French Revolution Dbq

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It The Bible says that God created the world in six days, and as an example to us, rested on the seventh. Whether you believe this or not, it set a good framework for the appropriate length of the week. In 1793 during the French Revolution, the National Convention tried to stray from this by creating a new calendar based on the decimal system. The year still consisted of 12 months split into thirty days, but these days were split into ten hours, and these hours split into one hundred minutes, and those minutes split into one hundred seconds. The calendar was conceived as part of a movement to remove all traces of the catholic church, who the revolutionaries blamed for a great portion of the despots’ power. But

In 1789, the third estate wrote a list of grievances to the rest of estates. One of them said, “We ask that the number of religious holidays be reduced, for each of them enchains the activity of a great people, being of considerable detriment to the State, not to mention the numerous disadvantages of idleness.” (Document 1) They were asking for the reduction in the amount of religious holidays, so that they could have more work days and make more money. Already, the common citizens were trying to reduce the role of religion. During the revolution, the catholicism was destroyed altogether. The revolutionaries wanted to destroy every trace of the source of the monarchs’ “divine right,” and went as far as to destroy the calendar, since they finally had the chance to make any changes they wanted. Just prior to implementing the new calendar, it

Besides the longer work week, it also added a new day for the weekend called the “Decadi.” On this day people would go to former churches and celebrate the revolution. Citizens were not too enthusiastic about this. In the church, they were reminded of their old religion (document 10), which many still revered and wanted to return to. But the Jacobins destroyed those people’s traditions and religion completely. The Jacobin’s conservative political opponents saw the Jacobin’s radical acts as acts of despotism similar to the ones that that the French Revolution was supposed to be removing. (Document 8) They saw the new calendar as hypocritical, useless, and when they protested they were killed.. During that time, people would be executed for every little reason. Being idle was one of them. Overall, the impacts of the French Republican Calendar were all