Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
company name	Harrods
company logo
company type	Private company
genre	Department Store
foundation	1834
founder	Charles Henry Harrod
location	London, United Kingdom
key people	Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani
industry	Retail
products	Quality & luxury goods
num employees	5000+
parent	Harrods
subsid	| owner Qatar Investment Authority
company slogan	Omnia Omnibus Ubique—All Things for All People, Everywhere
homepage	www.harrods.com
footnotes	}}

Harrods is a high-end department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air Harrods, and to Harrods Buenos Aires, sold by Harrods in 1922 and closed , with plans announced to reopen in 2013.

The store occupies a site and has over one million square feet () of selling space in over 330 departments. The UK's second-biggest shop, Oxford Street's Selfridges, is a little over half the size with of selling space.

The Harrods motto is ''Omnia Omnibus Ubique—All Things for All People, Everywhere''. Several of its departments, including the seasonal Christmas department and the Food Hall, are world famous.

Throughout its history, the store has had a total of five owners. On 8 May 2010, Mohamed Al-Fayed sold the store to Qatar Holdings for .

History

Harrods founder Charles Henry Harrod first set up shop in 1824, at the age of 25, south of the River Thames in Southwark, at 228, Borough High Street. He ran this business, variously listed as a Draper, or Mercer and Haberdasher, certainly until 1831. During 1825 the business was listed as 'Harrod and Wicking, Linen Drapers, Retail', but this partnership was dissolved at the end of that year. His first grocery business appears to be as ‘Harrod & Co.Grocers’ at 163 Upper Whitecross Street, Clerkenwell, E.C.1., in 1832. In 1834 in London's East End, he established a wholesale grocery in Stepney, at 4, Cable Street, with a special interest in tea. In 1849, to escape the vice of the inner city and to capitalise on trade to the Great Exhibition of 1851 in nearby Hyde Park, Harrod took over a small shop in the district of Brompton, on the site of the current store. Beginning in a single room employing two assistants and a messenger boy, Harrod's son Charles Digby Harrod built the business into a thriving retail operation selling medicines, perfumes, stationery fruit, and vegetables. Harrods rapidly expanded, acquired the adjoining buildings, and employed one hundred people by 1880.

However, the store's booming fortunes were reversed in early December 1883, when it burnt to the ground. Remarkably, in view of this calamity, Charles Harrod fulfilled all of his commitments to his customers to make Christmas deliveries that year—and made a record profit in the process. In short order, a new building was built on the same site, and soon Harrods extended credit for the first time to its best customers, among them Oscar Wilde, Lillie Langtry, Ellen Terry, Charlie Chaplin, Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Sigmund Freud, A. A. Milne, and many members of the British Royal Family.

On Wednesday, 16 November 1898, Harrods debuted England's first "moving staircase" (escalator) in their Brompton Road stores; the device was actually a woven leather conveyor belt-like unit with a mahogany and "silver plate-glass" balustrade. Nervous customers were offered brandy at the top to revive them after their 'ordeal'. The department store was purchased by the Fayed brothers in 1985.

Recent events

Following denial that it was for sale, Harrods was sold to Qatar Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of the emirate of Qatar in May 2010. A fortnight previously, Fayed had stated that "People approach us from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. Fair enough. But I put two fingers up to them. It is not for sale. This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury's. It is a special place that gives people pleasure. There is only one Mecca."

The sale was concluded in the early hours of 8 May, when Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani came to London to finalise the deal, saying that the acquisition of Harrods would add "much value" to the investment portfolio of Qatar Holdings while his deputy, Hussain Ali Al-Abdulla, called it a "landmark transaction". A spokesman for Fayed said "in reaching the decision to retire, [Fayed] wished to ensure that the legacy and traditions that he has built up in Harrods would be continued." Harrods was sold for £1.5 billion; half of the sale will be used to pay bank debts of £625 million.

Fayed later revealed in an interview that he decided to sell Harrods following the difficulty in getting his dividend approved by the trustee of the Harrods pension fund. Fayed said "I'm here every day, I can't take my profit because I have to take a permission of those bloody idiots...I say is this right? Is this logic? Somebody like me? I run a business and I need to take bloody fucking trustee's permission to take my profit" Fayed was appointed honorary chairman of Harrods, a position he will hold for at least six months.

Significant event timeline

1824: Charles Henry Harrod starts his first business as a Draper, at 228, Borough High Street, Southwark, London.

1834: Charles Henry Harrod (1799–1885) founds a wholesale grocery in Stepney, East London

1849: Harrods moves to the Brompton area of London, near Hyde Park

1861: Harrods undergoes a transformation when it was taken over by Harrod's son, Charles Digby Harrod (1841–1905)

1883: On 6 December, fire guts the shop buildings, giving the family the opportunity to rebuild on a grander scale

1889: Charles Digby Harrod retires, and Harrods shares are floated on the London Stock Exchange under the name ''Harrod's Stores Limited''

1905: Begun in 1894, the present building is completed to the design of architect Charles William Stephens.

1914: Harrods opens its first and only foreign branch in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It became independent of Harrods in the late 1940s but still traded under the Harrods name usable only in Argentina Harrods Buenos Aires.

1914: Harrods buys the Regent Street department store Dickins & Jones.

1919: Harrods buys the Manchester department store, Kendals; it took on the Harrods name for a short time in the 1920s, but the name was changed back to Kendals following protests from staff and customers.

1959: The British department store holding company, House of Fraser, buys Harrods.

1969: Christian the lion was bought by John Rendall and Anthony 'Ace' Bourke. The lion was set free in Kenya after reaching maturity.

1983: A terrorist attack by the Provisional IRA outside the Brompton store kills six people.

1985: The Fayed brothers buy House of Fraser including Harrods Store for . 1986: The small town of Otorohanga in New Zealand briefly changed its name to Harrodsville in response to legal threats made by Mohamed Fayed against a person with the surname of Harrod, who had used the name "Harrod's" for his shop. Other town businesses changed their store name to Harrod's in support, and the resultant lampooning in the British press led to Fayed dropping the legal action. 1990: A Harrods shop opens onboard the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, which was then owned by the Walt Disney Company. Harrods gives right to Duty Free International for a licence to operate a Harrods Signature Shop at Toronto Pearson International Airport's Terminal 3 (closed shortly after)

1994: The relationship between House of Fraser and Harrods is severed. Harrods remains under the ownership of the Fayed family, and House of Fraser is floated on the stock exchange.

1997: The British court issues an injunction to restrain the Buenos Aires Harrods store from trading under the Harrods name.

2000: A Harrods shop opens onboard the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, owned by the Cunard Line.

2006: The Harrods "102" shop opens opposite the main shop in Brompton Road; it features concessions like Krispy Kreme and Yo! Sushi, as well as florists, a herbalist, a masseur, and an oxygen spa.

2006: Omar Fayed, Mohamed's youngest son, joins the Harrods board.

2010: Qatar Holdings become the new owners of Harrods, after Fayed announces he has sold the shop. It had been reported that Qatar Holdings paid for the Brompton store, in a deal signed in the early hours of 8 May 2010. 2010: Harrods looks at the possibility of expanding to China and opening a new shop in Shanghai. Michael Ward, managing director of Harrods cited Chinese shoppers in Harrods is increasing and the average spend by a Chinese shopper is three times that of any other nationality.

Products and services

The shop's 330 departments offer a wide range of products and services. Products on offer include clothing for women, men, children and infants, electronics, jewellery, sporting gear, bridal trousseau, pets and pet accessories, toys, food and drink, health and beauty items, packaged gifts, stationery, housewares, home appliances, furniture, and much more.

A representative sample of shop services includes 32 restaurants, serving everything from high tea to tapas to pub food to haute cuisine; a personal shopping-assistance programme known as "By Appointment"; a watch repair service; a tailor; a dispensing pharmacy; a beauty spa and salon; a barbers shop; Harrods Financial Services; Harrods Bank; Ella Jade Bathroom Planning and Design Service; private events planning and catering; food delivery; a wine steward; bespoke "picnic" hampers and gift boxes; bespoke cakes; and bespoke fragrance formulations.

Up to 300,000 customers visit the shop on peak days, comprising the highest proportion of customers from non-English speaking countries of any department store in London. More than five thousand staff from over fifty different countries work at Harrods.

As of the 15 October 2009, Harrods Bank has started selling gold bars and coins that customers can buy "off the shelf". The gold products range from to , and can be purchased within Harrods Bank. They also offer storage services, as well as the ability to sell back gold to Harrods in the future.

Royal warrants

Harrods was the holder of royal warrants from:

Queen Elizabeth II for Provisions and Household Goods

The Duke of Edinburgh as Outfitters

The Prince of Wales as Outfitters and Saddlers

The Queen Mother, now deceased, for China and Glass

Harrods had held The Duke of Edinburgh's warrant since 1956, but it was rescinded by Prince Philip on 21 December 2001 because of a "significant decline in the trading relationship" between the duke and the shop.

Fayed then pre-emptively removed all the royal coats of arms that had been prominently displayed by the business, even though other warrants were yet to expire or be withdrawn. He claimed that the warrants were a curse and he had them destroyed. None of the royal grantors of warrants had spent any money at Harrods since 1997, the year Diana, Princess of Wales, died.

Memorials

Since the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Al-Fayed, Mohamed Al-Fayed's son, two memorials commissioned by Al-Fayed have been erected inside Harrods to the couple. The first, unveiled on 12 April 1998, consists of photographs of the two behind a pyramid-shaped display that holds a wine glass smudged with lipstick from Diana's last dinner as well as what is described as an engagement ring Dodi purchased the day before they died.

