AP European History

## Learning Outcomes

- Understand why the liberal phase of the French Revolution is dated to **1789–1792**
- Explain how the **August Decrees** attacked feudalism and hereditary privilege
- Identify how the **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen** justified revolutionary change
- Distinguish between **legal equality** and full political democracy
- Recall how the **Constitution of 1791** created a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic
- Assess the limits of the liberal phase, especially for women, poorer men, and enslaved people in the colonies

## AP European History Syllabus

For the AP European History, you are expected to understand how the liberal phase of the French Revolution dismantled the social and legal structure of the Old Regime, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that the liberal phase usually refers to **1789–1792**
- Identify the significance of the **August Decrees of 4–11 August 1789**
- Explain how the abolition of feudal and hereditary privilege challenged the **Old Regime**
- Understand the principles of the **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen** of **26 August 1789**
- Explain the difference between **equality before the law** and limited political participation
- Know that the **Constitution of 1791** created a **constitutional monarchy**
- Understand the distinction between **active** and **passive citizens**
- Assess the extent to which the liberal phase was bourgeois and limited rather than fully democratic

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why were the **August Decrees** a direct attack on the Old Regime?
2. What is the difference between the **August Decrees** and the **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen**?
3. Did the abolition of hereditary privilege in 1789 create full democracy in France?
4. What did the **Constitution of 1791** keep from the old monarchy, and what did it change?
5. How did the distinction between **active** and **passive citizens** reveal the limits of the liberal phase?

## Introduction

The French Revolution is one of the central topics in AP European History because it reshaped politics, society, and ideas across Europe. Within that larger story, the liberal phase matters especially because it destroyed the legal basis of the **Old Regime** while stopping short of full democracy. In these years, revolutionaries tried to build a new order based on liberty, property, citizenship, and the sovereignty of the nation.

The most dramatic change came in **1789**, when the National Assembly began to abolish feudal and hereditary privilege. That move mattered because the Old Regime was not only a monarchy. It was also a society built on legal inequality, where nobles and clergy enjoyed special rights by birth. The Revolution's early leaders tried to replace that structure with a constitutional state and equality before the law.

> **Key Term: Old Regime**
> The political and social order in France before 1789, marked by monarchy, estates, and privileges based on birth.

### Why hereditary privilege was central to the Old Regime

To understand why its abolition was so important, you need to see what hereditary privilege actually meant in practice. Under the Old Regime, society was divided into estates: clergy, nobility, and the Third Estate. These were not just social labels. They carried legal consequences.

The nobility enjoyed tax exemptions, honorary distinctions, privileged access to offices, and feudal rights over peasants. The clergy collected tithes and also possessed legal privileges. Meanwhile, peasants and townspeople carried much of the tax burden. So when revolutionaries attacked privilege, they were not simply saying “life should be fairer.” They were attacking the legal structure that defined power and wealth in France.

> **Key Term: hereditary privilege**
> Special legal, social, and political advantages received by birth, especially by nobles and clergy.

This helps explain the crisis of **1789**. France's monarchy had severe financial problems, worsened by war debts and an inefficient tax system. But reform was blocked because privileged groups did not want to lose exemptions. The monarchy could not easily tax those with the most wealth. That made privilege not only unjust but politically destructive.

The political crisis deepened when the **Estates-General** met in **May 1789**. The Third Estate objected to a system in which the privileged orders could outvote the majority of the nation. The issue was no longer only taxation. It became a question of sovereignty: who truly represented France?

> **Key Term: National Assembly**
> The body formed in 1789 by the Third Estate and its allies, claiming to represent the French nation.

Once the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly, the Revolution moved from a dispute over reform to a struggle over the whole political order. The **Tennis Court Oath**, the fall of the **Bastille**, and the **Great Fear** all pushed events further. Peasant attacks on manor houses and feudal records made it clear that social revolution in the countryside was already underway before the Assembly fully defined it in law.

### The August Decrees and the attack on feudalism

The key moment for this subtopic came on **4 August 1789**, when the National Assembly began issuing what are usually called the **August Decrees**. These measures are often remembered as the abolition of feudalism. That is true in principle, but AP answers need more precision.

> **Key Term: August Decrees**
> Laws passed by the National Assembly in August 1789 that abolished feudal privilege and attacked the social foundations of the Old Regime.

The decrees responded directly to the **Great Fear**. Peasants had risen against manorial dues and aristocratic power. The Assembly wanted to calm the countryside and show that the old order was ending. Nobles and clergy publicly renounced many of their privileges, including tax exemptions and exclusive rights tied to estate status.

This was revolutionary for two reasons. First, it struck at feudal rights in the countryside. Second, it rejected the broader principle that law should treat people differently because of birth. That second point is the bigger one for AP Euro. The Revolution was replacing a society of estates with a society of citizens.

Still, students often oversimplify the August Decrees. Not every feudal burden vanished instantly. Personal servitudes were abolished outright, but many dues tied to land were initially declared **redeemable**, meaning peasants were supposed to compensate lords in order to remove them. This meant abolition was partial in practice at first, even if absolute in principle.

That detail matters because it shows both change and limitation. The Assembly clearly rejected hereditary privilege, but it still protected property. Many deputies were bourgeois property owners, and they were willing to destroy noble privilege faster than they were willing to destroy property claims.

> **Test Tip:** In an SAQ or LEQ, avoid saying “feudalism ended overnight.” A stronger answer says that the August Decrees abolished feudal privilege in principle, but some seigneurial dues were at first redeemable rather than instantly cancelled.

