Table of

Contents
Page 2— Table of Contents
Page 3-4— Cover Story

Page 5-6— Opinion Article 1: Pro-Napoleon

 Always considered as irrelevant to this nation, the
Third Estate - made up of bourgeoisie, merchants, and
peasants, wanted sweeping changes to be made. The
Third Estate was also represented most of the citizens
during the French Revolution (98%!). I was a member of
the Third Estate. I fortunately had the chance to be
educated and the ability to pay off my taxes; I tried to live
a life that I deserved. Taxes were paid to better the nation,
but King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette used taxes to
benefit themselves.
The Bedroom of Marie Antoinette
Born into the Hapsburg royal family of Austria, Marie
Antoinette had not once experienced the struggle of
finding a job, or having to worry about her next meal like
so many of us constantly did. After her marriage with
King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette continued to
excessively spend her money on gambling, buying
jewelry, and accessories. Due to the huge amount money
lost, the nation slowly started to weaken and its debt
increased. By the time that the citizens and the
government realized its bankruptcy, it was too late for
anything to be restored to its past glory. Desperately, King
Louis XVI announced that he will tax the Catholic
Church’s credit and money to make up for his debt.
Starvation arose, and the peasants and laborers were under
even harsher conditions; some were forced to steal bread
because of the ridiculous inflation rates, making common
goods impossible to afford. It got so bad that on October
4, 1789 many women and some men marched to
Versailles demanding bread for their families. These
women tried to storm King Louis and Marie Antoinette's
living quarters. Finally, King Louis agreed to distribute
bread to the women in the crowd; he was later forced out
of his palace and was not allowed to return. This symbolic
event was one the first to mark the start of the Revolution.
We wanted to call for a general meeting (since the last one
took place in 1614) to fix on the current issue that was
breaking our society apart.
On May of 1789, we met with the other two
Estates—who had much more power and property than us.
Nothing was resolved because the clergy and nobles
griped hard to their power. The same amount of the votes
was given to other two more privileged estate, which
clearly demonstrated unfairness of our society. As a
chosen delegate of the Third Estate, I was obligated to
share my reality, and more importantly the miserable
reality of my brothers and sisters at bottom of the society,
who were powerless to change their horrible living
conditions. During the Estates-General meeting, I
expressed the dreary conditions of the lives of the
peasants and demanded a change, which enraged the
clergy and the nobility. They simply couldn’t face reality!
On July 14, a month after the Tennis Court Oath, our
unified force stormed into Bastille, a prison and symbol
of oppression. Our intention was not to release any
prisoners, instead, we wanted gunpowder from the
Bastille.

Seeing the unfairness of this society towards my

Estate, and being outvoted by the First and Second Estates,
we called for another meeting. During this meeting, we
were determined to make some changes. After the long
meeting, we declared ourselves to be known as the
National Assembly.