The second memorial, unveiled in 2005 and located by the Egyptian escalator at door three is titled "Innocent Victims", is a bronze statue of the two dancing on a beach beneath the wings of an albatross. The albatross is a bird that is said to symbolise the "Holy Spirit". The sculpture was created by 80 year old Bill Mitchell who is a close friend of Al-Fayed and has been the artistic design advisor to Harrods for 40 years. Mr. Al-Fayed said he wanted to keep the pair's "spirit alive" through the statue.

After the death of Michael Jackson, Al-Fayed announced that they had already been discussing plans to build a memorial statue of the singer. The statue of Michael Jackson has now been created, but will now be placed at Craven Cottage football ground following the sale of Harrods.

Dress code

Since 1989 Harrods has a dress code policy and has turned away several people who it believes are not dressed appropriately. These include a soldier in uniform, a scout troop, a woman with a mohican hair cut, a fifteen stone woman and FC Shakhtar Donetsk's first team for wearing tracksuits.

Criticism

Harrods and Mohamed Fayed have been criticised for selling real animal fur with regular protests organised outside Harrods. Harrods is the only department store in Britain that has continued to sell fur. Harrods was sharply criticised in 2004 by the Hindu community for marketing a line of feminine underwear (designed by Roberto Cavalli) which featured the images of South-Asian goddesses. The line was eventually withdrawn and formal apologies were made. Harrods has been criticised as "deeply sexist" for making female employees wear six kinds of makeup at all time without requiring this of male employees.

Further reading

See also

Harrods Buenos Aires

Jenners, known as the "Harrods of the North"

References

Notes:

References:

''Guinness World Records 2007'', published by Guinness (8 August 2006), ISBN 978-1904994121

External links

Harrods website

Harrods Aviation

Harrods Estates

Harrods store elevation

Mohamed al-Fayed interview Harrods Owner

Category:Buildings and structures in Kensington and Chelsea Category:Retail companies based in London Category:Companies established in 1834 Category:Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange Category:Department stores of the United Kingdom Category:Edwardian era Category:House of Fraser Category:Retail buildings in London Category:British Royal Warrant holders Category:Shops in London Category:Visitor attractions in Kensington and Chelsea Category:Department store buildings Category:1834 establishments in England

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Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
name	Mohamed Al-Fayedمحمد الفايد
birth name	Mohamed Al-Fayed
birth date	January 27, 1929
birth place	El-Gomorok, Alexandria, Egypt
nationality	Egyptian
occupation	Owner of the Hôtel Ritz Paris and Fulham football club, former owner of Harrods department store and the House of Fraser, Philanthropist
networth	US$1.2 billion (2011)
spouse	Samira Khashoggi(m. 1954–1956, divorced)Heini Wathén (1985–present)
children	Dodi FayedJasmine Al-FayedKarim Al-FayedCamila Al-FayedOmar Al-Fayed
relatives	Ali Al-Fayed (brother)
website	alfayed.com
signature	}}

Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Fayed () (born January 27, 1929 ) is an Egyptian businessman. After business ventures in Haiti and Dubai, Al-Fayed moved to England and fought a contentious battle for the ownership of the House of Fraser retail group, which included the Harrods department store. Al-Fayed ran Harrods from 1985 to 2010, before its sale to Qatar Holdings.

The owner of Fulham Football Club and the Hôtel Ritz Paris, Al-Fayed has been a controversial figure in England, with his propagation of conspiracy theories over the death of his son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash in Paris, quest for British citizenship, and his role in the Cash-for-questions affair. His wealth is estimated at $1.2 billion, making him the 993rd richest person in the world.

Early life

Mohamed Abdel Moneim Al-Fayed was born on January 27, 1929, in the El-Gomorok quarter of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. Al-Fayed's father, Aly Aly Fayed, was a primary school teacher, and later a school inspector. Al-Fayed has two sisters, and two brothers, Saleh (1931–2010), and Ali Fayed (born 1933).

Business career

At the age of nineteen Al-Fayed was selling bottles of Coca-Cola on the streets of Alexandria, and sold Singer sewing machines at the age of twenty one. In 1952 Al-Fayed was hired by a friend, Tousson El Barrawi, and the seventeen year old Adnan Khashoggi for their furniture importation business. Al-Fayed excelled at the business and impressed Adhan's father, Mohamed Kashoggi, the personal physcian of the King of Saudi Arabia. In the early 1950s Al-Fayed travelled to Europe for the first time, visiting France, Italy and Switzerland. Returning to Egypt, Al-Fayed confessed to his wife, Samira Kashoggi, Adhan Kashoggi's sister, that he had had an affair, and she demanded a divorce. Al-Fayed terminated his partnership with Adhan Kashoggi, and secretly withdrew £100,000 from Kashoggi's Al Nasr trading company. Kashoggi later issued a writ against Al-Fayed for the return of the money, and later agreed with Al-Fayed to forgive the money and other loans and debts for Samira's freedom to remarry and return to Egypt. Al-Fayed retained custody of their only child, Dodi Fayed.

Following Egyptian President Nassar's threats to expropropriate foreign businesses, Al-Fayed was able to take control of a small shipping company, owned by Leon Carasso, who wished to emigrate. Cassaro would later claim that Al-Fayed had defaulted on the agreed payment for his business. Fayed also acquired interests in other transportation companies at favourable prices. After Nasser ordered the consfication of Egyptian property in 1961, Al-Fayed transferred ownership of his Middle Eastern Navigation Company to Genoa in Italy.

Haiti

On June 12, 1964, Al-Fayed arrived in Haiti, then under the control of François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Al-Fayed entered the country on a Kuwaiti passport, and introduced himself as Sheikh Mohamed Fayed. Shortly after his arrival, Duvalier cancelled a ten year contract with an American company that gave them monopoly control over Haiti's oil industry, and signed a similar contract with Al-Fayed, for fifty years. Al-Fayed promised to use his connections in Dubai to help bring investment to the Caribbean island, if they allowed him to build an oil refinery, and develop the wharf at Port-au-Prince. Al-Fayed had exclusive control over the collection of fees for unloading and docking at Haiti's main port, and this caused resentment in the shipping industry. Al-Fayed was 'tapped' for $30,000 by Duvalier, and rather than pay, and fearful of the growing anger of the shipping agents, Al-Fayed left Haiti in December 1964. Fayed later claimed that he was owed $5 million by the Haitian government, although the 1988 DTI report into Al-Fayed's background stated that "we have no doubt at all that Mohamed Fayed perpetrated a substantial deceit on the government and people of Haiti in 1964...he deprived the harbour authority of over US $100,000 of money it could ill-afford to lose" Al-Fayed became a Haitian citizen in November 1964 and it was with a Haitian diplomatic passport that Fayed entered the United Kingdom later that year.

Dubai

Ingratiating himself in London's Arab expatriate community, Al-Fayed met an Iraqi businessman, Salim Abu Alwan, and through Alwan was introduced to Mahdi Al Tajir. Tajir was then an adviser to Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates. Rashid was the Emir of Dubai, and oil was soon to be discovered in Dubai, which would transform the wealth of the emirate.

Tajir informed Al-Fayed that Dubai was penniless and needed to borrow £1 million for the future construction of modern harbour facilities. Al-Fayed secured a loan of £9 million from Imre Rochlitz, an American lawyer. Rochlitz's Jewish ancestry caused embarrassment to Tajir, and later caused Rochlitz to reject Al-Fayed's offer of a formal partnership. Al-Fayed earned £1.5 million commission from the contract for British engineering company Costain to carry out the improvement works to the port. Al-Fayed also assisted with securing the financing for the Dubai World Trade Centre, with the banker David Douglas-Home of Morgan Grenfell managing the contract. By the mid 1970s Costain had gained over £280 million of contracts thanks to Al-Fayed and Tajir, and Al-Fayed bought 20.84% of Costain's shares, and was later appointed a company director.

With his earnings from commissions on various projects in Dubai, Al-Fayed bought a Rolls-Royce, a large chalet in Gstaad, and the remaining apartments of 60 Park Lane in Mayfair, where he had been living for the past few years.

In 1974 Al-Fayed met Roland 'Tiny' Rowland, a British businessman with extensive interests in Southern Africa, and the chairman of international conglomorate Lonrho. Fayed's complex professional relationship with Rowland would dominate his life for the next twenty years, with legal repecussions continuing into the late 1990s.

Rowland persuaded Al-Fayed to exchange his shares in Costain for 5.5 million shares in Lonrho in March 1975, and Al-Fayed used the profit from the deal to buy another 3 million shares in Lonrho and become a director of the company. Al-Fayed soon became alarmed at Rowland's use of Lonrho's money to fund his lifestyle and to pay large bribes in Africa, as well as his syphoning of company profits into a secret bank account in Switzerland.

The British Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) began to investiagate Lonrho in early 1976, and an alarmed Al-Fayed quit the company in May 1976, selling his Lonrho shares to Kuwati investors and bought back his Costain shares for £11 million.

Tajir's influence in Dubai was waning by 1977, and Al-Fayed was excluded from the commission process for a new aluminium smelter, and the development of Jebel Ali, putting Costain's future profits at risk. Al-Fayed sold his stake in the company for £15 million in November 1977.

