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The Tale Of A Revolution A tribute to the French Revolution by Sharmista Banerjee

The Tale Of A Revolution
A tribute to the French Revolution.

From afar, France was a fancy and opulent country brimming with beauty.
But what missed everybody’s eyes was the bloodshed on the streets.
And the tyranny of the king, but to him, it was his right and duty.
And above all, he based all that power on Divine Right, how sweet.

The country of France was slashed into three,
The First, the Second and the Third Estate.
Now the First and Second, the Clergy and Nobility, were the arrogant and egocentric breed,
Brimming with ego, supported by every ‘birth’ right, but free from the taxes which could cause them to bate.

But these two Estates only populated 2% of the country,
While the Third Estate, consisting of craftsmen, laborers, lawyers, merchants and peasants,
Filled up an entire 98% of the country!
Above all that, taxes on them were omnipresent!
In fact, they were the providers of the two Estates before them!

But every community has it’s breaking point,
A limit that’s better left untouched.
Apparently, neither the royalty, nor the Clergy and nor the Nobility understood this, and to the Third Estate this fact was, on their unhealed wounds, an unbearable anoint!
Might I tell you, this limit was broken after a calamity and a government expose came over the country, much to the Third Estate's disgust!

And so the king decided to call an Estates General meeting for a vote on the matters,
With the appointed representatives of each Estate called into attention.
Now I must add that each Estate, even the most populous Third Estate, had one mere vote!
And so when the king asked them all if the old privileges of the first two Estates should be removed for a fairer country and one without any more tension,

The first two Estates vehemently refused!
Now this battle was two against one,
And anger among the third estate ensued.
They stomped out of the room in a huff and making their way to the Tennis Court, declared themselves as one, called the
National Assembly.
This came along with a pledge to draft a new Constitution, with or without the other two Estates!
To pacify the Third Estate, King Louis XIV ordered the first two Estates to join the Third elementarily,
But foolishly dismissed his famous finance minister, Jaques Necker, who had performed that government’s-finance exposé in the first place!

This flared the anger of a thousand Parisians, and taking up arms, they stormed the Bastille prison in response, a symbol of royal, despotic power and a storehouse of weapons.
Marking the beginning of the Revolution, with fighters variform.
Fighting for freedom in procession.

Ultimately, the rebellion spread throughout the country, and the feudal system was abolished.
The Declaration of The Rights of Man and Citizen,
Though radical at that time, was eagerly published.

In all this fearful hustle and bustle, and fire and funeral piers all over the country, the king was frightened for his future, and tried to escape the country with his queen, unnoticed.
But a postman’s clever eye caught them leaving the lands just in time, and his attempted escape left the people’s faith in the royalty, ripped.
With this, the king and the queen were charged with treason, then publicly beheaded.
And their death signaled the end of a 1000-year monarchy.

And with the death of the monarchy came the finalization to the declaration of the first French Republic, led by the motto,
‘Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.’
But this didn’t satisfy the anger of some revolutionaries, and they set on transforming the entire French Society.

With these multiple factions formed, the extremist group, the Jacobins and their leader, Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer, launched the Reign of Terror, publicly executing anyone who dared to dissent against the new rules of the country.
Basically, anybody with a different opinion held a humongous bounty!
But, even though 20,000 people were executed by then, the Jacobins finally saw their own downfall later.

Soon, a directory, then a military dictator, Napoleon Bonaporte took over France.
All in all, the country underwent many other changes after the Revolution.
Such as the women’s rights movements and the abolishing of slavery, the strict determination for these movements were capable to leave you in a trance!

The people, too, believed Napoleon as their liberator, but apparently he turned out to be more of an invader, and so was finally defeated in Waterloo, thankfully.
It was a lot to face for all of the French, honestly.

To sum it up, the country of France, as it went through this phase, saw three constitutions, five governments, followed by decades of monarchy and revolt until the establishment of the next Republic in 1871.
Then it was all finally done.

And so, you see, the idea of ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’, an idea followed in many countries today, didn’t just come to rise one day.
It took the sacrifice of thousands, so respect is bestowed.
But with all this, I still have one question:

Does any ‘disciplined and fair’ community created by humans, really ever last?
Sharmista Banerjee
Class 10th
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)

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