The Violent Scene at the Bastille

On that day, several thousand of us marched up

to the royal prison and defeated the guards that were
loosely watching the prison. With the access of
gunpowder, our Estate acquired the power to defeat the
government who always acts against our best interest.
This glorious moment of peasants and merchants trying to
defeat the government was an event that will be forever
remembered in the hearts of those who care for freedom
A Raucous Meeting at Versailles
and equality of this nation.
This time, King Louis XVI was concerned that his power
We, the National Assembly, finally took control
would be overthrown, so he locked the halls of our
of our own homeland and we decided to have a new form
meeting area. We were sick of him taking advantage of us,
of government. We wrote the Declaration of the Rights of
so we were forced to break into an indoor tennis court.
Men on August 26, 1789. Heavily inspired by the
There, we made a deal: we shall draft a constitution to
Declaration of Independence of the United States, we
gain more rights for ourselves; we called this the Tennis
adopted the idea that men are born free and equal; justice
Court Oath. Out of 567 people, only one of our members
and liberty served a prominent role in this document. I
did not sign. Hearing this, King Louis XVI became afraid,
wish that this document, written the necessity of equality
and under the advice of some of the Second Estate
with the rights of men in mind, will become a document
members, he decided to call Swiss guards (mercenaries in
that inspires other countries and nations to strive achieve
Paris) into Versailles to protect himself. As a response,
to the same thing for their citizens.
our Estate reacted by arming ourselves as well.
 Why Napoleon Was Good
“A leader is a dealer in hope”-Napoleon Bonaparte.
As a wealthy landowner that lives in a farm near
his former palace, I am an immense supporter of
Napoleon. His reforms to the government of France and
his military genius revealed a brilliant visionary who
wanted to craft a better Europe.
Napoleon the Great was a French military and political
leader who rose to power in France. He was the savior of
France, and his improvements to the government made
him to be a successful and prominent leader.
Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1769 on the
Mediterranean island of Corsica. When he was nine, his
parents sent him to military school. At the early age of 16,
he completed military school and became a lieutenant in
the artillery. As soon as the Revolution started, he joined
the army of the government. When royalist rebels
marched on the National Convention, Napoleon defended
the delegates by firing on the mob, an action that saved
the Republic.
The Directory oversaw the government when Napoleon
was in the army. The Directory assigned Napoleon to
many expeditions around the world to places that were a
threat to the Republic. For example, Napoleon and the
French army crosses the Alps to fight Austria. His
powerful actions led him to several victories. In
November 9, 1799 Napoleon overthrew the Directory.
The legislature voted to end the Directory and hand power
over to Napoleon. He seizure of power was known as
coup d’état, or blow of the state.
In 1800, Napoleon performed a plebiscite, which was a
vote of the people. The people approved of a new
constitution and gave all the power to Napoleon. He
would now maintain stability and order to strengthen the
government. Napoleon also went in a completely
direction than King Louis XVI, who was a floundering
monarch that imposed incredible taxes on peasants. He
caused the government of France to drastically fail as the
98% rebelled against him.
Napoleon made many successful domestic reforms to the
economy. He kept several ideas of the Revolution and
expanded on them. First, he insured equal taxation so that
no peasants must overpay. He also set lower prices on
food products with the result that everyone could afford it.
Besides his fairer tax code, he created a national bank and
gave state loans to businesses. This promoted good
spending habits and more control.
His reforms to the government and society also impacted
his great leadership. He immediately fired all corrupt
officers which increased efficiency in the government.
One of my favorite reforms was the creation of lycées,
government run public schools that provided an equal and
competent education for all children, regardless of family
background. Lycées trained students for success in public
office. His system of meritocracy would choose the most and the rest of Europe would be prevented. He called this
qualified candidates based on merit. This ensured equality the Continental System as it made Europe more self-
of opportunity and does not support the wealthy. sufficient.

All of Napoleon's laws were in an extensive system

known as the Napoleonic Code. This significantly
impacted the strength and authority of the French
government. The laws were fair, equal, and made
everyone satisfied. The code eliminated injustices and
provided order to society.

Napoleon the great in his military campaigns

As Napoleon started to fight more wars with other nations,

he had many conflicts. This resulted in him being exiled
The Code de Napoleon, one of his greatest works and banished from France. However, this doesn’t affect

that helped reform the French Government the legacy of his accomplishments. Napoleon tried his
best in making France more stable. He was obviously
After Napoleon's successes, he crowned himself as more successful than other leaders and emperors.
emperor. He wanted to expand the empire and conquer
Napoleon brought the nation out of the chaos and
many nations. He rallied troops against many European
corruption of the Revolution, and stabilized the society
nations such as Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Luckily, he
and economy that was upended by years of incompetent
trampled his opponents. The leaders of each country
leaders. He gave equality to the people through his Code
signed a treaty with Napoleon to maintain peace. This
and the meritocratic system, his economic reforms solved
proves that Napoleon was highly skilled in military
France’s debt and increased its wealth and spending. His
actions and conquering nations. In 1806, Napoleon
ambition and strong will brought the strong leadership
ordered a blockade, which was a closing of ports. This
that France desperately needed.
insured that all trade and communication between Britain
 In today’s Europe, the Vienna Convention has fellow writer Jean-Philippe Couvreur was incorrect in
brought peace and stability to the entire continent. assuming that the laws “eliminated injustice and made
Interestingly, these changes have come because of the defeat everyone satisfied” in the preceding article.
of our egotistic and power-hungry emperor. Although
Napoleon initially gave France military might and social
stability, his destructive personality caused the downfall of
our glorious spirit of revolution.

Napoleon’s initial consolidation of power was unjustified, as

his methods were extremely manipulative. Prior to the Coup
of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon and his supporters plotted to
overthrow our government. I watched as three of my fellow
Directors resigned under Napoleon’s influence, and when I
refused, I was arrested. Napoleon’s brother and wife had also
produced a false rumor of an impending Jacobin uprising to
evacuate the legislature. By intentionally creating a power
vacuum, Napoleon could call a provisional government that
bent to his will. Through this web of deception and
intimidation, he planned the destruction of the Revolution.

