The French Revolution

The French Revolution, which began in 1789, was in many respects more sweeping than its American counterpart. While the American revolutionaries ended rule by a government thousands of miles away, French revolutionaries toppled a monarchy that had existed for centuries and executed King Louis XVI. Some historians consider the French Revolution the first true revolution in history. While the American Revolution was really a war for national independence, the French Revolution replaced a monarchical, feudal society with a republic. In 1792, French revolutionaries even created a new calendar, beginning with the year I, as though they had begun the world anew.

Like their American counterparts, the French revolutionaries declared that citizens were entitled to specific freedoms, and that government had a duty to protect those freedoms. In the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), the revolutionaries asserted that citizens possessed a right to participate in choosing their leaders, freedom of speech, press, and religion, equality before the law, property rights, and freedom from unfair arrest and punishment. The Declaration of the Rights of Man obviously contains many similarities to the bills of rights included in state constitutions in the U.S., as well as to the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution) proposed in 1789.