–10% of the lands in France—the highest per capita of any estate. All property of the First Estate was tax exempt. The Second Estate comprised the nobility, which consisted of 400,000 people at the time, including women and children. Since the death of Louis XIV in 1715, the nobles had enjoyed a resurgence in power. They had almost a monopoly over distinguished government service, higher church offices, army parliaments, and most other public and semipublic honors by the time of the revolution. Like the First Estate, they were not taxed by the principle of feudal precedent. The Third Estate comprised about 25 million people: the bourgeoisie, the peasants, and everyone else in France. Unlike the First and Second Estates, the Third Estate were compelled to pay taxes, but the bourgeoisie found one way or another to be exempt from them. The heavy burden of the French government therefore fell upon the poorest in French society—the peasantry, the working poor, and the farmers. There was much resentment from the Third Estate towards its superiors.The first year of the Revolution saw members of the Third Estate taking control, The Assault on the Bastille, in July, the passage of the Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizens, in August, and a Womens March on Versailles, in October.

GUIDING QUESTIONS (Day 1)

1) Which of the following was the Defining Event of the Revolution:

           - The Third Estate Taking Control?

           - The Storming of the Bastille?

           - The Passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man?

           - The Women’s March on Versailles?

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For this lesson students will need to have read the following Online Journal Articles exemplified by the “links” and answer the Guiding Questions each day of a 5-day teaching & learning exercise.

DAY 2

A) Fall of the Monarchy (1792): https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/monarchy-abolished-in-france

B) Establishment of the National Convention (1792-1795) https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Convention

C) The Committee of Public Safety (1793) https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/french-history/committee-public-safety

D) The Reign of Terror (1793) https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/modern-europe/french-history/reign-terror

C) Thermidorian Reaction (1794) https://www.britannica.com/event/Thermidorian-Reaction

D) Founding of the Directorate (1795 - 1799) https://www.britannica.com/event/French-Revolution/The-Directory-and-revolutionary-expansion

E) Creation of the French Consulate (1799 - 1804) https://www.britannica.com/topic/Consulate-French-history

In the history of France, the First Republic was founded on 22 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire in 1804 under Napoleon, although the form of the government changed several times. This period was characterized by the fall of the monarchy. In Revolutionary France, the Legislative Assembly votes to abolish the monarchy and establish the First Republic. The measure came one year after King Louis XVI reluctantly approved a new constitution that stripped him of much of his power. The National Convention was the first government of the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly. This was followed by the Committee of Public Safety which was created to preserve the reforms of the Revolution. This was a 12-member body that came to be dominated by Maximilien Robespierre. Directed by the Committee their aim was to eliminate all internal counterrevolutionary elements, to raise new armies, and to assure food supplies for the armies and cities, and ferret out treason. Police measured taken by the Committee resulted in mass confinements and executions called The Reign of Terror. Discontent with the brutal measures the members of the National Convention, fearing that new purge would be turned against them, joined forces with Robespierre's enemies on the committees and overthrew Robespierre in a measure that has come to be known as the Thermidorian Reaction and the fall of Maximilien Robespierre. The Directory was a five-member committee that replaced the Committee of Public Safety until it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and brought General Napoleon Bonaparte to power and in the view of most historians ended the French Revolution. This bloodless Coup overthrew the Directorate replacing it with the French Consulate and Napoleon's rise to power.

GUIDING QUESTIONS (Day 2)

1) Which of the following was the most harmful to the Revolutionary cause?

            - Fall of the Monarchy

            - Establishment of the National Convention

           - The Reign of Terror

           - The Thermidorian Reaction

           - The Directory

           - The Creation of the Consulate

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For this lesson students will need to have read the following Online Journal Articles exemplified by the “links” and answer the Guiding Questions each day of a 5-day teaching & learning exercise.

DAY 3

A) The Execution of Louis IV (1793) https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/louis_xvi.shtml

            https://www.wikipedia.org/

B) The Execution of Marie-Antoinette (1793) https://www.history.com/topics/france/marie-antoinette

            https://www.wikipedia.org/

C) The Execution of Maximilien Robespierre (1794)  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Maximilien-Robespierre

            https://www.wikipedia.org/

King Louis XVI ascended to the French throne in 1774 and from the start was unsuited to deal with the severe financial problems that he inherited from his predecessors. In 1789, food shortages and economic crises led to the outbreak of the French Revolution. King Louis and his queen, Mary-Antoinette, were imprisoned in August 1792, and in September the monarchy was abolished. Soon after, evidence of Louis’ counterrevolutionary intrigues with foreign nations was discovered, and he was put on trial for treason. In January 1793, Louis was convicted and condemned to death by a narrow majority. On January 21, he walked steadfastly to the guillotine and was executed. 

Queen Marie-Antoinette followed him to the guillotine nine months later. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1755, Marie Antoinette married the future French king Louis XVI when she was just 15 years old. The young couple soon came to symbolize all of the excesses of the reviled French monarchy, and Marie Antoinette herself became the target of a great deal of vicious gossip. After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the royal family was forced to live under the supervision of revolutionary authorities. In 1793, the king was executed; then, Marie Antoinette was arrested and tried for trumped-up crimes against the French republic. She was convicted and sent to the guillotine on October 16, 1793.

Maximilien Robespierre, (Born May 6, 1758 died July 28, 1794, Paris), radical Jacobin leader and one of the principal figures in the French Revolution. In the latter months of 1793 he came to dominate the Committee of Public Safety the principal organ of the Revolutionary government during the Reign of Terror but in 1794 he was overthrown and executed in the Thermidorian Reaction.

