Talk: French Revolution
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request from the main page:
Somebody PLEASE RE-NEW this article for the sake of Jimbo Wales!!! :) ;(
There was more than one french revolution, and that's not including the Commune uprising. I also think that referring back to the American revolution isn't exactly NPOV. -- Tarquin
- Uf. There are lots of links here. Maybe we should have French Revolutions with links to French Revolution of 1789, French Revolution of 1830, French Revolution of 1848, Fronde, Vendee, French May 1968, Commune de Paris and whatever may be. -- Error 01:32, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
- Of course we all know the Revolution really happened because the French don't play cricket. - Bagpuss
Waooooh. This has to be replaced by a serious article.
This is written by someone who knows some of the history of France and Great Britain but not much. Example: at the time, more "peasants" were landowners in France than in Britain -- by far. Second, British taxation was by way of selective consumption taxes that imposed a heavy burden on the poor. The British aristocracy paid very little taxes. (In 1776, America revolted over taxation -- unfair taxation -- without representation.) Louis XIV's debts had no effect on the French revolution. Isolating the court at Versailles did. He died 74 years before the Revolution. (Wall Street crashed 74 years ago -- is it the cause of the whatever today?) Louis XV could (and should) have resolved the country's finances; France was still one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But, XV stupidly took them into the War of the Austrian Succession for no reason and at great cost. Then, the French & Indian War was a disaster. etc. etc. etc. The roots of the French Revolution can be traced to XV, but it was the privileges (nearly absurd when examined in depth) that the Old Noblesse (including the church Noblesse) refused to give up that created a frustration by ordinary people that change would never come. The French people love their King. The guillotined Louis XVI but then made Napoleon more than a "King", then three more Kings after him until 1871 and even then they wanted another King and today still argue about it. This article needs massive work from someone who knows what they are talking about. The idiocy of the "age of wit" at the French court under XVI exemplifies the decay underway. User:Black Widow
- I don't claim to be a history expert, but I do think that Louis XIV had a lot to do with the Revolution. He waged more wars than either of his successors (though smaller ones, perhaps - I don't know), and he blew a huge amount of money on the construction of Versailles. True, Louis XV could have remedied the situation had he heeded the "Letter to the Dauphin" or whatever it was called, but it was his granddaddy who set the tone for his half-century on the throne.
- And yes, 74 years is a long time, but we've gone through ten presidents in that time, whereas the French only went through two kings. And please explain what the isolation of the Court had to do with the Revolution. -Smack 05:18 20 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- It is infamous that when Zhou Enlai was asked in in 1972 what he though of the effects of the French revolution, he replied that is was, "too soon to tell."
- There is no way we will get actual agreement on the causes or the effects of the French Revolution. The best we can hope for is to present the conflicting theses and attribute them appropriately (e.g. "Simon Schama claims...", "Alfred Cobban claims..." It's a legitimately controversial subject. Come with sources. Even if you can't quote chapter and verse, it's probably reasonably to at least know and acknowledge the genealogy of your views (Marxist? Free-enterprise capitalist?) -- Jmabel 04:51, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- It should not be too hard. See American Civil War for an example that is fairly sane. Daniel Quinlan 04:56, Dec 12, 2003 (UTC)
The Switzerland page states: "In 1798, armies of the French Revolution conquered Switzerland." I think that could be better dealt with on this page. Daniel Quinlan 10:23, Aug 1, 2003 (UTC)
- Seems to me that things like that deserve at least a mention in both places, one cross-referring to the other, which really handles the story. -- Jmabel 04:51, 12 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I've made a few changes to this article, but I'm really hesitant to jump in heavily on a topic where I have at best the equivalent of a good undergraduate's knowledge on a topic outside his or her major. Instead, I've added a Glossary of the French Revolution and a List of people involved in the French Revolution. I hope that, as well as being useful for user reference, these will be of use as places for those of us with a moderate knowledge of the Revolution to effectively build up a set of "pointers" to help one another find what is already in the wikipedia, in order to eventually come back and strengthen this article. Much of the information we would need for a strong article appears to be scattered around the wikipedia, but of that, much has not up to now been easy to identify. -- Jmabel 09:35, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- 8 days and a lot of research later, I'm jumping in. -- Jmabel 23:49, 24 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- I've carried this pretty seriously down through the storming of the Bastille; also, I've moved discussion of causes (as against the history of the revolution itself) out to a separate Causes of the French Revolution.
- Arguably, I've stuck a little too close to Mignet, whom I've been using as a source. He's a bit polemical, which is to say POV, but I believe I know my history well enough to have avoided falling too much into his POV.
- In any case, I'm getting out of this article for a few days. If someone else would like to cover part of the remaining decade (!), which is still mostly as I found it, please leap in. If not, I'll pick up in a few days where I left off. I'm on good dround down to the Thermidorian reaction (1794). Post-Thermidor, I don't know the history that well myself, and will have less ability to evaulate sources, but that leaves me five more years of reasonably solid ground. It would be really, really cool if someone who knows their stuff could cover the Directoire years. -- Jmabel 04:52, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)
In the course of a major rewrite, I've removed the following statement from the article because I believe it to be false. (I suppose the last sentence is true, but it's already elsewhere in the article.)
- The King tried to make the Estates meet in a modern way but the parlements decided that the Estates-General would meet in the same way as it met in 1614: in different chambers for each of the three classes, or Three Estates. Each of the Estates received one vote out of three on all issues.
