The French Revolution (1789 to 1799) was the overthrow of France's absolute monarchy and its society of legal privilege, and the decade of conflict over what should replace it. It began because the crown was bankrupt: Louis XVI called the Estates-General in May 1789 to raise taxes, and the Third Estate, representing about 97 per cent of the population, declared itself the National Assembly. The Bastille fell on 14 July. Feudal privileges were abolished and the rights of man declared. The monarchy failed, war came in 1792, the king was executed in January 1793, and the Republic turned to the Terror. It ended with Napoleon Bonaparte's coup in November 1799.

The short version: five phases

Almost every textbook splits the decade the same way, even if the names vary. Learning the phases first, and the events second, is what makes the revolution hang together.

If you only remember one shape, remember this: power moved left, from king to moderate assembly to radical Republic, peaked in 1793 to 1794, then swung back to the centre and into one man's hands.

Why it started

There are four causes students are expected to explain, and they work together rather than in a list.

A broken tax system. France was divided into three estates. The First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility), together around 2 to 3 per cent of the population, held large privileges, including exemption from much direct taxation. The Third Estate, everyone else from rich lawyers to landless peasants, paid most of the tax.

Debt. France had fought expensive wars, most recently helping the American colonies against Britain from 1778. By the late 1780s a large share of the royal budget went on interest. Ministers proposed taxing the privileged, and the privileged refused. The crown's way out was to call the Estates-General, which had not met since 1614.

Bread. The harvest of 1788 was disastrous. By the spring and summer of 1789 bread prices in Paris were at their highest in decades, and a labourer could spend most of a day's wage on bread. Hunger brought ordinary Parisians and peasants into politics.

Ideas. Enlightenment writers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, and the example of the American Revolution, gave educated members of the Third Estate a language for their complaints: sovereignty belongs to the nation, not the king, and rights belong to citizens, not orders. The abbé Sieyès's pamphlet of early 1789, "What is the Third Estate?", answered its own question: everything.

1789: the year everything changes

The opening year is the one exams ask about most, and it moves fast.

• 5 May: the Estates-General opens at Versailles. The dispute is immediate: vote by order (each estate one vote, so the privileged win two to one) or by head (the Third Estate had been given double representation).
• 17 June: the Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly.
• 20 June: locked out of their hall, the deputies swear the Tennis Court Oath not to separate until France has a constitution.
• 11 July: the king dismisses the popular minister Necker and troops gather around Paris.
• 14 July: Parisians storm the Bastille, a royal fortress and prison, looking for gunpowder. It held only seven prisoners. Its fall becomes the symbol of the revolution.
• Late July: the Great Fear: panic and peasant uprisings in the countryside, with manor houses attacked and records of feudal dues burned.
• 4 August: the Assembly abolishes feudal privileges in a single night session.
• 26 August: the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: men are born and remain free and equal in rights; sovereignty lies with the nation.
• 5 to 6 October: the Women's March on Versailles. Thousands of Parisian women march over bread prices, and the royal family is brought back to Paris.

From monarchy to Republic

Phase 2 is an attempt to share power with the king. The Assembly reorganises France into departments, sells Church land to pay the debt, and in July 1790 passes the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which makes priests elected state employees. Many priests refuse the oath, and religion splits the country.

In June 1791 the royal family tries to flee in disguise and is caught at Varennes. A constitution with a king is passed that September anyway, but almost nobody trusts him again.

In April 1792 France declares war on Austria, soon joined by Prussia. The war goes badly. On 10 August 1792 the Paris crowd and National Guard storm the Tuileries palace and the king is suspended. In September, prisoners are massacred in the Paris jails, the French win at Valmy, and on 21 September the new National Convention abolishes the monarchy. France is a republic.

The Terror

Louis XVI, tried as "Citizen Louis Capet", is executed on 21 January 1793. Within weeks France is at war with most of Europe, and in March a royalist and Catholic revolt breaks out in the Vendée in the west.

The Convention responds by concentrating power. The Committee of Public Safety is created in April 1793. In June the radical Jacobins, the Montagnards, purge their more moderate rivals, the Girondins. In September the Terror is declared "the order of the day" and the Law of Suspects allows the arrest of almost anyone. Marie Antoinette is executed in October.