GUIDING QUESTIONS (Day 3)

1) What is the legacy of each of these pivotal personalities involved in the Revolution?

 -       King Louis XVI

-       Queen Marie Antoinette

-       Maximilien Robespierre

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For this lesson students will need to have read the following Online Journal Articles exemplified by the “links” and answer the Guiding Questions each day of a 5-day teaching & learning exercise.

DAY 4

Napoleon Bonaparte -The Rise & Fall: https://www.history.com/topics/france/napoleon

Empress Josephine: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), also known as Napoleon I, was a French military leader and emperor who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. Born on the island of Corsica, Napoleon rapidly rose through the ranks of the military during the French Revolution (1789-1799). After seizing political power in France in a 1799 coup d’état, he crowned himself emperor in 1804. Shrewd, ambitious and a skilled military strategist, Napoleon successfully waged war against various coalitions of European nations and expanded his empire. However, after a disastrous French invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon abdicated the throne two years later and was exiled to the island of Elba. In 1815, he briefly returned to power in his Hundred Days campaign. After a crushing defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, he abdicated once again and was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena, where he died at 51.

In 1796, Napoleon married Josephine de Beauharnais (1763-1814), a stylish widow six years his senior who had two teenage children. More than a decade later, in 1809, after Napoleon had no offspring of his own with Josephine, he had their marriage annulled so he could find a new wife and produce an heir. In 1810, he wed Marie Louise (1791-1847), the daughter of the emperor of Austria. The following year, she gave birth to their son, Napoleon Fran?ois Joseph Charles Bonaparte (1811-1832), who became known as Napoleon II and was given the title king of Rome. In addition to his son with Marie Louise, Napoleon had several illegitimate children.

Joséphine, the eldest daughter of an impoverished aristocrat who had a commission in the navy, lived the first 15 years of her life on the island of Martinique. In 1779 she married a rich young army officer, Alexandre Beauharnais, and moved to Paris. Although she bore him two children, the vain Alexandre was ashamed of her provincial manners and lack of sophistication and declined to present her at the court of Marie-Antoinette at Versailles; his indifference grew so great that in March 1785 she obtained a separation. She remained in Paris three years, learning the ways of the fashionable world, and went back to Martinique in 1788. In 1790 a slave uprising on the island forced Joséphine to return to Paris, which was then in the throes of the French Revolution. She frequented high society, but her life was endangered when her husband, who had been serving in the Revolutionary army, fell out of favour with the left-wing Jacobins - which was the most famous and an egalitarian group of the French Revolution and he was guillotined in June 1794. Joséphine herself was imprisoned, but, after the coup d’état of 9 Thermidor (July 27) put an end to the Reign of Terror, she was released and by the time of the inauguration of the Directorate was a leader of Paris society. No longer unsophisticated, Joséphine was able to catch the fancy of Bonaparte, then a rising young army officer. She agreed to marry him after he had been appointed commander of the Italian expedition. Married in a civil ceremony on March 9, 1796, Joséphine was an indifferent wife, declining to answer the future emperor’s passionate love letters and, while he was campaigning in Egypt in 1798–99, flirting with another army officer in a most compromising manner. Bonaparte threatened to divorce her, but her children dissuaded him, and he eventually forgave her, even agreeing to pay the enormous debts she had accumulated. During the Consulate (1799–1804) she was careful to cause no more scandals and used her social position to advance her husband’s political fortunes. After Napoleon became emperor of the French in May 1804, she persuaded him to marry her anew with religious rites; the ceremony, which the emperor arranged most reluctantly, took place on December 1, 1804.

But her extravagance and, above all, her inability to give Napoleon a son put a strain on their marriage. Hoping to make a politically convenient marriage with Marie-Louise, daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, Napoleon in January 1810 arranged for the nullification of his 1804 marriage on the grounds that a parish priest had not been present at the ceremony. This slight technical irregularity, which seems to have been premeditated, enabled him to dispose of Joséphine without having to resort to a divorce, which would have displeased both the church and the Austrian emperor. Joséphine retreated to her private residence at Malmaison, outside Paris, where she continued to entertain lavishly, with the emperor paying the bills. After Napoleon’s abdication, she won the protection of the Russian emperor Alexander I but died soon after.

GUIDING QUESTIONS (Day 4)

1) What is the legacy of each of these pivotal personalities involved in the Revolution?

-       Napoleon Bonaparte

-       Josephine de Beauharnais

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For this lesson students will need to have read the following Online Journal Article exemplified by the “links” and answer the Guiding Questions each day of a 5-day teaching & learning exercise.

DAY 5

A) Parallels of the French Revolution (1789 - 1799) to the American Revolution (1775-1783) https://www.upi.com/US-founders-and-the-French-Revolution/49661024008366/

It's generally agreed that the War for American Independence (1775-1783) was one of the few revolutions to result in a government better than the one it overthrew. In this respect, it differed from the French Revolution of (1789 - 1799), which began in anarchy, descended into terror and culminated in military dictatorship. The American struggle has been likened to the bloodless Glorious Revolution of 1688, which installed the parliamentary system that is still in place in Britain and in many other democratic countries around the world. The French Revolution has been considered the forerunner of violent upheavals that have ended in despotism.

GUIDING QUESTION (Day 5)

1) What part did Thomas Jefferson play in both The American Revolution (1775 -1783) and the   French Revolution (1789 - 1799)?

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