The Bastille fell July 14, 1789. It wasn't really that big of a deal. The Estates-General kept working. The Estates-General is the same thing as the National Assembly. The king was kind of held captive by them but was treated well and said he was behind the reforms. The nobility were escaping the country and forming military groups on the French border with foreign aid.
Then came the summer of the Great Fear. Rumors spread that the brigands were coming (bandits from the woods). The peasants in Southern France armed themselves and burned down things after they found out the brigands didn't come. They burnt libraries cuz that's where the tax records were kept. Soon rumors spread that Southern France was in rebellion. There was a secret night meeting of the National Assembly. The nobles were scared and said the lower class was rebelling cuz they had gotten a cruddy deal. Everybody agreed. They voted in privileges for the lower class (which had formerly only belonged to the nobles. The National Assembly drew up the Declaration of the Rights of Man. It sounded like Rousseau (though Rousseau was dead by this time). Men were born free and equal in rights. The government was supposed to protect the national rights: liberty, property, security, freedom from oppression. The law was to be an expression of the general will and not exclude people cuz of their opinions. Soon there were many radical newspapers in Paris. The price of food had gone up in Paris. They said if the government moved back to Paris, the food price would go down. There was a women's march on Versailles which demanded that the government come back to Paris.
In 1791, there was a French constitution. It was based on the English constitutional monarchy. Louis XVI signed it with regret (France, up til this point, had a divine right monarchy–only God can make a king and the king has total power). The Pope said the constitution was heretical. The king and queen decided to escape in disguise. They almost made it to the Belgian border. The revolution was actually over cuz there was a constitution. Nothing changed for the lower class, but the middle class got to vote.
Journalist Jean Paul Marat (1743-1793), Lawyer Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), and Lawyer Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) were in the Jacobin Club (radical political club whose members had a major impact on the Revolution). They were essentially the leaders of the Revolution. They wanted to get rid of the king entirely. Marat wanted to help the lower class. He was willing to behead people to save the Revolution. He wanted to be made dictator to decide who lived. He was assassinated (irony, anyone?). Danton was an orator with many middle class followers. Robespierre was a lawyer who had followed Rousseau's teachings. He wanted virtue and justice. He was called "The Incorruptible."
Now, for the new government: France was going to war with its borders. The neighbors of France didn't want democratic ideas to slop over into their borders. The nobles who had escaped were outside with their gathered armies. The right (conservative) wing of the government wanted war to prove that the French army would lose cuz of the new government and therefore the nobles would come back. The left (liberal) wing wanted war so it would all be blamed on the king and they could kick him out. There was war with Austria and Prussia. France lost. The left wing won; the king was blamed. The king and queen were locked up, deposed, and beheaded in 1793. So there is no constitutional monarchy anymore cuz there's no monarch. There was a lost war, no government, and to top it all off, the right wing wanted civil war.
The Committee of Public Safety (executive body in created in 1793 by the National Assembly) was running France. When the more moderate Republicans were defeated at the National Convention, the radical Jacobins stepped in in 1793. The period from 1793 to 1794 was called the Reign of Terror. The Committee of Public Safety, led by Robespierre, stomped out all opposition cuz they could arrest anybody. 3-4% of ½ million were executed (16,000 were guillotined). The guillotine was the high class way to die. People avoided anything to do with nobility. They made a 10 month year cuz the Christian calender was out (the clergy had sided with the nobles). The French army was using the draft. They won their battles by sheer number. Robespierre was trying to get out all of the government officials, but they got him instead (he was killed in 1794). A lot of Jacobins were jailed.
The Directory took over the government in 1795. It was a new government with an upper and lower house. There were five directors to run the country. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)was an artillery lieutenant who put a cannon outside the government building to put down a revolution against the Directory. He was given credit for saving the government.
Napoleon was born in Corsica of Italian parents. He was sent to French military school. He didn't do well but he wanted to be a hero and liberate Corsica from France. He became a Jacobin just at the end of the Reign of Terror. He was imprisoned but was so unimportant that he was let out. The Directory put him in charge of the French army in Italy. It was not a good set of troops in Italy vs. the Austrians. He maneuvered Austria out of Italy. Next, he wanted to conquer Egypt (maybe so he could be like that famous ancient person named Alexander the Great!). England owned Egypt. The French navy was destroyed by England. The Egyptian campaign wasn't going well so Napoleon went back to France.