French Revolution

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"Charles Dorian: "Old... Connor and his Assassins... The American Revolution undid your Templar business."
Shay Cormac: "Then perhaps we shall start a revolution of our own."

―Last conversation of Charles Dorian, Versailles, 1776

The French Revolution was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France that began in 1789 and ended in 1799 with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte. During this period, French citizens razed and redesigned the country's political landscape, uprooting centuries-old institutions such as absolute monarchy and the feudal system. Like the American Revolution before it, the French Revolution was influenced by Enlightenment ideals, particularly the concepts of popular sovereignty and inalienable rights. Although it failed to achieve all of its goals and at times degenerated into a chaotic bloodbath, the movement played a critical role in shaping modern nations by showing the world the power inherent in the will of the people.

The Revolution was orchestrated in part by the radical faction of the Parisian Rite of the Templar Order led by François-Thomas Germain, a Sage, a reincarnation of the Isu Aita, who wanted to achieve the Great Work of Jacques de Molay, another Sage and the Grand Master of the Templar Order who was executed by the King Philip IV of France. Germain profited of the Revolution to reform the Templar Order and destroy the French monarchy, avenging de Molay's death and shaping a new society to be control by the Templars.

Prelude to the Revolution

The conception of the Revolution began at the end of the 18th century, when François-Thomas Germain, a silversmith and a member of the Templar Order in Paris, was haunted by visions which led him to the Jacques de Molay's vault under the Temple. There, he found the Codex Pater Intellectus, a book where de Molay wrote his thoughts about the First Civilization and his views about the future of the Templar Order and the human kind. For him, the Templar Order needed to be more secret and rule the society in the shadows using Capitalism and the middle class as a mean to assure the Great Work. Germain understood that, in some ways, he was connected to de Molay and he was his prophet. The two were in fact Sages, human person with the memories of Aita, a member of the Isu and husband of Juno, who wanted to control humanity.

Germain returned before the other Templars and explained that the Templars needed to reform, retire from the aristocracy, the offices of Church and the State which corrupt their true purpose and to end the French monarchy, who had arrested and execute Jacques de Molay and the Templars. The Grand Master of the Parisian Rite, François de la Serre, saw Germain as an extremist and a heretic and expelled him from the Order. However some of the Templars were convinced by the words of Germain. One of them, Marie Lévesque, helped Germain to create his own faction of Templar. Together, they began to plan to take over the leadership of the Parisian Rite and finish the French monarchy.

At the end 18th century, the political and social situation in France gave the perfect opportunity for the radical faction to take control. The France’s costly involvement in the American Revolutionary War and extravagant spending by King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette and their predecessor had left the country on the brink of bankruptcy. Not only were the royal coffers depleted, but two decades of poor cereal harvests, drought, cattle disease and skyrocketing bread prices had kindled unrest among peasants and the urban poor. Many expressed their desperation and resentment toward a regime that imposed heavy taxes yet failed to provide relief by rioting, looting and striking.

In the fall of 1786, Louis XVI's controller general, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, proposed a financial reform package that included a universal land tax from which the privileged classes would no longer be exempt. To garner support for these measures and forestall a growing aristocratic revolt, the king summoned the Estates-General, an assembly composed of representants of Church, nobility and the Third Estate. The meeting was scheduled for the 5 May 1789; in the meantime, delegates of the three estates from each locality would compile lists of grievances (“cahiers de doléances”) to present to the king.

History

Estates-General of 1789

On the 5 May 1789, the deputies of the different Estates assembled at the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs in Versailles to open the Estates-General with a speech from the king. During the speech, the noble deputy and Grand Master François de la Serre secretly met the deputy of the Third Estate and Mentor of the Parisian Brotherhood of Assassins Honoré Mirabeau. Together, they spoke about the future of France and decided to make a truced between their factions. During the night, François de la Serre organised a ball at the Palace of Versailles for the induction of his daughter, Élise de la Serre, as a member of the Templar Order. But after the ceremony, the Grand Master was murdered by Charles Gabriel Sivert and the Roi des Thunes, two members of Germain's faction. With the death of de la Serre, a civil war between the Templars began, Germain taking the title of Grand Master for the extremist faction, and Élise taking the role of his father for the old guard.