In 1993 Al-Fayed was visited at Harrods by Mohammed Alabbar, the director of Dubai's Department of Economic Development. Alabbar had been appointed by Sheikh Maktoum to eradicate the system of large commission payments from previous decades. Tajir was challenged in the British courts to repay his alleged excessive profits earned from the construction of Dubai's aluminum smelter, and Al-Fayed was targeted over his management contract of the Dubai World Trade Centre. Al-Fayed's contract to manage the centre was later terminated by the Maktoums and Al-Fayed sued them for compensation estimated between £30 to 90 million. The case came to court in October 1994, and after trying to unsucssfully settle the case with the Maktoums, Al-Fayed was due to testify on October 17. Al-Fayed's lawyer informed the court that morning that he had been taken seriously ill with neck and back complications, and could not fly to Dubai as a result.

Alabbar, however, had secretly taped Al-Fayed on his way to Harrods that morning, and the tapes were shown to the court the next day. Al-Fayed's lack of ill health was evident, and Al-Fayed was informed by his lawyer of the disastrous effect that his deception had on the case that day.

House of Fraser group and Harrods

;Background to Harrods purchase In 1984, Al-Fayed and his brother Ali, purchased a 30 percent stake for £138 million in the House of Fraser, a group that included the Knightsbridge department store Harrods, from Roland 'Tiny' Rowland, the head of international conglomerate Lonrho.

Lonrho had been pursuing control of the House of Fraser since 1977, and was prevented from acquiring it by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in a 1981 ruling, although Lonrho's purchase of ''The Observer'' was approved.

After his purchase of the House of Fraser shares, Al-Fayed demanded that Rowland leave the board of House of Fraser, and courted the chairman of House of Fraser, Professor Roland Smith, who received a retroactive bonus once Al-Fayed had acquired the company. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, John Biffen, ruled that Lonrho must give an undertaking not to buy any more shares in the House of Fraser, a ruling that left Roland "incandescent". Following the ruling Rowland began to sell shares to Al-Fayed, whom he had met while Al-Fayed was briefly a director of Lonrho. Rowland later said that "I knew that Tootsie (as Rowland called Al-Fayed) could never afford to purchase the whole of House of Fraser."

Al-Fayed did purchase the remaining 70 percent of the House of Fraser in early 1985 for £615 million, sparking a bitter feud between himself and Rowland. The former editor of ''The Observer'', Donald Trelford, believes that Rowland was "...certainly motivated in his vendetta against Al-Fayed by outrage at having been conned. But he was also convinced that his shareholders had been cheated." Rowland felt his shareholders had been cheated as he believed Al-Fayed had used a power of attorney that he held for the Sultan of Brunei, then the richest man in the world, to fund the purchase. Rowland's bitterness also came from his belief that Al-Fayed had lied to the British government about the sources of his wealth, and that the government had failed to investigate Al-Fayed's credentials and had approved the sale without a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (while Lonrho had faced three inquiries under the commission), and that the new trade secretary, Norman Tebbit, had prevented Lonrho from bidding while Al-Fayed's deal went through.

Origins of wealth

To take control of the House of Fraser group, the Fayed brothers had to convince the British government that they possessed sufficient assets to securely purchase the group. The Fayeds invented a spurious family history of old money for themselves. Represented by the investment bankers Kleinwort Benson and the law firm Herbert Smith, the Fayeds' bankers submitted to the government a one and a half page summary of their assets, which the government accepted. The Al-Fayed brothers claimed they were from a family of wealthy cotton traders. Their wealth was estimated by their bankers, Kleinwort Benson, to be worth "several billion dollars". A press release by Kleinwort Benson stated that the Fayeds were an "old established Egyptian family who for more than 100 years were ship owners, land owners and industrialists in Egypt." The report said that they were raised in Britain and fled Egypt following the rise to power of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The DTI report, however came to very different conclusions about the scale of their wealth, stating that;

If people had known, for instance, that they only owned one luxury hotel; that their interests in oil exploration consortia were of no current value; that their banking interests consisted of less than 5 percent of the issued share capital of a bank and were worth less than $10 million; that they had no current interests in construction projects: that far from being 'leading shipowners in the liner trade' they only owned two roll-on roll-off 1600 ton cargo ferries; if all these facts had been known people would have been less disposed to believe that the Fayeds really owned the money they were using to buy HOF (House of Fraser)

—1988 DTI report into the background of the Fayed brothers''

In March 1985 the Fayeds announced a formal cash offer for House of Fraser of £615 million, which Kleinwort claimed was untethered by any borrowings. There has not yet been a comprehensive account of the state of Fayeds finances in 1985, but the DTI. report claimed that by October 1984 the Fayeds had at least $600 million in the Royal Bank of Scotland and in a Swiss bank at their disposal. "We were not told the source of any of these funds or given a credible story as to how and where they were obtained", said the DTI. inspectors. The money the Fayeds claimed as their own was apparently used as collateral in order to guarantee a loan of more than £400 million to buy House of Fraser.

Al-Fayed told Maureen Orth in an interview that "If you have a company with tremendous assets like Harrods...you have no problem. You don't need to use cash." The first loan, from a Swiss bank, was replaced with another loan secured by House of Fraser shares, the Fayeds had acquired the House of Fraser with none of their own money used to purchase it. The Fayeds ownership of Harrods was complete when the British government issued a press release announcing that it would not refer the Fayeds' bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. During the final stages of the Fayeds purchase of Harrods, Tiny Rowland wrote to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Norman Tebbit, repudiating the Fayeds story of the origin of their families wealth. Rowland also enlisted the help of Ashraf Marwan, to aid him in his exposing of the Fayeds. ''The Observer'' newspaper, owned by Rowland, was used to attack the Fayeds. Al-Fayed issued a libel suit against ''The Observer'', and other newspapers critical of the Fayeds were routinely threatened or issued with similar writs. All critical reporting of the Fayeds outside of the ''Observer'' was virtually stopped.

1988 DTI Report

From 1985 until 1987 Rowland led a worldwide investigation into Al-Fayed and his acquisition of Harrods. He employed accountants and solicitors, private detectives and freelance journalists in an operation, said to cost many millions of pounds, that was beyond the scope of any newspaper inquiry. Illicit bugging devices were used and some of the money went in bribes to officials to unearth incriminating documents in Egypt, Haiti, Dubai, Brunei, France and Switzerland, allegedly proving fraudulent dealings by Al-Fayed and showing his humble origins and limited net worth.

The results of Rowlands investigations into the Fayeds were given to the Sunday newspaper ''The Observer'', that was owned by Lonrho. ''The Observer'' campaigned for an inquiry into the House of Fraser purchase, and an inquiry by inspectors from the Department of Trade and Industry was delivered in July 1988, but the DTI declined to publish it. Rowland obtained a copy in 1989, and the report was published in a special free sixteen page edition of ''The Observer'' on a Thursday morning. Publishing the report helped put the DTI inspectors' findings into the public arena, helping ''The Observer''s libel defence, with the aim of pressuring the government into releasing the report. Lawyers from the DTI produced a court injunction and ordered all copies of ''The Observer''s version of the report to be handed over or pulped. The report was officially published in 1990.

The DTI report said that the Fayed brothers had 'dishonestly represented their origins, their wealth, their business interests and their resources to the Secretary of State, to the Office of Fair Trading, to the House of Fraser board and shareholders, and their own advisers' Rowland and the Lohnro group had previously been strongly criticised by a 1976 DTI report, and had been described by Prime Minister Edward Heath as "an unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism".

In 1993 the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a case brought by Al-Fayed and his brothers against the British Government, which had accused them of misrepresentation in the DTI report. They contended that the report had ruined their reputation and was not subject to appeal.

Ownership of Harrods

Harrods had entered a steady decline under Hugh Fraser, yet still accounted for half of the House of Fraser groups profits. Determined to restore Harrods fortunes, Al-Fayed hired Brian Walsh as manager of House of Fraser. Walsh created dvisions in the company, and more than two hundred buyers resigned in the next two years. Following arguments with Al-Fayed, Walsh was fired in October 1987. To calm staff, Al-Fayed distrbuted envolopes containing £2,000 in cash. Following Walsh's departure, Fayed moved his offices onto the fifth floor of Harrods, and took a more hands-on role as chairman of the store. Walsh was replaced by Michael Ellis-Jones, who was later fired after eight weeks.

Christoph Bettermann became the deputy chairman of Harrods in 1990, after having worked for Al-Fayed in Dubai since 1984. Bettermann was approached to work in the Emirate of Sharjah, in April 1991, and in June, Bettermann told Maureen Orth, Al-Fayed "showed me a written transcript of a phone conversation between the headhunter and me. He accused me of breaking our trust by talking to these people. I told him, 'If you don’t trust me, I resign. I cannot trust you if you bugged my phone.'" Bettermann quit his job at Harrods and went to work for an oil company in Sharjah.

Al-Fayed wrote to the ruler of Sharjah, and accused Bettermann of stealing large sums of money. Bettermann was cleared by three courts in which Fayed had pressed charges.

Al-Fayed delighted in publicity stunts to raise the profile of the store, dressing as a Harrods doorman, a boy scout and Father Christmas over the years.

Sculptor William Mitchell was hired by Al-Fayed to remodel the Harrods escalators in an ancient Egyptian style. Mitchell also designed memorials for Dodi Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales at Harrods. Al-Fayed claimed to have invested more than £400 million restoring Harrods, with £75 million being spent on the Egyptian escalator.

