1. French Revolution Journal Project
Ashley LeMay
 &
Sam Price
Period 1

2. Journal Entry # 1 January 17th, 1787
My name is Ashlan Pray. I am a 17 year old man. I am a Parish Priest in the first estate. The first and second estates are the most important because we create the laws and are in control of the kingdom. The third estate has people that are farmers, merchants, servants, doctors, and many more of the low paying jobs. The farmers grow crops for the merchants to sell. The servants sometimes help those farmers with growing their crops. The doctors obviously treat patients that have bad wounds, diseases, or high fevers. My privilege is that I can eat whatever i choose, do whatever I want, and I am treated like royalty. I deserve to be treated this way because I was born in the first estate and that's just the way it is. Lately the third estate has been bothering me with things like hunger for bread and money problems. I try to tell them that isn't my problem but they wont leave me alone. It's not my fault they are dealing with these kinds of problems.

3. Journal Entry #2 May 5th, 1789
Today we had the first estates general meeting since Our king Louis XVI is a hefty spender along with his wife which angers the 3rd estate. So we called this meeting to see how everyone thinks they should vote and be taxed. The 1st and second estate want to vote and be taxed by class because were more educated, in the gov't, and work at the church. We think that the 3rd estate should continue being taxed the same amount or more. They want to be taxed by population. King Louis XVI agrees with the 1st and 2nd estate but also wants to start taxing the nobles. It makes sense that they give back to us sense we give them their land. Why tax the high class when we give them everything they own?

4. Journal Entry # 3 June 20th, 1789
Because I was feeling sorry for the third estate, I moved down from being in the first estate to the third. The national assembly is a new name for the third estate. I feel good that the third estate is finally standing up for themselves and doing something about these taxes and laws. When we got locked out of the court room for the estates general meeting, we got so angry we went to the tennis court right next to the courthouse and had a meeting of our own, and that's how we created the tennis court oath. We stated that we will no longer follow the clergies or the nobilities laws. We decided to create our own constitution that said we will no longer vote by order, but we will vote by head. If the first and second estates don't like our constitution then we will do whatever it takes to have our rights. We should be able to have the same rights as any other person in the kingdom. It's not fair for the first and second estate to just do whatever they want and get away with it. Something has to be done about this.

5. Journal Entry #4 July 14th, 1789
The Bastille is a place in the palace sort of like a dungon where the king puts traitors or people who deserve to be there for any reason. The are tortured, killed, or if lucky just jailed. On July 14th of 1789 we stormed the Bastille. It ment that our Monarchy no longer had any power over us. They could not torture us. The storming was very violent with weapons and fire. we pushed or hammered every stone and if a human got in the way, so be it. they were going down with the Bastille. This event in history was very good and bad. It showed the king that we could fend for ourselves and would if need be get violent. But it was also bad because we were so vicous, it was only a taste of what was to come. I do fear for my safety seeing how brutal people can be if things are not going their way.

6. Journal Entry # 5 October 31st, 1789
The great fear is when the third estate started rioting throughout the whole city and destroying anything that has to do with the first or second estate. Peasants everywhere became outlaws and attacked many nobles and clergies. People raided nobles houses and burned newspapers that said for the third estate to pay the second estate. I think this is when things are starting to become very frightening. People are being murdered and getting their food stolen from their houses. The great fear was not a pleasant time for any one of the estates. During this time, a group of women marched to versailles to demand that the king and queen return to Paris and see what has happened to their kingdom. Many buildings were on fire and people were starting to be found dead on the streets. It was no longer safe to live anywhere near this area. People are starting to be worried for their lives because people could get murdered at any moment.

7. Journal Entry #6 September 1781
The Declaration of The Rights of Man is a statement of revolutionary ideals that the national assembly adopted. It states that men are born and remain free and equal. i agree with this because now being in the 3rd estate it gives us so much more freedom. During this time the Catholic Churchs lost both their land and political independence. i do agree with this because they were helping France pay off huge depts that we shouldnt have had in the first place. The constitution created a Limited Constitutional Monarchy and a Legislative Assembly. Which both stripped king Louis XVI of some of his power. Although he still had over all power. So it was a good idea but didn't really work out the way we may have hoped. But i still don't feel safe since everything were attempting just continues to turn out violently.

8. Journal Entry # 7 September 1792
France is at war with Europe because the queen is from there and she told them to attack France. I think that war is the last thing we need right now in this country. There are already thousands of murders because of the sans-culottes. They went to prisons and killed thousands of prisoners. The killing of all the prisoners was called the september massacres. It created a wide-spread panic throughout Paris. Things were starting to get out of hand with all these people being murdered and their heads being put on spears. It's really frightening because i feel like everywhere i go I'm going to get attacked. I can't flee either because that would be betraying my country and i would get killed for that too. It's a very dangerous place right now...

9. Journal Entry #8 1793
The Reign of Terror was when Robespierre was basically leading Paris. It was a very frightening time. Robespierre is the man leading the revolution and the Jacobins. He thought that the best way to handle traitors was by trailing them and then guillotining them. The Guillotine a device used to chop of peoples heads. It was created by a doctor and thought to be painless. I personally stayed in France to help fight back to the Monarch and get my freedom. The Jacobins who were club members to Jean-Paul Marat's news paper, were a big contrabution to the Revalution. Jean-Paul's newspaper told everyone that the more people we beheaded the better things would get. The Committee of Public Safety was doing an awful job people were dying left and right. But the Emigres were safe because they all fled France. There was a lot of Treason going on during this time. At this point most of the 1st and 2nd estates privlieges had been taken away. which was a huge step for us because everything we had ever known was the 1st and 2nd estates being so well off. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette the former king and queen of France were being trialed. They were accused of everything up to Marie being accused of incest. I am glad they were executed they were nothing but bad things for France.

10. Journal Entry # 9 July 1794
Robespierre was killed because he went too far with the killings of the citizens of France. When people realized that people were being killed for no good reason, he was sent to the guillotine to be killed. Once he was killed, that marked the end of the reign of terror and the end of the revolution itself. The committee of public safety was 12 of the most important people at that time, put together in a group and was in charge of making the laws. The laws that they made were completely ridiculous. The french directory and conservative were created after things started getting better with the country. Soon after Robes Pierre was killed, things started looking up in France. People treated others as equals and the murdered started decreasing rapidly. Killing Robes Pierre was necessary to end the revolution. 

11. Journal Entry #10
The last 6 years of the Revolution have been amazing and horrible. We achieved our goals of getting our freedom and becoming our on but not exactly in the way that we wanted to. or not in the way that I wanted to. When i look back on those years I remember the storming of the bastille and the guillotine that most. Mainly because those are two things that took our savagery to the next level. From polite to angry, from angry to deadly. I wish we could have not killed the innocent people and starved and neglected the King and Queens kids. If we could have shed less blood but had the same impact of getting rid of the monarch and unfair social classes I would have been happier. But I am happy about the freedom that we gained from the revolution. When I look back on these years I will be proud but at the same time say i had no part in any of it. Freedom can be a deadly gift...