During the meeting, the primary problem was the voting process: a vote by order, which favorised the nobles and clergymen, or by head, which favorised the Third-Estate. The highly public debate over its voting process had erupted into hostility between the three orders, eclipsing the original purpose of the meeting and the authority of the man who had convened it. On June 17, with talks over procedure stalled, the Third Estate met alone, invating members of the other two orders and formally adopted the title of National Assembly; three days later, they met in a nearby indoor tennis court and took the so-called Tennis Court Oath, vowing not to disperse until constitutional reform had been achieved. Among the deputies, there were Mirabeau, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, and also Maximilien de Robespierre, a Templar from Germain's faction. On June 23, the king ordered to disolve the Assembly, but the Mentor stated that they would "yield to nothing but bayonets". Within a week, most of the clerical deputies and 47 liberal nobles had joined them, and on June 27 Louis XVI grudgingly absorbed all three orders into the new assembly.

Popular revolt

On July 12, as the National Assembly continued to meet at Versailles to work on a new Constitution, fear and violence consumed the capital. Though enthusiastic about the recent breakdown of royal power, Parisians grew panicked after the news of the remplacement of the Controller-General of Finances Jacques Necker, who have sympathy with the Third Estate, by the more conservatist Joseph Foullon de Doué, and also as rumors of the arrestation of the Assembly and an impending military coup in Paris by the royal troops began to circulate. At the Palais-Royal, the journalist Camille Desmoulins called the parisian population to take ups the arms. The popular insurgency also have the supports of the militaries of the French Guard, and the 13 July was created the National Guard, which have for purpose to restore order in the capital.

On July 14, rioters took riffles in the Invalides but need gunpowder. So the insurgent went to the Bastille to reclame gunpowder to his governor Bernard-René de Launay. After he refused, the crowd stormed the Bastille. Among the rioters there was Élise de la Serre, who wanted to liberated Arno Dorian, her step brother and lover who was wrongfully imprisoned for François de la Serre's murder.The young man succeeded to escape from the prison with the help of Pierre Bellec, a Master Assassin who had trained Arno's father, Charles Dorian. After the storming, the prisonnners where liberated and the governor de Launay was killed, beheaded and his head placed on pike. The events of this day, now commemorated in France as a national holiday, as the start of the French Revolution.

After the Bastille, the King withdrew his troops and recalled Necker in his government. On July 15, The Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of the American Revolution and an ally of the Assassins, was elected as the commandant of the National Guard. At this time in Paris, Joseph Foullon de Doué began to hoard food to sell it at a higher price. The Assassins helped the people to access to the food and the 22 July, the crowd hung de Doué to a lamp Place des Grèves before beheading him.

The wave of revolutionary fervor and widespread hysteria quickly swept the countryside. Revolting against years of exploitation, peasants looted and burned the homes of tax collectors, landlords and the seigniorial elite. Known as the Great Fear, the agrarian insurrection hastened the growing exodus of nobles from the country and inspired the National Constituent Assembly to abolish feudalism and priviledges of Clergy on August 4 night, ending the Ancien Régime.

On August 26, the Assembly, under an idea of Lafayette and Mirabeau, adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a statement of democratic principles grounded in the philosophical and political ideas of Enlightenment thinkers. The document proclaimed the Assembly’s commitment to replace the Ancien Régime with a system based on equal opportunity, property, freedom of speech, popular sovereignty and representative government.

Even with the resolution of political problems, the French population starved. On October 5, the women who worked in Paris marketplaces began to protest, leading by Théroigne de Méricourt, and began a march on Versailles to speak to the royal family. Taking arms from the Hôtel de Ville and being support by the National Guard, the protestation was infiltrated by the radical Templars, who wanted to create a violent riot against the royal family. A team of Assassins was sent to protected Méricourt and killed the Templar agents. The crowd arrived in the Palace of Versailles without harm and after audience and the breaking of the Palace, the King said to the crowd that he accepted the Constitution and that he returned to Paris.