In 1991 the House of Commons Trade and Industry Committee ordered the Governor of the Bank of England, Robin Leigh-Pemberton to order the Fayeds to transfer control of the Harrods Bank to trustees, after they found that the Fayeds were not "fit and proper" to run the bank. Al-Fayed bought his brother, Saleh, out of his interest in Harrods for £100 million in 1994. In 1994, before House of Fraser plc was relisted on the London Stock Exchange, Harrods was moved out of the group so that it could remain under the private ownership of the Al-Fayed and his family. ;Employee relations Al-Fayed was concerned by the loyalty of his staff, and employed two young Greek women as spies, to report on their fellow employees. The telephones of the shop workers trade union, USDAW were bugged. Al-Fayed also listened to his employees secretly recorded conversations about their sex lives.

Al-Fayed would customarily fire employees who offended his idea of athestics, being most offended by overweight staff or black people. To avoid hiring black people, Harrods required applicants to submit photographs. The number of black people employed by Harrods was eventually half the number employed by other London stores.

;Theft from Harrods safety deposit boxes Al-Fayed, along with the director of Harrods security, John Macnamara, and four other employees, were arrested in 1998 after allegations that they had broken into Rowland's safety deposit box, stored at Harrods. Sensitive documents were stolen, along with jewellery, rare stamps and a gold cigarette case, among other items. Fayed sued the Metropolitan Police in 2002 for wrongful arrest over the case, and lost, facing a £1 million legal bill.

Al-Fayed later agreed a £1.4 million settlement with Rowland's widow

The theft from the safety deposit boxes was later cited as one of the reasons behind the British governments refusal to grant the Fayeds citizenship in 1999.

;Royal warrants In August 2010, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Al-Fayed revealed that he had burnt Harrods royal warrants, after taking them down in 2000. Harrods had held the Royal warrants since 1910. Describing the warrants as a "curse", Al-Fayed claimed that business had tripled since their removal. The Duke of Edinburgh removed his warrant in January 2000, the other warrants were removed from Harrods by Al-Fayed in December, pending their five yearly review. The Duke of Edinburgh had been banned from Harrods by Al-Fayed. Film of the burning of the warrants in 2009 was shown in the final scene of ''Unlawful Killing'' a film funded by Al-Fayed and directed by Keith Allen.

;Sale of Harrods Following denials that it was for sale, Harrods was sold to Qatar Holdings, the sovereign wealth fund of the emirate of Qatar in May 2010. A fortnight previously, Al-Fayed had stated that "People approach us from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar. Fair enough. But I put two fingers up to them. It is not for sale. This is not Marks and Spencer or Sainsbury's. It is a special place that gives people pleasure. There is only one Mecca."

A spokesman for Al-Fayed said "in reaching the decision to retire, (Al-Fayed) wished to ensure that the legacy and traditions that he has built up in Harrods would be continued." Harrods was sold for £1.5 billion; half of the sale will be used to pay bank debts of £625 million.

Al-Fayed later revealed that he decided to sell Harrods following the difficulty in getting his dividend approved by the trustee of the Harrods pension fund. Fayed said "I'm here every day, I can't take my profit because I have to take a permission of those bloody idiots...I say is this right? Is this logic? Somebody like me? I run a business and I need to take bloody fucking trustee's permission to take my profit". Fayed was appointed honorary chairman of Harrods, a position he will hold for at least six months.

Current businesses

Hôtel Ritz Paris and the 'Villa Windsor'

In March 1979, Al-Fayed and his brother, Saleh, bought the Hôtel Ritz Paris for £9 million. The Ritz-Escoffier School of French Gastronomy was added to the hotel in 1988, and an underground swimming pool and nightclub have since been added during their extensive refurbishment of the Ritz. Al-Fayed has incured considerable debt during his ownership of the hotel, in 1993 his losses on the Ritz were estimated at $120 million, and in 2010, an RBS loan of £90 million on the hotel was due to paid, having had payment delayed from the previous November. For Al-Fayed's efforts in restoring the Ritz he was awarded the 'Medaille de Paris' and made a Chevalier in the Légion d'honneur by the French government.

In 1986 Al-Fayed signed a fifty year lease with the city of Paris to rent the former home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, at 4 rue du Champ d'Entraînement, on the Neuilly-sur-Seine side of the Bois de Boulogne. The house is sometimes unofficially called the 'Villa Windsor'.

Following Edward VIII's abdication as King of the United Kingdom in 1936, he was created the Duke of Windsor, and lived in the house in Paris with his wife, Wallis, from 1952 until his death in 1972. When Wallis died in 1986, the house was returned to the ownership of the French state, and leased to Al-Fayed later that year. In July 1997 it was announced that an auction of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's possessions from the 'Villa Windsor' would take place later that year in New York. Fayed had purchased the possessions for $4.5 million from the beneficiary of the Duchess' estate, the Pasteur Institute.

The executor of the Duchess' estate claimed that Al-Fayed tried to purchase the Duchess' jewels for a "rock bottom price", they were later sold at auction in 1987 for $50.5 million.

Auction catalogues were secretly prepeared, and the British Royal family was said to be distressed, with the auction threatening to over shadow the fiftieth birthday of Charles, Prince of Wales. The items offered for auction had immense personal value for the Royals, with items including the desk from which Edward abdicated in 1936, a collection of 10,000 photographs, and a doll given to Edward by his mother, Queen Mary. The auction was later postponed following the death of Al-Fayed's son, Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales. Fayed claimed that Dodi and Diana had visited the house on the day of their death, but this was untrue.

The auction eventually took place in February 1998 at Sotheby's New York, with more than 40,000 items for sale, collected into 3,200 lots. The proceeds from the auction were donated to the Dodi Fayed International Charitable Foundation and causes associated with the late Princess of Wales. The British Royal family was believed to have purchased items in the sale. Al-Fayed extensively refurbished and restored the 'Villa Windsor', and for his efforts was promoted to an Officier in the Légion d'honneur in 1989, and was awarded the 'Grande Plaque de Paris' by the French government.

Fulham F.C.

Al-Fayed bought the freehold of West London professional football club Fulham F.C. for £6.25 million in 1997. The club was purchased via Bill Muddyman's Muddyman Group. His long-term aim was that Fulham would become a FA Premier League side within five years. In 2001, Fulham took the First Division (now Football League Championship) under manager Jean Tigana, winning 100 points and scoring over 100 goals in the season. This meant that Al-Fayed had achieved his objective of Fulham being a Premiership club a year ahead of schedule. By 2002, Fulham were competing in European football, winning the Intertoto Cup and challenging in the UEFA Cup. Fulham have since continued to play in the Premiership, and reached the final of the 2009–10 UEFA Europa League.

Fulham temporailiy left Craven Cottage whilst it was being upgraded to meet modern safety standards. There were fears that Fulham would not return to the Cottage, after it was revealed that Al-Fayed had sold the first right to build on the ground to a property development firm.

Fulham lost a legal case against former manager Tigana in 2004 after Al-Fayed had wrongly alleged that Tigana had overpaid more than £7m for new players and had negotiated transfers in secret. In May 2007 Al-Fayed said he was interested in helping Scottish football team Ross County, following their relegation.

In 2009 Al-Fayed revealed that he is in favour of a wage cap for footballers, and criticised the management of The Football Association and Premier League as "run by donkeys who don't understand business, who are dazzled by money."

A statue of Michael Jackson was unvieled by Al-Fayed in April 2011 at Fulham's Craven Cottage stadium. In 1999 Jackson had attended a league game against Wigan Athletic F.C. at the stadium. Following criticisms of the statue, Al-Fayed said "If some stupid fans don't understand and appreciate such a gift this guy gave to the world they can go to hell. I don't want them to be fans."

Fulham F.C. is owned by Mafco Holdings, based in the tax haven of Bermuda. Mafco Holdings is owned by Al-Fayed and his family. By 2011, Al-Fayed had loaned Fulham F.C. £187 million in interest free loans.

Relationship with the Sultan of Brunei

Al-Fayed told Maureen Orth that he had known Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei since childhood and that they had become acquainted during the building of a trade centre in Brunei. Tiny Rowland told DTI inspectors that Al-Fayed had told him that he negotiated an introduction to the Sultan for $500,000 plus a percentage of any resulting business with an Indian holy man and alleged fraudster, Shri Chandra Swamiji Maharaj. Rowland later admitted this account was untrue.

In the summer of 1984 Al-Fayed received several powers of attorney and written authorizations from the Sultan to carry out tasks for him. These powers of attorney gave Al-Fayed legal access to large sums of the Sultan's money. The Sultan was then the richest man in the world. During this period, the bank of the three Fayed brothers, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), received a sudden transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from Switzerland into their accounts. RBS assumed that the money belonged to the Sultan, but Al-Fayed told the bank that his portfolio was separate from the Sultan's. The DTI report noted that "It may be no more than coincidence that this vast increase in disposable wealth followed quickly on the admission of Mohamed to the Sultan's confidence...It is, however, a very powerful coincidence."

Using a power of attorney, Al-Fayed purchased the Dorchester Hotel for the Sultan in 1985. Al-Fayed accompanied the Sultan to 10 Downing Street to visit Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in January 1985, with the British pound in drastic decline, and threatening the economy the Sultan, who had moved £5 billion ($5.6 billion) of assets out of pounds sterling, moved the assets back into sterling. Al-Fayed took credit for this assist and also for persuading the sultan to give half a billion pounds of contracts to British defence industries.