The decrees also ended ecclesiastical tithes and attacked corporate privilege, provincial privilege, and venal officeholding. This reflected a wider Enlightenment desire for a more rational and uniform society. Privileges attached to a province, office, or corporation looked irrational to revolutionaries who wanted one law for one nation.

### The Declaration of the Rights of Man and why it mattered

Later in **August 1789**, the Assembly adopted the **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen**. If the August Decrees were the social-legal destruction of privilege, the Declaration was the ideological explanation for that destruction.

> **Key Term: Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen**
> A statement of revolutionary principles issued in August 1789 that proclaimed liberty, legal equality, and national sovereignty.

The most famous line is **Article 1**: men are born and remain free and equal in rights. This directly challenged the estate system. Rights were no longer supposed to come from inherited status. They came from being human and being part of the nation.

Other articles matter too. **Article 2** listed liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression as natural rights. **Article 3** declared that sovereignty resided in the nation, not in the king. **Article 17** called property “inviolable and sacred.” That last phrase is crucial. The Declaration was liberal, but it was also strongly protective of property.

> **Key Term: legal equality**
> The principle that all citizens are equal before the law rather than divided into privileged estates.

This is where students need a careful distinction. The Declaration proclaimed equality before the law, but not equality of wealth, and not full political equality. It abolished legal privilege by birth. It did not abolish social differences or create universal suffrage.

That is why historians often call this phase **liberal** or **bourgeois** rather than democratic. It promoted civil rights, national sovereignty, and the protection of property. It did not trust full popular rule.

> **Test Tip:** If a prompt asks how far the liberal phase was revolutionary, argue both sides. It was revolutionary in abolishing legal privilege and redefining sovereignty, but limited because political rights and social equality did not extend to everyone.

### From privilege to citizenship: the Constitution of 1791

The liberal phase reached its constitutional form in the **Constitution of 1791**. This did not abolish monarchy. Instead, it created a **constitutional monarchy**.

> **Key Term: constitutional monarchy**
> A system in which a राजा remains head of state but political power is limited by a constitution and representative institutions.

Under this constitution, France had a unicameral Legislative Assembly, while the king retained a **suspensive veto**. He could delay legislation, but sovereignty had shifted away from royal absolutism. This shows the basic pattern of 1789–1791: change was deep, but it was not yet republican.

The constitution also reorganized France administratively into **83 departments**, replacing the old provinces. This was another attack on the Old Regime. Provincial privilege and irregular local traditions gave way to a more uniform state.

But the clearest limit of the new order was political participation. The constitution divided men into **active** and **passive citizens**.

> **Key Term: active citizens**
> Men who met tax qualifications and could participate in voting under the Constitution of 1791.
>
> **Key Term: passive citizens**
> Men who possessed civil rights but lacked the tax qualifications required to vote under the Constitution of 1791.

Active citizens could vote indirectly because they paid a required level of tax. Passive citizens had civil equality but no vote. Women were excluded altogether. This distinction shows exactly how the Revolution changed France and how it did not.

Civil equality expanded. Privilege by birth was destroyed. Religious minorities such as Protestants and Jews gained political rights. Yet political power remained restricted to propertied men. The Assembly feared direct democracy and distrusted the urban poor.

This is one of the most useful analytical points for AP essays: the Revolution replaced status with citizenship, but citizenship itself was graded. Some people had fuller political membership than others.

### Why the abolition of hereditary privilege was both real and incomplete

By **1791**, France was no longer an Old Regime society in the old legal sense. Noble privilege had been attacked, feudal structures weakened, legal equality proclaimed, and sovereignty placed in the nation. That is a major break in European history.

Yet the liberal phase was incomplete in at least three ways.

First, it protected property more than equality of condition. Bourgeois deputies did not want a social leveling revolution. Second, it limited political participation through active versus passive citizenship. Third, it excluded major groups from full rights in practice, especially women and enslaved people in the colonies.

Olympe de Gouges exposed this contradiction in **1791** by rewriting the Declaration for women. Her work showed that “universal” rights were not really universal. Similarly, debates over slavery revealed that rights were easier to proclaim in France than to apply in the empire.

This is why the subtopic matters so much. The abolition of hereditary privilege was not symbolic. It destroyed the central legal idea of the Old Regime. But the new order was not fully democratic or fully inclusive. That tension drove the Revolution forward into more radical stages after **1792**.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The liberal phase of the French Revolution is usually dated **1789–1792**
- The Old Regime was built on legal inequality and privileges based on birth
- The **August Decrees** began on **4 August 1789** and attacked feudal and hereditary privilege
- The decrees abolished personal servitudes outright, but some seigneurial dues were initially redeemable
- The August Decrees weakened noble, clerical, provincial, and corporate privilege
- The **Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen** was adopted on **26 August 1789**
- The Declaration proclaimed liberty, property, security, resistance to oppression, legal equality, and national sovereignty
- Legal equality did not mean full political democracy
- The **Constitution of 1791** created a constitutional monarchy, not a republic
- The distinction between **active** and **passive citizens** limited political participation
- The liberal phase replaced birth-based status with citizenship, but political equality remained restricted
- Women, many poorer men, and enslaved people in the colonies were excluded from full rights in practice

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Old Regime
- hereditary privilege
- National Assembly
- August Decrees
- Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
- legal equality
- constitutional monarchy
- active citizens
- passive citizens


The French Revolution - Liberal phase abolished hereditary privilege