The same day, the radical Templars killed every supporter of Élise de la Serre. The heiress of de la Serre escaped by jumping in the Seine. She decided to train herself better before resuming her quest of revenge.

Time of changes

After the popular revolts, the Kingdom of France experienced many changes. Politically, the royal family resided in the Tuileries Palace in Paris and the National Assembly in the Salle du Manège near the Jardins des Tuileries. The National Assembly was elected by the people and the territory was reorganised in departement. Many political club opened during the Revolution, as the Jacobins Club. The Bastille was dissassembled to erase the symbol of arbitraty of monarchy and used the stone for other monuments, as the Concord bridge. The freedom of press increased with a numbers of journals, revolutionnary, as "L'Ami du peuple" of Jean-Paul Marat or royalist as "Les Actes des Apôtres", created to informe population of the events in the country. For decreasing the debt of France a new paper money was created, the assignats which was backed by the values of the properties of Church confiscated by the Nation. The Walls of the Farmers-General were destroyed and with the end of privileges, everyone payed taxes.

The equality between people was searched in every fields, even in death. The Dr Guillotin militated for the equality of the death sentence, Antoine Louis and Tobias Schmidt worked on a machine which would make the death painless, it was name the Guillotine and used as the only mean for death sentence in France. The Church in France was also reformed with the requisition of land of Church and the end of monastic vows. On the 12 July 1790, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was approved, ending the monastic orders in France and the clergymen must now juring oath to the State of France and not the Pope. The priest who refused were called "refractory priests" and the Pope didn't recognized the Constitution. A year after the storming of the Bastille was organized the Fête de la Fédération, to prove the unity of the country with the King, the National Assembly and the People. The ceremony was in fact a success.

During this time, the Assassins tried to make the Revolution peacefull as possible, as Mirabeau was in the National Assembly and served as an advisor for the King. The Mentor wanted also to observe the truce he made with de La Serre, so the Templars profited of this to make their plans. In January 1791, with the population attacking nobles and churches, Charles Gabriel Sivert organized a smuggling network to protecte nobles and clergymen in return of their wealths. Knowing that, the Assassin Council ended the truce and appointed Arno Dorian, who became an Assassin, to investigate on de la Serre's murder. After assassinating his step-father's murderers, Sivert in Notre-Dame and the Roi des Thunes in the Cour des Miracles, Arno discovered that they had a connection with Germain, but Arno believing that he was only the silversmith who created the Templar pin which killed de la Serre. Interrogated by Arno, Germain profited of his ignorance to mislead the Assassin and said that Chrétien Lafrenière was the Templar who hired him to create the pin. Arno discovered that Lafrenière prepared an attack and destroyed his stock in the Halle aux Blés and assassinated Lafrenière in the Holy Innocents' Cemetery while he was in a reunion with Templars of other rites.

In fact, Lafrenière was the most loyal man of de la Serre, even preventing him of the trahison which cost his life, and the attack he prepared wasn't against the Assassins but the Hôtel de Beauvais, where radical Templars had a reunion. While the Jaccobins listened a speech of Robespierre, under the Hôtel de Beauvais Germain reunited with his advisors: Marie Lévesque, Louis-Michel le Peletier, Aloys la Touche, the lieutenant of the Roi des Thunes, and Frédéric Rouille, a captain of the National Guard. They orchestrated the next step of their plan: while Lévesque will organized a food hoarding to make the population more violent, Rouille will collected proofs that incriminate the King as a counterrevolutionary and le Peletier, as a member of the National Assembly, will assurated that this proofs served for the trial of the King. Germain also declared that he had set a trap to kill Élise de la Serre, but Arno who eavesdropped the reunion, saved Élise.