Other business ventures

;Allied Stars In the late 1970s Al-Fayed created a film production company, Allied Stars, and appointed his son, Dodi Fayed as the chief executive. Allied Star's first production was the 1980 musical ''Breaking Glass'', which flopped, costing Al-Fayed £50,000. The next production backed by Allied Stars was the drama ''Chariots of Fire'', in which Al-Fayed invested £3 million and purchased a 25% stake in the film. Dodi Fayed was barred from the set of ''Chariots of Fire'' by the director, David Putnam, after he distributed cocaine to the cast. The film was a huge success and earned Allied Stars $6 million.

Dodi's profligacy following the success of ''Chariots of Fire'' irriated his father, and Mohamed Al-Fayed froze his financial support to his son. IMS would prove to be a financial success, earning Al-Fayed profits of $21 million following the need for salvage ships during the Iran-Iraq war. Al-Fayed was furious at having bought a potentially worthless company, and punished Dodi by cancelling his credit cards. Fayed also held the finance director of the House of Fraser responsible for the deal and falsely accused him of taking bribes.

Nationality

Al-Fayed was born an Egyptian citizen, entered Haiti on a Kuwaiti passport, and left Haiti with a Haitian diplomatic passport with which he entered the United Kingdom in 1964.

In 1970 Al-Fayed informed Mahdi Al Tajir that his and his brothers Haitian diplomatic passports had expired, and their Egyptian passports made it difficult for them to obtain visas in many countries. Tajir secured Dubaian passports for Al-Fayed, but not Dubaian nationality.

Fayed's adding of ''Al-'' to his surname earned the nickname "the Phoney Pharaoh" from ''Private Eye'' magazine.

The rulers of Dubai, the Al Maktoum family, had refused to renew the Fayeds passports in 1993, and so they reverted to travelling on their original Egyptian passports. Mohamed and Ali Fayed applied for British citizenship in early 1993. Ali's application was supported by Gordon Reece and Peter Hordern, and Mohamed's by Lord Bramall and Jeffrey Archer. The Fayed brothers application for British citizenship was rejected in December 1993, on the basis that the DTI report disqualified them from citizenship. Michael Howard, the Conservative home secretary, asked for the decision to be reviewed, fearing renewed embarrassment over his connections wth alleged fraudster Harry Landy, which surfaced during the DTI investgation. The Home Office later abandoned its appeal to the House of Lords against the High courts decision.

In 1997 Jack Straw, the home secretary in the new Labour government, reconsidered the Fayeds citizenship request, but rejected the request in May 1999.

The rejection was attributed to Al-Fayed's admittance that he bribed politicians and his breaking into safety deposit boxes in Harrods. Al-Fayed described the decision as "perverse" and said he was a victim of the British establishment and "zombie" politicians.

Tax status

In 1989 Al-Fayed announced that despite living in the United Kingdom since 1964, he had not been 'domiciled' in the country, a status which requires a minimum stay of 180 days. A settlement on his global taxes was negotiated with the Inland Revenue, with Al-Fayed, his brothers and Dodi paying £20 million in past taxes. To limit British income tax, the dividends from Harrods would be paid to an offshore company based in the tax haven of Liechtenstein; this company was itself a subsidiary of two other companes, based in Panama and the British Virgin Islands, also tax havens.

Less than a year later, Al-Fayed announced that he was leaving the UK for Switzerland, announcing that "The grossly unfair treatment finally convinced me that, for the sake of my family, the time has come to leave. I am leaving with a heavy heart." In a 2004 interview with CNN Al-Fayed revealed that he had left the UK after his tax arrangement was cancelled. Al-Fayed later returned to the United Kingdom.

The Fayed family collected £368m in dividends from Harrods between 1999–2009, with the money paid into a holding company, which filtered into a web of sister companies ultimately based in the tax haven of Bermuda.

Property

Al-Fayed owns 60 and 55 Park Lane, and a building on South Street, Mayfair. All three buildings are secretly connected to the Dorchester Hotel, which Al-Fayed purchased for Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei.

In 1995 Westminster City Council believed that Hyde Park Residences, the company letting 170 luxury flats at 55 and 60 Park Lane, had been wrongly reporting the flats as let on long leases to avoid paying higher business rates due on short tenancies. The council imposed a demand for an additional £1.1 million, and Al-Fayed believed that the letting agent, Sandra Lewis-Glass had betrayed his confidence to the council. Denying the false accusation, Lewis-Glass was released uncharged, and later sued for wrongful dismissal, winning £13,500.

In the early 1970s Al-Fayed purchased the Castle Ste-Thérèse in the Parc de St Tropez on the French Riviera, a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, Bocardo SA is a company owned by Al-Fayed that owns his estates in Scotland and Surrey, it is based in the tax haven of Liechtenstein.

Scotland

In 1972, Fayed purchased the Balnagowan estate in Easter Ross, Ross, Northern Scotland. From an initial twelve acres, Al-Fayed has since built the estate up to sixty five thousand acres. Al-Fayed has invested more than £20 million in the estate, restored the 14th century pink Balnagowan castle, and created a tourist accommodation business. The Highlands of Scotland tourist board awarded Al-Fayed the "Freedom of the Highlands" in 2002, in recognition of his "outstanding contribution and comittment to the highlands".

As an Egyptian with links to Scotland, Al-Fayed was intrigued enough to fund a 2008 reprint of the 15th century chronicle ''Scotichronicon'' by Walter Bower. The ''Scotichronicon'' describes how Scota, a sister of the Egyptian Pharoh Tutankhamen, fled her family and landed in Scotland, bringing with her the Stone of Scone. According to the chronicle, Scotland was later named in her honour. The tale is disputed by modern historians. Al-Fayed later declared that "The Scots are originally Egyptians and that's the truth"

In 2009 Al-Fayed revealed that he was a supporter of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, announcing to the Scots that "It's time for you to waken up and detach yourselves from the English and their terrible politicians...whatever help is needed for Scotland to regain its independence, I will provide it...when you Scots regain your freedom, I am ready to be your president"

Media interests

In 1996 Al-Fayed established Liberty Publishing, with the goal of the company "to launch and acquire or take strategic interests in significant media businesses".

The chairman of Liberty Publishing was Stewart Steven, the former editor of the Evening Standard, with John Dux the chief executive, a former managing director of News International.

Al-Fayed had failed in bids to buy the newspaper ''Today'' from Lonrho in 1986 and from News International in 1995. Al-Fayed believed that the British government had put pressure on Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News International not to sell the newspaper to him. Andrew Neil was recruited by Liberty Publishing, and helped agree a £4 million takeover of London News Radio. The takeover later collapsed. A women-only radio station, Viva Radio, was bought for £3 million in May 1996.

Since 1989 Al-Fayed has been publicly represented by public relations expert and former BBC journalist Michael Cole.

''Punch'' relaunch

In 1996 Al-Fayed bought the rights to the historic British humorous magazine ''Punch'', and it was relaunched later that year, at a cost of £3 million, under new editor Peter McKay. ''Punch'' had previously been published from 1841 to 1992. The relaunch was not successful, with ''Punch'' failing to match its satirical competitor, ''Private Eye''. ''Punch'' folded for a second time in 2002.

The People's Trust

In January 1997 Al-Fayed established a new political organisation to promote a crusade against a "culture of violence". The establishment of the trust followed Al-Fayed's support for anti-abortion candidates and the Christian Democrat, the newspaper of the Movement for Christian Democracy. The People's Trust planned to write to all candidates in the 1997 United Kingdom general election in order to identify a group of MPs who put "their consciences, their constituents and their country at the heart of their politics, rather than their party" The People's Trust was dissolved in September 1998 after failing to file its accounts.

Cash for Questions affair

By 1985 Tiny Rowlands attacks on Al-Fayed had extended to the House of Commons, where Members of Parliament (MP's) sympathetic to his cause tabled questions critical of Al-Fayed and sent detailed anti-Fayed submissions to ministers. Fayed was exasperated by the inaction of Peter Hordern, who as the House of Frasers parliamentary consultant was paid £40,000 a year, yet never asked a question helping Al-Fayed or attacked his enemies in parliament. In conversation with Al-Fayed, the chairman of British Airways, Lord King, suggested that Al-Fayed use the services of lobbyist Ian Greer of Ian Greer Associates, who lobbied in parliament on behalf of such companies as British Airways, British Gas, Cadbury Schweppes, Asda and Phillip Morris. Less than two days later Greer wrote to Al-Fayed to tell him that he had spoken to Conservative MP Neil Hamilton, who had agreed to table a parliamentary question on Al-Fayed's behalf. Greer later helped facilitate introductions to Al-Fayed with Conservative MP's such as Gerry Malone, Michael Grylls, Tim Smith and Andrew Bowden.

These MPs tabled parliamentary questions, submitted Early Day Motions and lobbied ministers on Fayed's behalf.

Al-Fayed's payments to Ian Greer Associates, were given to forty mostly Conservative MPs for election expenses. Al-Fayed also funded Hamilton's stay at the Ritz Hotel in Paris in September 1987. Fayed also revealed that the cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken had stayed for free at the Ritz at the same time as a group of Saudi arms dealers. This claim lead to Aitken's subsequent unsuccessful libel case and imprisonment for perjury.

In September 1994, Al-Fayed summoned Brian Hitchen, then editor of the Sunday Express, to his office and told him the of the cash for questions. He specifically named Hamilton and Smith as recipients of payments.

