Robespierre and the Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror was a period of violence that occured after the onset of the French Revolution. It was provoked by conflict between rival political groups, and it was marked by the executions of many enemies of the revolution. Robespierre played a big part in the reign of terror by becoming its dominant member. He took control of the government and tried to wipe out the old monarchy. With Robespierre as the new dictator, everything changed. Many people were executed by the government. No one was safe. Not even the people in the government. People got tired of Robespierre cutting off everyones head. As a result, a conspiracy was formed against him. He was arrested, and beheaded. This ended the reign of terror.

The French Revolution

Many people in France were critical of the nobility, the king, and the clergy for many reasons.
-The nobles had almost complete authority over peasants.
- Nobles did not have to do military service
-Nobles didnt have to pay most taxes. This didnt make any sense because the nobles had enough money in order to pay taxes. But the peasants who were poor and had nothing, had to pay taxes. This was totally unfair.
-Nobles collected tolls from people using roads and markets.
-Many nobles and clergy lived in great luxury and palaces. This shows that the clergy and the nobles were being greedy.
The king had absolute rule and authority over France. the people clearly didnt like that. They were treated very unfairly just because they were poor.
A French peasant would have grumbled about alot of things in 1789.
-They were forced to do militarty service
-Peasants couldnt hunt or fish on noble grounds
-Peasants had to pay taxes to the king, their lord, and the church
-They had to use the lords mill, oven, and winepress. They had to pay. Its not even like they had a choice of whether or not they wanted to use their lords mill, oven and winepress. The peasants had to use it and they were charged for it. How sad this was.
Based on source A, I think the cartoonist is making a really good point. The picture shows a peasant carrying the noble and the lord on his back. This means that the lord and the nobles depend on the peasants in order to live.The peasants made up almost all of the French population. They taxes and everything that was being collected from the peasants went towards the king, the clergy, the nobles, and the lords. Without the peasants, they would be peasants themselves. The caption under the picture "one hopes this will end soon" is tyelling us that the peasants hope that this will soon end. It is too much for them to carry.

the author of source B, describes the lives of the french peasants by saying " the taxes and feudal dues are crushing us". The author goes on to give an example of a woman whose husband had only a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor horse. They had to pay 20kg of wheat and three chickens as feudal dues to one lord. 60kg of oats, one chicken, five pence to another, and heavy taxes were to go to the king's tax collectors. Their lives were terrible.

Sources A,B, and C explain why the peasants resented the rich. The rich treated the peasants badly and they were taking what little money the peasants had. According to source B, the peasants had to give a lot of money towards the rich. All of their money was being taken leaving the peasants poor. If i was living in France during this time, i would have resented the rich too.

The writing of Rousseau in source D, would influence the peasants the most. With the idea of no man having natural authority over others, in the heads of the peasants, this would probably cause them to strike. They would stop paying taxes and stop doing all of the unfair things that the king is making them do. They would gang up on the king, nobles, lords and clergy. Eventually removing them from their power. This is possible because of all the people living in France, 90% of them were peasants. Then they will realize that they have the power to chose and make decisions for themselves.

The pamphlet from which source D came from was banned in 1775. The king, lord, nobles, and clergy most likely banned this piece of literature. They probably did this in order to prevent the peasants from getting ideas about themselves having power. They realized that if the peasants go on strike, this could remove the king, lord, nobles, and clergy from their power. Resulting in them becoming peasants as well.

John Locke and the Enlightenment

The rights that Jefferson is talking about in the Declaration of Independence are: the people have the right to abolish or alter, any form of government that becomes destructive and to institute a new government. In other words, if the people feel that the president or the governor, or the mayor, or someone who is governing them is doing a bad job at it, the people have the right to abolish or destroy that form of government and chose a new one.
When people were created, no one had more rights than the next person. All men are treated equally. The Declaration of Independence supports this by saying that people have the right to life, the people have the right to freedom, and the people have the right to happiness. Everyone is born with these rights.
According to the Declaration of Independence, the government comes from the people. The people chose the ones whom they want to govern them. They chose these individuals by voting.
People have many rights.

Copernicus and the trial of Galileo

The theory that came first was the geocentric theory. This theory placed the earth at the center of the universe. The heliocentric theory is the theory that the sun is at the center of the solar system. This theory came out of the scientific revolution. The advancements of mathematics and physics, was eventually able to support the heliocentric theory.
The trial of Galileo. A man named Galileo believed that the earth revolved around the sun. This is normal for both you and I to believe because it has been proven, but for the Catholic Church in 1633, this idea was nonsense. Galileo began to develop an interest in the Copernican theory. Sometime during the mid 1590's, Galileo came to the conclusion that the theory Copernicus had was right.After Galileo discovered the telescope, he was able to confirm his belief. Galileo began to tell people of his idea and write about it.

The Scientific Method

The scientific method is a method that is used in order to organize an experiment that is being conducted.The experiment is tested over and over with the few easy steps of the scientific method. A long time ago, a man by the name of Aristotle had a theory that heavier objects fell faster than lighter objects. in the late 1500's, a man named Galileo tested this theory. He went to the top of the leaning tower of pisa and he experimented. He took stones of different weight and dropped them from the top of the tower. Galileo was able to conclude that objects fall at the same speed no matter what the weight is. Galileo tested his theory more than once to make sure everything was accurate. He had used the scientific method.

Evolution vs. Creation

Darwins theory of evolution is that everything is related in some way because of natural selection. everything is always changing. whether it be plants, animals, food. everything is changing. Darwins theory talks about how things are still evolving slowly but surely.how it works is that a superior species is evolved. the more of that species there is, the inferior species will eventually decline until they are extinct.now you have a new species for a period of time;but its not long until another species starts to evolve from that species.
The theory of creation rejects the theory of evolution. Creationism is the belief that humanity, life, the earth, and the universe were created by a God. Old earth creationism used geological findings. This is what rejects the theory of evolution.
Personally, i believe that the earth and humanity was created by God. In the Genesis, the bible tells of how God created the heavens and the earth. He also created the animals and plants on the earth and Adam and Eve. As a result, man used the things that God gave us to create other species scientifically. all in all i can say that i do not agree with the theory of evolution.