Arno proposed an alliance between Élise and the Assassins to track the radical Templar but many Assassins opposed to that even if Mirabeau wanted to help the young Templar to ensured a future peace with the Templar Order. But the alliance was never conclued as Mirabeau was poisoned by Pierre Bellec and tried to incriminated Élise for the murder. Bellec also tried to poison all the Assassins to reform the Brotherhood as army and not a political force but Arno killed him in the Sainte-Chapelle. With the deaths of two Master of the Council, the Assassins refused the alliance with Élise and Arno was dismissed on the investigation of de la Serre's murder. Mirabeau was cremated and the National Assembly buried him in the Panthéon as a hero of the Revolution.

Fall of Monarchy

With the death of Mirabeau, the King lost his most powerful supporter in the National Assembly. Feeling more as a prisoner than a king in Paris, the 20 June 1791, Louis XVI flew with his family to Varenne but they were recognized and brang back to Paris. This event dicreased the popularity of the King and some deputies as Danton and Robespierre reclaimed the deposition of Louis and the proclamation of a French Republic. The Jacobins who wanted the King to stay formed the Feuillants Club. The things get worse when the 17 July, a crowd reunited on the Champ de Mars to sign a petition for the removal the King were shot by the National Guard led by Lafayette. On September the Constittion was adopted, France was the a constitutional monarchy, the King could choose his government and had a veto against laws.

But the threat of war against the Habsburg dynasty, the family of the Queen Marie-Antoinette, increased at the end of the year 1791, as the brother of the Queen had sympathy for the counterrevolutionnaries and wanted to retablish the autority of his brother-in-law. The Girondists, deputies of the Legislative Assembly, wanted to declare war against the Austria, hoping to spread the revolutionary ideals across Europe through warfare. On the other hand, the Montagnards, led by Robespierre, wanted to keep the peace to consolidate the Revolution in France. Otherwise, in April 1792, the Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria and the French Army invaded the Austrian Netherlands, beginning the French Revolutionary Wars. Prussia joined Austria in the war.

In Paris, the population began to starve as Marie Lévesque and Flavigny hoarded food during the summer 1792 to anger the crowd. Théroigne de Méricourt investigated on that case and helped by the Assassins recovered the food before the Assassins killed Flavigny.

With numbers defeats on the front, the Assembly proclamed a military conscription and many troops arrived in Paris. With the news of an alliance between the King of France and the counterrevolutionnaries army and the upkeep of the King, a part of the population of Paris, influenced by the Jacobins, revolted and took power in the Hôtel de Ville on the 9 August 1792 and organized as the Commune. The next day, the Commune was supported by the the National Guard and attacked the Tuileries Palace. In the angry mob, Frédéric Rouille led a group of Templars to enter in the palace to recover proofs of the King's treason against the Nation. The Assassins Council, which discovered that Mirabeau had sent letters to the King with important informations on the Brotherhood in France, sent Arno Dorian to infiltrate the palace and destroyed the letters before the Templars recovered its. In the King's office, the Assassin met a young soldier, Napoleon Bonaparte, who searched a key to open a temple of the First Civilization under the Basilica of Saint-Denis. The two allied and took what they searched before fleing when Rouille and his men arrived. The Templars recovered the proofs they need for the trial of the King. During the attacked the royal family flee the palace protected by the Swiss guards and arrived in the Salle du Manège to be protected by the Legislative Assembly. But when the rioters arrived, the King was arrested and prisoned in the Temple. The Legislative Assembly was replaced by the National Convention with a strong influence of the Commune.

The following month, a wave of violence occured in Paris and France's prisons with the preventive executions of accused counterrevolutionaries, to prevent a royalist uprising. Many of the prisoners were common criminals or non-juring priest. Rouille and his men led an attack on the Grand Châtelet and began to kill the prisoners. Arno, who tracked Rouille since the 10 August, infiltrated the prison and assassinated the captain without the permission of the Council. The 2 September, a Austrian spy ring tried to deliver informations on Paris' defense and to kill Georges Danton. A team of Assassins saved Danton, who became an ally of the Brotherhood, and killed the Austrian spies. On 20 September, the French army defeated the Austrian army at Valmy. With this victory, the next day the National Convention proclaimed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the French republic. A new calendar and the universal suffrage were instored, the Convention was in his majority Girondist after the first election.