Hitchen alerted Prime Minister John Major to the allegations, and Major established an inquiry headed by Robin Butler. In October, shortly before Butler's inquiry was published, the Guardian, which had also been alerted by Al-Fayed, ran a story about cash for questions involving MP's Smith and Hamilton.

Hamilton and Greer launched a libel action against the Guardian, but just before it was due to reach court in October 1996, they withdrew it.

The matter was referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee chaired by Gordon Downey, along with the behaviour of two Conservative ministers, David Willetts and Andrew Mitchell. Mitchell was cleared, but Willetts resigned as Paymaster General after the committee found he had "dissembled". Downey was expected to present his findings just before the election, but Major's decision to prorogue Parliament prevented publication. In July 1997 Downey's Standards and Privileges Committee published its report on the affair.

The fall-out of the cash-for-questions-affair was seen as one of the key reason for the heavy Conservative defeat in the 1997 general election.

;Hamilton libel case Following accusations made by Al-Fayed in a 1997 Channel 4 documentary, Hamilton bought a libel case against Al-Fayed, which he lost in 1999. Fayed's testimony in the five week trial was described by the judge, Justice Morland, as "inconsistent, confused and unreliable" and warned the jury not to accept it unless it could be independently corroborated. The trial led to Hamilton's bankruptcy. Al-Fayed later failed in a bid to claim costs for the trial from Hamilton's financial backers.

Media portrayals

After ''Vanity Fair'' published Maureen Orth's article ''Holy War at Harrods''. Fayed sued the American magazine for libel in September 1995 but withdrew his suit in 1997. Fayed invited Tom Bower to write his biography in 1996. Bower's biography, ''Fayed'' was published in 1998. Fayed announced his intention to sue, but withdrew his suit.

Orth and Bower were both attempted victims of entrapment by Al-Fayed, with Al-Fayed's staff offering allegedly stolen documents to the writers.

Personal life

Fayed was married to Samira Kashoggi the sister of Fayed's early business partner, the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi from 1954 to 1956. Fayed had a son by Kashoggi, Dodi Fayed. In 1985, Fayed married for a second time, to former Finnish model Heini Wathén, with whom he has four children, Jasmine, Karim, Camila, and Omar, and three grandchildren.

In May 2002 the British newspaper, ''The Daily Telegraph'', falsely accused Al-Fayed of having links to a uranium smuggling ring, and linked his name with Osama bin Laden, leader of terrorist group al-Qaeda. Following these allegations the newspaper made a subsantial donation to the Dodi Al Fayed Charitable Foundation, and gave Al-Fayed right of reply in the newspaper.

Al-Fayed appeared on an episode of ''Da Ali G Show'' in 2000, and the ''Howard Stern Show'' in 2007. Al-Fayed's yacht, the ''Sokar'' (formally the ''Jonikal'') is moored in Monaco.

Accusations of sexual assault and harrassment

Al-Fayed has been accused by several women of sexual harassment and assault.

Attractive young women applying for employment at Harrods were often submitted to HIV tests and gynacological examinations. These women were then selected to spend the weekend with Fayed in Paris. In her profile of Al-Fayed for ''Vanity Fair'', Maureen Orth described how according to former employees "Fayed regularly walked the store on the lookout for young, attractive women to work in his office. Those who rebuffed him would often be subjected to crude, humiliating comments about their appearance or dress...A dozen ex-employees I spoke with said that Fayed would chase secretaries around the office and sometimes try to stuff money down women's blouses"

In 1994, Hermina Da Silva quit her job as a nanny at Al-Fayed's home in Oxted. Da Silva had prepared accusations that she was sexually harassed by Al-Fayed, and she was subsequently arrested by detectives and held overnight in cells following a complaint of theft by an employee of Al-Fayeds. She was later released without charge after officers concluded she had not stolen anything. Al-Fayed eventually settled with her out of court, and she was awarded £12,000.

Al-Fayed was interviewed under caution by the Metropolitan Police after an allegation of sexual assault against a 15-year-old schoolgirl in October 2008. The case was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service, after they found that there was no realistic chance of conviction due to conflicting statements.

In December 1997 the ITV current affairs programme, ''The Big Story'' broadcast testimonies from a number of former Harrods employees who spoke of how women were routinely sexually harassed by Al-Fayed.

Princess Diana

Diana Spencer was born in 1961, and married the heir to the British throne, Charles, Prince of Wales in 1981, becoming the Princess of Wales. Diana was an international celebrity and a frequent visitor to Harrods in the 1980s. Al-Fayed and Dodi first met Diana and Charles when they were introduced at a polo tournament in July 1986, that had been sponsored by Harrods. Diana and Charles divorced in 1995. After turning down Al-Fayed's invitation to holiday in his homes in Gstaad, Scotland and St Tropez, Diana agreed to be hosted by Al-Fayed in the south of France in the summer of 1997, with her two sons, the Princes William and Harry. For the holiday, Fayed bought a 195 ft yacht, the ''Jonikal'' (later renamed the ''Sokar'').

In July 1997, Dodi had been engaged for eight months to Kelly Fisher, an American model, and was due to be married on August 9 in Los Angeles. Al-Fayed had purchased a $7.3 million house in Malibu for Dodi and Fisher.

On 31 July, Dodi and Diana began a private cruise on the ''Jonikal'', paparazzi photographs of the couple in an embrace were published on 10 August, Diana's friend, the journalist Richard Kay, confirmed that Diana was involved in "her first serious romance" since her divorce Contacting Al-Fayed on 7 August to discuss her wedding, Kelly Fisher was told by Al-Fayed never to call again. Publicist Max Clifford advised Fayed's spokesman Michael Cole that Dodi's romance with Diana should be portrayed as genuine, and Fisher should be labelled a "bimbo".

Fisher held a press conference on 15 August 1997 to announce that she was filing a breach of contract suit against Dodi Fayed, and claimed that he had "led her emotionally all the way up to the altar and abandoned her when they were almost there. He threw her love away in a callous way with no regard for her whatsoever".

Dodi and Diana went on a second private cruise on the ''Jonikal'' in the third week of August, and returned from Sardina to Paris on the 30 August. The couple privately dined at the Ritz later that day, after the aggressive behaviour of the paparazzi caused them to cancel a restaurant resevation, they then planned to spend the night at Dodi's apartment near the Arc de Triomphe. In an attempt to deceive the paparazzi, a decoy car left the front of the hotel, while Diana and Dodi departed at speed in a Mercedes-Benz W140 driven by chauffeur Henri Paul from the reear of the hotel. Four minutes later, the car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel, killing Paul and Dodi. Diana died later in hospital. Fayed arrved in Paris at the next day, and viewed Dodi's body, which was returned to Britain for an Islamic funeral.

;Conspiracy theories From February 1998, Al-Fayed claimed that the crash was a result of a conspiracy, and later contended that the crash was orchestrated by MI6 on the instructions of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

His claims that the crash was a result of a conspiracy were dismissed by a French judicial investigation and by Operation Paget, a Metropolitan police inquiry that concluded in 2006.

An inquest headed by Lord Justice Scott Baker into the deaths of Diana and Dodi began at the Royal Courts of Justice, London, on 2 October 2007 and was a continuation of the original inquest that began in 2004. On 7 April 2008, the jury released an official statement that Diana and Dodi were unlawfully killed by the grossly negligent driving of chauffeur Henri Paul and the paparazzi.

During the Baker inquest, lawyers representing Al-Fayed accepted that there was no direct evidence that either the Duke of Edinburgh or MI6, had been involved in any murder conspiracy involving Diana or Dodi.

Al-Fayed's barrister, Michael Mansfield, told the inquest that the Fiat Uno was not the cause of any loss of control by the Mercedes. Lawyers for Al-Fayed also accepted that there was no evidence to support the assertion that Diana was illegally embalmed in order to cover up a pregnancy, a "pregnancy" which they accepted, could not be established by any medical evidence. they also accepted that there was no evidence to support the assertion the French emergency and medical services had played any role in a conspiracy to harm Diana.

Following the Baker inquest, Al-Fayed said that he was abandoning his campaign to prove that Diana and Dodi were murdered in a conspiracy, and said that he would accept the jury's verdict of unlawful killing due to the "gross negligence" of driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi.

Philanthropy

Al-Fayed established the Al-Fayed Charitable Foundation (Charity Commission number 297114) in 1987. The foundation aims to help children with life-limiting conditions and children living in poverty.

The New School at West Heath

In September 1997, West Heath School in Sevenoaks, Kent, United Kingdom, was placed into receivership. West Heath was the former school of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was an independent girls school. Al-Fayed purchased the school for £2.3 million and it became the new premises for the Beth Marie Centre for Traumatised Children, which had previously been based in Sevenoaks. The school reopened as The New School at West Heath in September 1998. Al-Fayed has since continued to donate to the school.

References

;Footnotes ;Additional notes # Tom Bower and the BBC state that the "Al-" prefix was added in the 1970s. # Al-Fayed's biographer, Tom Bower and the 1988 DTI report assert that Al-Fayed was born in 1929. Al-Fayed says that he was born in 1933.

