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Unlock This CourseAt the end of June the king seemed to have accepted the National Assembly. In fact, he was calling thousands of soldiers to Paris and Versailles. Many came from Swiss and German regiments in the French army, which were thought more likely to obey an order to fire on French crowds. Then, on 11 July, Louis dismissed Necker, the one minister ordinary people trusted.
The news reached Paris on 12 July. Parisians put the two things together: the king was about to close the Assembly by force and punish the city.
After the bad harvest of 1788, bread prices in Paris reached their peak in July 1789. Hungry people were angry and ready to act.
Troops were gathering round the city. People believed the king and the nobles were plotting to crush the Assembly.
Necker's dismissal. At the Palais-Royal, a young lawyer, Camille Desmoulins, called on the crowd to take up arms.
On 12 and 13 July crowds attacked the customs posts around Paris, where taxes were charged on food coming into the city, and raided gunsmiths' shops. The men who had elected the Paris deputies set up a committee at the city hall to keep order. It formed a citizens' militia, soon called the National Guard.
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On the morning of 14 July a crowd took about 30,000 muskets from a military hospital, the Invalides. Now they needed gunpowder, and it was stored in the Bastille.
The governor of the Bastille, de Launay, had just over 100 soldiers. He refused to hand over the powder. When part of the crowd got into the outer courtyard, his men opened fire and nearly 100 attackers were killed. In the afternoon, French Guards, soldiers who had gone over to the people, arrived with cannon. De Launay surrendered. The crowd killed him and freed the prisoners. There were only seven.
The fortress hardly mattered. What mattered was what its fall showed: Louis had lost Paris and could not trust his army to win it back.
The peasants were hungry too. The new harvest was not yet in, and the roads were full of people looking for work or begging. The cahiers had raised hopes that feudal dues would end, but nothing had changed.
When news of the Bastille reached the villages, rumours came with it. People said the nobles were hiring gangs of brigands (armed robbers) to destroy the ripening crops and take revenge on the Third Estate. No such gangs existed, but from about 20 July to 6 August panic ran from village to village.
They armed themselves, then turned on their lords. They broke into châteaux (the nobles' country houses) and burned the documents that listed the feudal dues they owed. Some châteaux were burned too. Few people were killed. The target was the feudal system.
Royal authority in the countryside collapsed, and peasants stopped paying dues and tithes. The deputies at Versailles, many of them landowners, were alarmed. They had to act fast to calm the countryside. Their answer comes in The August Decrees and the Rights of Man.
The short-term causes form a chain. The failure of Calonne and Brienne left the king nearly bankrupt and forced him to call the Estates General. That gave the Third Estate the chance to set up the National Assembly. When Louis tried to win back control with troops, Paris rose and the Bastille fell. The Great Fear then carried the Revolution into the countryside. Each step took more power from the king.
'The main reason why Louis XVI lost control of France in the years 1787-89 was the storming of the Bastille.'
How far do you agree? Explain your answer.
You may use the following in your answer:
You must also use information of your own. [16 marks]
I agree only partly. The storming of the Bastille was the moment Louis lost the power to use force, but he had been losing control since 1787.
The Bastille mattered because it took away the king's last weapon. In early July 1789 Louis moved troops to Paris and on 11 July dismissed Necker, so it seemed he was about to crush the National Assembly. When the crowd captured the Bastille on 14 July, helped by French Guards who had changed sides, Louis saw that he could not rely on his army. He sent the troops away, recalled Necker and on 17 July wore the tricolour in Paris. The city was now run by its own council and guarded by the National Guard. The Assembly survived because of 14 July.
However, the policies of Calonne and Brienne had already weakened the king badly. Calonne's land tax was rejected by the Assembly of Notables in 1787, and Brienne's attempt to force new taxes through led to the revolt of the nobles in 1788. By August 1788 the treasury had stopped payments in cash and Louis was forced to call the Estates General. This shows that he had lost control of his finances and of his own nobles a year before the Bastille fell.
A third reason is the setting up of the National Assembly. On 17 June 1789 the Third Estate deputies claimed to speak for the nation, and in the Tennis Court Oath they swore to give France a constitution. When Louis ordered them to separate on 23 June they refused, and by 27 June he had given in. This was a loss of political control, because a body he had not created was now limiting his power.
Overall, the storming of the Bastille was not the main reason, although it was the most dramatic. Judged by which event the others depended on, the failure of Calonne and Brienne matters most. Near bankruptcy forced Louis to call the Estates General, which made the National Assembly possible, and the Bastille was stormed only to defend that Assembly. The Bastille confirmed a loss of control that had begun in 1787.
What lifts it to the top level: it covers three reasons, one of them not in the bullets, and the judgement uses a clear test (which event the others depended on) to rank them.
An answer that uses only the two bullets cannot reach the top level, so plan your third reason before you start. Here the National Assembly, the Tennis Court Oath or the Great Fear would all work. Then say in your conclusion how you are judging 'main': the reason that came first, the one the others depended on, or the one that did most damage to the king.