During the month of October, the Templar Marie Lévesque continued to hoard the food arriving in Paris. Her plan was to accuse the royal family of hoarding the food to starve the people. She organized a party in the Luxembourg Palace, which serve also as a prison at this time but also as the location where the food was stocked, and intended that the guests discovered the food. But her plan failed as Élise de la Serre moved the food and Arno Dorian killed her during the party.

On December 11, after the discover of documents in the Tuileries Palace incriminating the former King in an alliance with the Austrian monarchy to end the Revolution, the Convention opened a trial against Louis Capet. Judging him for treason against the Revolution and the Nation, the deputies recognized him guilty the 15 January 1793. The next day, the Convention voted the sentence of Louis Capet. With 360 votes for execution and 360 votes for clemency, the Templar Louis-Michel le Peletier made the 361st vote for execution. After the trial, le Peletier informed Germain of the result and promised he could see the execution. On 20 January, le Peletier assisted to a party in the Palais-Égalité and was assassinated by Arno who need information on Germain's location. Le Peletier was seen as a martyr of the Revolution.

The next morning at the Place de la Révolution, the public Execution of Louis XVI began. A scaffold was builted with a guillotine and the executioner Charles-Henri Sanson oversaw the execution of Louis. The crowd amassed to see the death of the former King. Germain, who saw the event from a tribune, was confronted by Arno. Explaining to the Assassin as that the population didn't fear anymore the power of nobility and Church, the Templars could control the population with gold. When Louis was guillotined, Germain declared the de Molay was avenged and flee the place before Arno could kill him. As Élise de la Serre came to save Arno from Germain's henchmen, Arno decided to protect her instead of following Germain. This decision infuriated Élise and she decided to end their partnership as Arno couldn't sacrifice her life to avenge her father's death. After this Arno was summoned by the Assassin Council who discovered that Arno resumed his hunt for Germain without their permission. As it was the third time he disobeyed to the Council, Arno was expelled from the Brotherhood.

The Revolution Turns Radical: Terror and Revolt

Following the king’s execution, war with various European powers and intense divisions within the National Convention ushered the French Revolution into its most violent and turbulent phase. In June 1793, the Jacobins seized control of the National Convention from the more moderate Girondins and instituted a series of radical measures, including the establishment of a new calendar and the eradication of Christianity. They also unleashed the bloody Reign of Terror (“la Terreur”), a 10-month period in which suspected enemies of the revolution were guillotined by the thousands. Many of the killings were carried out under orders from Robespierre, who dominated the draconian Committee of Public Safety until his own execution on July 28, 1794. His death marked the beginning of the Thermidorian Reaction, a moderate phase in which the French people revolted against the Reign of Terror’s excesses.

End of the Revolution and Impact

On August 22, 1795, the National Convention, composed largely of Girondins who had survived the Reign of Terror, approved a new constitution that created France’s first bicameral legislature. Executive power would lie in the hands of a five-member Directory (“Directoire”) appointed by parliament. Royalists and Jacobins protested the new regime but were swiftly silenced by the army, now led by a young and successful general named Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821).

The Directory’s four years in power were riddled with financial crises, popular discontent, inefficiency and, above all, political corruption. By the late 1790s, the directors relied almost entirely on the military to maintain their authority and had ceded much of their power to the generals in the field. On November 9, 1799, as frustration with their leadership reached a fever pitch, Bonaparte staged a coup d’état, abolishing the Directory and appointing himself France’s “first consul.” The event marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era, in which France would come to dominate much of continental Europe.

Trivia

• Overall, the Revolution did see the abolishment of the Ancien Régime and the French monarchy, but it also and established principles of inalienable rights in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
• After the abolishment of the Kingdom of France, the French Republic was founded. However, this gave way to many upheavals and executions. Furthermore, the major powers of Europe felt threatened by the new republic's revolutionary ideals, and waged war on France, taking advantage of its destabilized government. In the wake of the ensuing chaos, the French Empire was founded by Napoleon Bonaparte, who used an Apple of Eden to expand the holdings of his new empire.

References

ru:Великая французская революция