External links

Official website

Fayed Charitable Foundation

;Interviews with Mohamed Al-Fayed

Mohamed Fayed: Why I sold Harrods

;Articles about Mohamed Al-Fayed

1995 ''Vanity Fair'' profile by Maureen Orth

2008 BBC profile

2007 profile from the ''Independent''

'The Swami with the Golden Touch' 1988 Forbes article about Chandraswami, the Sultan of Brunei and Al-Fayed

The Guardian, Fayed and the cash for questions affair by Richard Webster

;Official papers

1997 House of Commons Standards and Privileges committee report

House of Lords judgement in Al Fayed V. Hamilton

The Jury's Verdict: Hearing Transcript at the Inquests into the deaths of Dodi Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales - 7 April 2008

2007-2008 Coroner's Inquests into the deaths of Diana, Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed

Category:1929 births Category:Egyptian businesspeople Category:Egyptian Muslims Category:English football chairmen and investors Category:Fulham F.C. directors and chairmen Category:Hoteliers Category:House of Fraser Category:People from Alexandria Category:Egyptian billionaires Category:Egyptian emigrants to the United Kingdom Category:Living people

ar:محمد الفايد cs:Mohamed Al-Fayed da:Mohamed Al-Fayed de:Mohamed Al-Fayed es:Mohamed Al-Fayed fr:Mohamed Al-Fayed ko:모하메드 알파예드 it:Mohamed Al-Fayed arz:محمد الفايد nl:Mohamed Al-Fayed ja:モハメド・アルファイド pl:Mohamed Al-Fayed pt:Mohamed Al-Fayed ro:Mohamed Al-Fayed sr:Мухамед ел Фајед fi:Mohamed Al-Fayed sv:Mohamed Al-Fayed

Coordinates

41°52′55″N87°37′40″N

{{infobox historical event |event name

The French Revolution |Image_Name Prise de la Bastille.jpg |Image_Caption The storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 |Participants French society |Location France |Date 1789–1799 |Result Abolition and replacement of the French monarchy with a radical democratic republic. Radical social change to forms based on Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights. Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte Armed conflicts with other European countries }}

The French Revolution (; 1789–1799) was a period of radical social and political upheaval in French and European history. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years. French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from left-wing political groups and the masses on the streets. Old ideas about hierarchy and tradition succumbed to new Enlightenment principles of citizenship and inalienable rights.

The French Revolution began in 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-General in May. The first year of the Revolution saw members of the Third Estate proclaiming the Tennis Court Oath in June, the assault on the Bastille in July, the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and an epic march on Versailles that forced the royal court back to Paris in October. The next few years were dominated by tensions between various liberal assemblies and a right-wing monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A republic was proclaimed in September 1792 and King Louis XVI was executed the next year. External threats also played a dominant role in the development of the Revolution. The French Revolutionary Wars started in 1792 and ultimately featured spectacular French victories that facilitated the conquest of the Italian peninsula, the Low Countries and most territories west of the Rhine – achievements that had defied previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular sentiments radicalized the Revolution significantly, culminating in the rise of Maximilien Robespierre and the Jacobins and virtual dictatorship by the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror from 1793 until 1794 during which between 16,000 and 40,000 people were killed. After the fall of the Jacobins and the execution of Robespierre, the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799, when it was replaced by the Consulate under Napoleon Bonaparte.

The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. The growth of republics and liberal democracies, the spread of secularism, the development of modern ideologies and the invention of total war all mark their birth during the Revolution. Subsequent events that can be traced to the Revolution include the Napoleonic Wars, two separate restorations of the monarchy and two additional revolutions as modern France took shape. In the following century, France would be governed at one point or another as a republic, constitutional monarchy and two different empires (the First and Second).

Causes

Adherents of most historical models identify many of the same features of the ''Ancien Régime'' as being among the causes of the Revolution. Economic factors included hunger and malnutrition in the most destitute segments of the population, due to rising bread prices (from a normal 8 sous for a four-pound loaf to 12 sous by the end of 1789), after several years of poor grain harvests. Bad harvests (caused in part by extreme weather from El Niño along with volcanic activity at Laki and Grímsvötn), rising food prices, and an inadequate transportation system that hindered the shipment of bulk foods from rural areas to large population centers contributed greatly to the destabilization of French society in the years leading up to the Revolution.

Another cause was the state's effective bankruptcy due to the enormous cost of previous wars, particularly the financial strain caused by French participation in the American Revolutionary War. The national debt amounted to some 1,000–2,000 million livres. The social burdens caused by war included the huge war debt, made worse by the loss of France's colonial possessions in North America and the growing commercial dominance of Great Britain. France's inefficient and antiquated financial system was unable to manage the national debt, something which was both partially caused and exacerbated by the burden of an inadequate system of taxation. To obtain new money to head off default on the government's loans, the king called an Assembly of Notables in 1787.

Meanwhile, the royal court at Versailles was seen as being isolated from, and indifferent to, the hardships of the lower classes. While in theory King Louis XVI was an absolute monarch, in practice he was often indecisive and known to back down when faced with strong opposition. While he did reduce government expenditures, opponents in the parlements successfully thwarted his attempts at enacting much needed reforms. Those who were opposed to Louis' policies further undermined royal authority by distributing pamphlets (often reporting false or exaggerated information) that criticized the government and its officials, stirring up public opinion against the monarchy.

Many other factors involved resentments and aspirations given focus by the rise of Enlightenment ideals. These included resentment of royal absolutism; resentment by peasants, laborers and the bourgeoisie toward the traditional seigneurial privileges possessed by the nobility; resentment of the Church's influence over public policy and institutions; aspirations for freedom of religion; resentment of aristocratic bishops by the poorer rural clergy; aspirations for social, political and economic equality, and (especially as the Revolution progressed) republicanism; hatred of Queen Marie-Antoinette, who was falsely accused of being a spendthrift and an Austrian spy; and anger toward the King for firing finance minister Jacques Necker, among others, who were popularly seen as representatives of the people.

Pre-revolution

Financial crisis

Louis XVI ascended to the throne amidst a financial crisis; the state was nearing bankruptcy and outlays outpaced income. This was because of France’s financial obligations stemming from involvement in the Seven Years War and its participation in the American Revolutionary War. In May 1776, finance minister Turgot was dismissed, after he failed to enact reforms. The next year, Jacques Necker, a foreigner, was appointed Comptroller-General of Finance. He could not be made an official minister because he was a Protestant. Necker realized that the country's extremely regressive tax system subjected the lower classes to a heavy burden, while numerous exemptions existed for the nobility and clergy. He argued that the country could not be taxed higher; that tax exemptions for the nobility and clergy must be reduced; and proposed that borrowing more money would solve the country's fiscal shortages. Necker published a report to support this claim that underestimated the deficit by roughly 36 million livres, and proposed restricting the power of the ''parlements''. This was not received well by the King's ministers and Necker, hoping to bolster his position, argued to be made a minister. The King refused, Necker was fired, and Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed to the Comptrollership. Calonne initially spent liberally, but he quickly realized the critical financial situation and proposed a new tax code. The proposal included a consistent land tax, which would include taxation of the nobility and clergy. Faced with opposition from the parlements, Calonne organised the summoning of the Assembly of Notables. But the Assembly failed to endorse Calonne's proposals and instead weakened his position through its criticism. In response, the King announced the calling of the Estates-General for May 1789, the first time the body had been summoned since 1614. This was a signal that the Bourbon monarchy was in a weakened state and subject to the demands of its people.

Estates-General of 1789

The Estates-General was organized into three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the rest of France. On the last occasion that the Estates-General had met, in 1614, each estate held one vote, and any two could override the third. The ''Parlement'' of Paris feared the government would attempt to gerrymander an assembly to rig the results. Thus, they required that the Estates be arranged as in 1614. The 1614 rules differed from practices of local assemblies, where each member had one vote and third estate membership was doubled. For example, in the Dauphiné the provincial assembly agreed to double the number of members of the third estate, hold membership elections, and allow one vote per member, rather than one vote per estate. The "Committee of Thirty," a body of liberal Parisians, began to agitate against voting by estate. This group, largely composed of the wealthy, argued for the Estates-General to assume the voting mechanisms of Dauphiné. They argued that ancient precedent was not sufficient, because "the people were sovereign." Necker convened a Second Assembly of Notables, which rejected the notion of double representation by a vote of 111 to 333. The King, however, agreed to the proposition on 27 December; but he left discussion of the weight of each vote to the Estates-General itself.

Elections were held in the spring of 1789; suffrage requirements for the Third Estate were for French-born or naturalised males only, at least 25 years of age, who resided where the vote was to take place and who paid taxes.

''Pour être électeur du tiers état, il faut avoir 25 ans, être français ou naturalisé, être domicilié au lieu de vote et compris au rôle des impositions.''

Strong turnout produced 1,201 delegates, including: "291 nobles, 300 clergy, and 610 members of the Third Estate." To lead delegates, "Books of grievances" (''cahiers de doléances'') were compiled to list problems. The books articulated ideas which would have seemed radical only months before; however, most supported the monarchical system in general. Many assumed the Estates-General would approve future taxes, and Enlightenment ideals were relatively rare. Pamphlets by liberal nobles and clergy became widespread after the lifting of press censorship. The Abbé Sieyès, a theorist and Catholic clergyman, argued the paramount importance of the Third Estate in the pamphlet ''Qu'est-ce que le tiers état?'' ("What is the Third Estate?"), published in January 1789. He asserted: "What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something." The Estates-General convened in the Grands Salles des Menus-Plaisirs in Versailles on 5 May 1789 and opened with a three-hour speech by Necker. The Third Estate demanded that the verification of deputies' credentials should be undertaken in common by all deputies, rather than each estate verifying the credentials of its own members internally; negotiations with the other estates failed to achieve this. The commoners appealed to the clergy who replied they required more time. Necker asserted that each estate verify credentials and "the king was to act as arbitrator." Negotiations with the other two estates to achieve this, however, were unsuccessful.