Around 17,000 people were officially sentenced to death across France, and many thousands more died in prison or were killed without trial, especially in the Vendée. Maximilien Robespierre, the Committee's best-known member, justified it as the virtue of the Republic defending itself. On 27 July 1794 (9 Thermidor Year II in the revolutionary calendar) the Convention turned on him, and he was guillotined the next day.

Thermidor, the Directory and Napoleon

After Robespierre, the Convention dismantles the Terror and writes a new constitution with a two-chamber legislature and an executive of five Directors. The Directory, from 1795, is a republic for property owners. It is squeezed from both sides by royalists and radicals, overturns elections it dislikes, and depends more and more on the army.

The army's most successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte, takes power in the coup of 18 Brumaire, 9 November 1799. Most historians end the revolution here. Napoleon keeps much of what it built, including legal equality, the end of feudal dues and a centralised state, later written into the Civil Code of 1804. He removes the elections and the free press.

What it changed

A good exam answer does not stop at "the king died". The lasting changes:

• Sovereignty of the nation. Power comes from the people, not from God through the king.
• Legal equality. The end of the three estates, noble privilege and feudal dues.
• Rights. The 1789 Declaration became a model for later declarations, though it left out women (Olympe de Gouges answered it with a Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791) and, at first, enslaved people in the colonies. The Convention abolished slavery in 1794, after the uprising in Saint-Domingue; Napoleon restored it in 1802.
• Left and right. The terms come from where deputies sat in the Assembly.
• A model of revolution. Every later revolution, from 1848 to 1917, was argued about in its terms.

A scene plan for a five minute video

The revolution is a story with a clear shape, so a drawn timeline with a "power" marker that moves left and right works well:

1. A pyramid of the three estates, the Third at the bottom carrying the weight.
2. The royal treasury, empty, and a loaf of bread with its price going up.
3. Versailles, May 1789: three doors, one vote each, the Third Estate's door twice as wide.
4. The Tennis Court Oath, then the Bastille: the power marker moves from king to Assembly.
5. 4 August and the Declaration: the pyramid flattened.
6. Varennes: the king's carriage stopped. The marker moves further left.
7. War, the Tuileries, the Republic, the king's execution.
8. The Terror: the Committee of Public Safety in the centre, the marker at its furthest left.
9. Thermidor, the Directory, then Napoleon: the marker swings back and lands in one place.

The painted printing press sample below is a different historical topic, but it shows how a painted style handles a period subject without photos.

Make your own version for class

Most French Revolution assignments are questions, not topics: was it caused more by money or by ideas, was the Terror a betrayal of 1789 or its result, did Napoleon end the revolution or complete it. Pick one and let the scenes be evidence. How to make a timeline video for history class covers turning a prompt into a thesis and choosing events, and how to make a history explainer video covers avoiding anachronistic images.

1. 1

   Turn the question into a thesis

   One sentence you can defend, such as: the Terror grew out of war and civil war more than out of the ideas of 1789. It decides which events you keep.

2. 2

   Pick 10 to 14 dated events

   Use the lists above, and check each date against your textbook and one other source. Write one line on what happened and one on why it matters to your thesis.

3. 3

   Write the script, one paragraph per scene

   Open with the thesis, end with your answer, and include the strongest counter-argument. At 150 spoken words a minute, 750 words is five minutes.

4. 4

   Paste it into openCanviz

   Choose Keep my wording and a target length. Painted or poster styles suit the period. Draw the power marker as a recurring element so it moves across scenes.

5. 5

   Check dates, names and costumes

   Pause on each scene. Drafted drawings can get dates, names like Sieyès or Girondins, and period details wrong. Fix any scene in the editor before you hand it in.

For revising this before an essay exam rather than presenting it, see the best way to study for a history essay exam.

Common questions

What were the main causes of the French Revolution? Royal bankruptcy after costly wars, a tax system that exempted the privileged, a bad harvest and high bread prices in 1788 to 1789, and Enlightenment ideas about rights and the sovereignty of the nation. The debt forced the Estates-General to meet; the other causes decided what happened once it did.

Why is 14 July celebrated? It marks the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the moment the people of Paris acted and the king backed down. It has been France's national day since 1880.

Did Marie Antoinette say "let them eat cake"? There is no evidence she did. A similar line appears in Rousseau's Confessions, written when she was a child in Austria.

When did the French Revolution end? Most historians date the end to Napoleon's coup of 9 November 1799. Some extend it to 1804, when he became Emperor, or argue the conflicts it opened lasted through the nineteenth century.