Although Napoleon claims to have won his power through a

democratic vote, many other aspects of his government
betrayed the ideals of our people. He established an absolute
monarchy, the very form of government that we had fought
so hard to remove. He restricted many crucial social reforms,
such as women’s rights and the freedom of speech.
Shockingly, he reinstated the oppressive institution of
slavery in our colonies, which violates the most fundamental In Napoleon on His Imperial Throne, the man’s self-
indulgence can be seen in his fanciful attire and wreath of
personal liberties of man. The Napoleonic Code even solid gold.
included the right for fathers to imprison their sons, an
In his diplomatic dealings with the Church, Napoleon
archaic law dating back to Roman times. Our dear friend and
showed the worst of his character. During his coronation,
Napoleon pridefully removed the crown from Pope Pius VII,
and proceeded to crown himself in a show of selfish defiance.
He even dared to take the Pope as a prisoner of France for
five years following his invasion of the Papal States, an act
of gross disrespect and indecency, especially considering the
Vatican’s lack of previous aggression.
The Continental System was meant to increase self-reliance
within continental Europe and disrupt the British economy,
but it achieved the opposite. Due to the defeat and
weakening of our navy at Trafalgar, we were not able
enforce a tight blockade around Britain. Napoleon should
have known that defeating Britain by war or embargo would
require a vastly superior navy, yet his lust for power led him
to overlook this fact. The blockade ended up hurting France,
as Britain’s own blockade against Europe was tighter and
brought in revenue from trans-Atlantic tariffs. Napoleon’s
far-fetched dream of vanquishing Britain was unrealistic and
a major distraction to continental affairs.
Napoleon’s greatest defeats are obviously within his failed
military campaigns. He was not satisfied with securing
France’s sovereignty using our powerful army, and instead
wanted to conquer all of Europe. Multiple mistakes emerged
in his overly ambitious and ultimately disastrous campaigns.
The most egregious of these mistakes took place in his
invasion of Russia, in which he boldly chose to attack our
estranged ally instead of seeking a diplomatic solution.
Russia posed no threat to France, their only transgression
was not honoring the blockade. Napoleon was overconfident
when entering Russia; he naïvely assumed that the war
would be quick. He failed to anticipate the Russians’
destruction of their own supplies and buildings, which led to
mass starvation in his “Grand” Army, as they were not able
to use the enemy’s supplies. Napoleon’s foolishness and
brashness caused the deaths of 400,000 men, or 60% of his
army.
The people of France would have been content with ensuring
social order and economic stability, yet Napoleon put his
own interests above ours by choosing to pursue petty wars
of conquest instead of focusing on establishing peace.
Napoleon failed to gain the loyalty of the conquered nations
because he used military might to coerce people into obeying.
This careless use of force strengthened people’s ties to their
own nations, instead of suppressing nationalism as Napoleon
had intended.
Napoleon and his defeated army somberly march out of a
scorched and barren Russia.
Napoleon’s pathetic attempt at clawing his way back into
power following his exile is the behavior of a man
intoxicated by the allure of power. In his final campaign,
Napoleon ultimately displayed the signs of a disconnected
and desperate ruler who desired to reclaim his glory days,
and was blind to his inevitable defeat. The disastrous Battle
of Waterloo marked Napoleon’s terminal and humiliating
defeat. In his extraneous military campaigns, Napoleon
threw away the lives of his soldiers not to ensure the survival
of France, but to entertain an impossible dream of absolute
power.
Napoleon Bonaparte did not and will never represent the
glorious spirit of our people. He abandoned the Revolution’s
ideals and committed countless costly errors. Although he
implemented well-received social reforms in France, his
hunger for power overtook his service to the public.
Ultimately, Napoleon’s plan to unite Europe under his rule
failed due to his flawed character and course of action.