I am not aware of evidence that the king had this intention. The accounts I've read of the meeting of the Estates general (notably http://www.outfo.org/literature/pg/etext06/8hfrr10.txt, which I am following on this period) tend to contradict this, but provide no direct evidence of the king's intentions, which might have been revealed, for example, in private or official correspondence. If anyone has evidence for the earlier claim, I'd be glad to reinstate something to that effect, but the general quality of the article before I started on it doesn't encourage me to assume a lot of knowledge on the part of the author of this statement. Jmabel 01:16, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)
I know I said I'd stay out of this article for a bit, but...
I followed several other sources at putting the number of deputies to the 1789 Estates General at 600 for the Third Estate and 300 for each of the others. However, http://www.quid.fr/2000/Q017710.htm, which seems to me quite well researched has "1 139 députés élu par 615 bailliages et sénéchaussées, dont clergé 291 (curés 206), noblesse 270 (dont 90 libéraux), tiers état 578 (dont 200 avocats, 3 ecclésiastiques, 11 nobles)", which is to say ""1,139 deputies elected by 615 bailliages and sénéchaussées (regions headed by a bailiff or senechal, respectively) with 291 clergy (206 of them "curés" - priests as against higher clergy), 270 represntatives of the nobility (90 of them liberals), and 578 representatives of the Third Estate (including 200 lawyers, 3 priests, and 11 nobles)." I'm inclined to believe these numbers and, unless someone speaks up to the contrary in the next 72 hours, I'm going to edit the article accordingly. -- Jmabel 18:15, 30 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- I've fixed this in the article, and will deal with it more comprehensively in French States-General. -- Jmabel 08:00, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)
This article now "does the job" down to July 14, 1789, but really falls off after that. -- Jmabel 22:42, 5 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I've extended it a few more months (at the pace I'm going, I'm afraid I'm only doing one month of the revolution each month!). It's already getting awfully big. I've now split out causes & prelude, but it is inevitable that to avoid this becoming massive (like maybe 100KB), we are going to have to split out some of the events unquestionably part of the revolution itself. Since this is part of the History of France series, that's a bit tricky. My suggestion, unless anyone objects, is to keep a broad narrative here, split out periods each into their own article, and create a sort of second-level article-linking box for use in those articles, which will show all of the periods currently given for French History, but will also contain those specific to the French Revolution. I'm prototyping that at Template:French Revolution. -- Jmabel 05:47, 21 May 2004 (UTC)
- No one else seems to be particularly tracking this article, so I guess I'll just go for it. -- Jmabel 06:01, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
| Contents |
Formatting
At the bottom of the article French Revolution, the following
- ''This article makes use of the out-of-copyright'' [http://www.outfo.org/literature/pg/etext06/8hfrr10.txt History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814]'', by François Mignet ([[1824]]), as made available by [[Project Gutenberg]].''
...shows up as...
- This article makes use of the out-of-copyright History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.
On my system, at least, there is an undesired space between the external link and the following comma. I believe this is new with the new software upgrade, and I presume it is not specific to my configuration.
- Does anyone understand what is going on?
- Is there either a fix on the way or a good, generalizable workaround? (Obviously in this case I could move the restart of the italics to after the comma, but I'm interested in a general solution)
-- Jmabel 04:35, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
- Are you seeing an icon following the external link? (Looks like two intersecting boxes). If not, there could be some browser/compatibility issue: there's meant to be an icon there, and it's present for me. - Nunh-huh 05:32, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
- I am not seeing a space. →Raul654 05:28, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
- Try refreshing the page (Mozilla: click Reload (or Ctrl-R), IE / Opera: Ctrl-F5, Safari: Cmd-R, Konqueror Ctrl-R). There should be an image after the link. Can you see other images on Wikipedia ok? Angela. 08:15, 30 May 2004 (UTC)
- I'm seeing the same problem. Screenshot:
- This seems to only occur when the external link wraps around because it reaches the edge of the screen. (Note that the icon on the second external link, which doesn't wrap around, shows up fine while the first link wraps around and has the problem.) That's the way it's been happening whenever I've seen this. Also note that a slice of the icon does show up after the "to", when the link wraps around.
- Perhaps the reason others aren't having the problem is because they're using a different screen resolution from Jmabel, so the text wraps at different places? I'm using 800x600, and I would guess Jmabel is too. LuckyWizard 06:20, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
- Yup. And 800 x 600 should be supported, no? -- Jmabel 20:20, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
- I'm running at 1024 x 768, and I've seen the same problem, though on other pages. I'd say the issue is just one of wrapping within a link. Anyone could reproduce it by adjusting their browser width to cause a wrap in a multi-word link. -Rholton 14:38, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Useful sources
I've noticed http://membres.lycos.fr/histoire1789/, which I plan to read through to see if it covers topics we've overlooked, and which seems to me to be probably good enough to mention in the article even though it's in French. Does anyone have other useful sources (especially online sources) to recommend? -- Jmabel 06:00, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC) (adding) http://mapage.noos.fr/mlopez/index1.htm also looks good. Also in French. -- Jmabel 06:04, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)
The navbox template
I have an idea for a slightly modified template design, but I'm not sure if it's too fancy. Does anyone have any particularly strong thoughts on the issue?
-Didactohedron 02:09, Nov 18, 2004 (UTC)
Tennis Court Oath
With reference to the members of the first two estates who joined the communes shortly after the Oath, someone recently and anonymously added, "Their desire to weaken the power of the monarchy outweighed the loss of power they suffered through empowering the Third Estate." I don't think this is on the mark, and I am reverting. Abbé Sieyès, for example, identified almost totally with the Third Estate, as did much of the lower clergy. I suggest that if we want to get into motivations at this level, we take it up in one of the more detailed articles rather than here in the main overview article. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:09, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