Maximilien Robespierre was a cruel dictator who
led France through one of the darkest times known formally
as ‘The Reign of Terror’. With his background as a lawyer,
he was a suitable candidate to bring France back into the
light—or so it seemed.
France was in a state of great panic and chaos.
Foreign armies such as Austria, Prussia, Great Britain,
Holland, and Spain joined together to form the First
Coalition. These five nations allied together to take down
France. Because of the First Coalitions’ threats, the Jacobins,
a radical group, who wanted to get rid of France’s
monarchical government, was forced to take extreme
measures. The National Convention drafted 300,000 French
citizens to serve in the military to meet The First Coalition
in battle. By 1794, France’s army grew to
about 800,000 people. Even children
were being drafted into the army! I lived in fear that my three
children would be drafted into the army! After all, they were
only 16 years old!
To make matters worse, the Jacobins also had many
enemies within France. This included peasants who were
scarred from the beheading of Louis XVI, and priests who
refused to accept government control over the church. This
string of chaotic events placed France in an anarchical state.
However, during all this, a French lawyer managed
to seize power. Maximilien Robespierre had many
revolutionary ideas that he and his supporters believed
would most benefit France. He wanted to form a “republic
of virtue.” His first step was to rid France of its monarchical
government. He got rid of everything that was related to the
word ‘king’. People were even changing their last names to
fit in to Robespierre's’ new way of thinking. He also
implemented a more secular way of life. Radicals wanted to
clear France of all its old ideas when King Louis XVI and
Marie Antoinette were in power, and so they changed all the
calendars by dividing each year into twelve months. Each
month has thirty days, and each week only had six days.
They excluded Sunday from the calendar because they
believed that religion opposed their beliefs. They even went
so far as to shut down churches all around France. These
ideas spread like wildfire all throughout France, which
altered order and stability in the French government.
 Soon after implementing these “innovative” ideas in
France, Robespierre became the leader of the Committee of
Public Safety. This committee was tasked to decide and
discover threats to the Revolution and would guillotine them
if they showed any signs of rebellion against the Revolution.
During this time, the guillotine became the trendiest way to
execute people. A guillotine is a machine with a heavy blade
that is used to behead people. The Committee of Public
Safety would try citizens in the morning and then guillotine
them that afternoon.
The economy did not improve much under
Robespierre. Inflation continued as the government printed
more and more money; the price of bread was still
outrageously high. There was great unrest in the streets, and
people would often loot stores out of desperation. I huddled
in terror whenever the looters came near my antique store.
Fortunately, they were only interested in food.
Robespierre’s dictatorship of France was known as the
Reign of Terror. During the Reign of Terror, thousands of
lives would fall victim to the guillotine, including the former
Queen, Marie Antoinette. Living a lonely widowed life after
her husband and ex-king Louis XVI was guillotined earlier
that year, she herself was sentenced to death the same way.
Because of Robespierre’s new ideals, all traces of the
previous monarchy that corrupted their country had to be
erased. Therefore, after a two-day trial for the ex-queen, she
was convicted of treason and was sentenced to die on
October 16, 1793, marking the beginning of an era.
The Brutal Guillotine
I remember specifically watching Marie ride
through the crowd awaiting her death. For some reason, she
seemed calm: as if she was expecting it. The crowd that day
was the largest of any guillotine showing I have ever see—
apart from her husband’s earlier that year. I watched as
Marie walked up the scaffold remaining calm and collected
as a queen would, and amid the all the commotion in the
crowd, I barely noticed, but I heard her apologize to her
executioner! I watched in awe as she walked to the guillotine.
CLUNK! I heard the sounds of her neck snapping and the
crowds cheering. The queen’s head tumbled to the platform,
coating the pristine pine planks in a gory slash of red. The
piercing scent of fresh blood wafted through the cool autumn
air. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!
After the ex-queen was executed, beheading of
civilians through the guillotine became more and more
unreasonable and more and more frequent. All of us
commoners lived in constant and extreme fear of the
committee of safety and Robespierre. Many of Robespierre’s
“enemies” were the same people who helped him build this
republic in the first place, however he feared they threatened
his leadership, so Robespierre started sentencing his fellow
revolutionaries to death simply because they weren’t “as
radical” as he was. His reasons for killing people gradually
became more and more irrational as he became more and
more paranoid of people who challenged the revolution.
After a year of this chaos, even people of official
government positions were starting to fear Robespierre.
Because of this fear, many members of the National
Convention allied together to take down Robespierre. The
next day, the most prominent leader of this radical,
revolutionary phase had fallen under his own rule. On July
28, 1794, Maximilien Robespierre died and along with him:
The Reign of Terror.
“A true revolutionary should be ready
to perish in the process.”-Maximilien
Robespierre
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