National Assembly (1789)

On 10 June 1789, Abbé Sieyès moved that the Third Estate, now meeting as the ''Communes'' (English: "Commons"), proceed with verification of its own powers and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them. They proceeded to do so two days later, completing the process on 17 June. Then they voted a measure far more radical, declaring themselves the National Assembly, an assembly not of the Estates but of "the People." They invited the other orders to join them, but made it clear they intended to conduct the nation's affairs with or without them.

In an attempt to keep control of the process and prevent the Assembly from convening, Louis XVI ordered the closure of the Salle des États where the Assembly met, making an excuse that the carpenters needed to prepare the hall for a royal speech in two days. Weather did not allow an outdoor meeting, so the Assembly moved their deliberations to a nearby indoor real tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath (20 June 1789), under which they agreed not to separate until they had given France a constitution. A majority of the representatives of the clergy soon joined them, as did 47 members of the nobility. By 27 June, the royal party had overtly given in, although the military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles. Messages of support for the Assembly poured in from Paris and other French cities.

National Constituent Assembly (1789–1791)

Storming of the Bastille

By this time, Necker had earned the enmity of many members of the French court for his overt manipulation of public opinion. Marie Antoinette, the King's younger brother the Comte d'Artois, and other conservative members of the King's privy council urged him to dismiss Necker as financial advisor. On 11 July 1789, after Necker published an inaccurate account of the government's debts and made it available to the public, the King fired him, and completely restructured the finance ministry at the same time.

Many Parisians presumed Louis's actions to be aimed against the Assembly and began open rebellion when they heard the news the next day. They were also afraid that arriving soldiers – mostly foreign mercenaries – had been summoned to shut down the National Constituent Assembly. The Assembly, meeting at Versailles, went into nonstop session to prevent another eviction from their meeting place. Paris was soon consumed by riots, chaos, and widespread looting. The mobs soon had the support of some of the French Guard, who were armed and trained soldiers. On 14 July, the insurgents set their eyes on the large weapons and ammunition cache inside the Bastille fortress, which was also perceived to be a symbol of royal power. After several hours of combat, the prison fell that afternoon. Despite ordering a cease fire, which prevented a mutual massacre, Governor Marquis Bernard de Launay was beaten, stabbed and decapitated; his head was placed on a pike and paraded about the city. Although the fortress had held only seven prisoners (four forgers, two noblemen kept for immoral behavior, and a murder suspect), the Bastille served as a potent symbol of everything hated under the ''Ancien Régime''. Returning to the Hôtel de Ville (city hall), the mob accused the ''prévôt des marchands'' (roughly, mayor) Jacques de Flesselles of treachery and butchered him.

The King, alarmed by the violence, backed down, at least for the time being. The Marquis de la Fayette took up command of the National Guard at Paris. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, president of the Assembly at the time of the Tennis Court Oath, became the city's mayor under a new governmental structure known as the ''commune''. The King visited Paris, where, on 17 July he accepted a tricolore cockade, to cries of ''Vive la Nation'' ("Long live the Nation") and ''Vive le Roi'' ("Long live the King").

Necker was recalled to power, but his triumph was short-lived. An astute financier but a less astute politician, Necker overplayed his hand by demanding and obtaining a general amnesty, losing much of the people's favour.

As civil authority rapidly deteriorated, with random acts of violence and theft breaking out across the country, members of the nobility, fearing for their safety, fled to neighboring countries; many of these ''émigrés'', as they were called, funded counter-revolutionary causes within France and urged foreign monarchs to offer military support to a counter-revolution.

By late July, the spirit of popular sovereignty had spread throughout France. In rural areas, many commoners began to form militias and arm themselves against a foreign invasion: some attacked the châteaux of the nobility as part of a general agrarian insurrection known as ''"la Grande Peur"'' ("the Great Fear"). In addition, wild rumours and paranoia caused widespread unrest and civil disturbances that contributed to the collapse of law and order.

Working toward a constitution

On 4 August 1789, the National Constituent Assembly abolished feudalism (although at that point there had been sufficient peasant revolts to almost end feudalism already), in what is known as the August Decrees, sweeping away both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate and the tithes gathered by the First Estate. In the course of a few hours, nobles, clergy, towns, provinces, companies and cities lost their special privileges.

On 26 August 1789, the Assembly published the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which comprised a statement of principles rather than a constitution with legal effect. The National Constituent Assembly functioned not only as a legislature, but also as a body to draft a new constitution.

Necker, Mounier, Lally-Tollendal and others argued unsuccessfully for a senate, with members appointed by the crown on the nomination of the people. The bulk of the nobles argued for an aristocratic upper house elected by the nobles. The popular party carried the day: France would have a single, unicameral assembly. The King retained only a "suspensive veto"; he could delay the implementation of a law, but not block it absolutely. The Assembly eventually replaced the historic provinces with 83 ''départements,'' uniformly administered and roughly equal in area and population.

Amid the Assembly's preoccupation with constitutional affairs, the financial crisis had continued largely unaddressed, and the deficit had only increased. Honoré Mirabeau now led the move to address this matter, and the Assembly gave Necker complete financial dictatorship.

Women's March on Versailles

Fueled by rumors of a reception for the King's bodyguards on 1 October 1789 at which the national cockade had been trampled upon, on 5 October 1789 crowds of women began to assemble at Parisian markets. The women first marched to the Hôtel de Ville, demanding that city officials address their concerns. The women were responding to the harsh economic situations they faced, especially bread shortages. They also demanded an end to royal efforts to block the National Assembly, and for the King and his administration to move to Paris as a sign of good faith in addressing the widespread poverty.

Getting unsatisfactory responses from city officials, as many as 7,000 women joined the march to Versailles, bringing with them cannons and a variety of smaller weapons. Twenty thousand National Guardsmen under the command of La Fayette responded to keep order, and members of the mob stormed the palace, killing several guards. La Fayette ultimately persuaded the king to accede to the demand of the crowd that the monarchy relocate to Paris.

On 6 October 1789, the King and the royal family moved from Versailles to Paris under the "protection" of the National Guards, thus legitimizing the National Assembly.

Revolution and the Church

The Revolution caused a massive shift of power from the Roman Catholic Church to the state. Under the ''Ancien Régime'', the Church had been the largest single landowner in the country, owning about 10% of the land in the kingdom. The Church was exempt from paying taxes to the government, while it levied a tithe—a 10% tax on income, often collected in the form of crops—on the general population, which it then redistributed to the poor. The power and wealth of the Church was highly resented by some groups. A small minority of Protestants living in France, such as the Huguenots, wanted an anti-Catholic regime and revenge against the clergy who discriminated against them. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire helped fuel this resentment by denigrating the Catholic Church and destabilizing the French monarchy. As historian John McManners argues, "In eighteenth-century France throne and altar were commonly spoken of as in close alliance; their simultaneous collapse ... would one day provide the final proof of their interdependence."

This resentment toward the Church weakened its power during the opening of the Estates General in May 1789. The Church composed the First Estate with 130,000 members of the clergy. When the National Assembly was later created in June 1789 by the Third Estate, the clergy voted to join them, which perpetuated the destruction of the Estates General as a governing body. The National Assembly began to enact social and economic reform. Legislation sanctioned on 4 August 1789 abolished the Church's authority to impose the tithe. In an attempt to address the financial crisis, the Assembly declared, on 2 November 1789, that the property of the Church was "at the disposal of the nation." They used this property to back a new currency, the assignats. Thus, the nation had now also taken on the responsibility of the Church, which included paying the clergy, caring for the poor, the sick and the orphaned. In December, the Assembly began to sell the lands to the highest bidder to raise revenue, effectively decreasing the value of the assignats by 25% in two years. In autumn 1789, legislation abolished monastic vows and on 13 February 1790 all religious orders were dissolved. Monks and nuns were encouraged to return to private life and a small percentage did eventually marry.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, passed on 12 July 1790, turned the remaining clergy into employees of the state. This established an election system for parish priests and bishops and set a pay rate for the clergy. Many Catholics objected to the election system because it effectively denied the authority of the Pope in Rome over the French Church. Eventually, in November 1790, the National Assembly began to require an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution from all the members of the clergy. This led to a schism between those clergy who swore the required oath and accepted the new arrangement and those who remained loyal to the Pope. Overall, 24% of the clergy nationwide took the oath. Widespread refusal led to legislation against the clergy, "forcing them into exile, deporting them forcibly, or executing them as traitors." Pope Pius VI never accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, further isolating the Church in France. During the Reign of Terror, extreme efforts of de-Christianization ensued, including the imprisonment and massacre of priests and destruction of churches and religious images throughout France. An effort was made to replace the Catholic Church altogether, with civic festivals replacing religious ones. The establishment of the Cult of Reason was the final step of radical de-Christianization. These events led to a widespread disillusionment with the Revolution and to counter-rebellions across France. Locals often resisted de-Christianization by attacking revolutionary agents and hiding members of the clergy who were being hunted. Eventually, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety were forced to denounce the campaign, replacing the Cult of Reason with the deist but still non-Christian Cult of the Supreme Being. The Concordat of 1801 between Napoleon and the Church ended the de-Christianization period and established the rules for a relationship between the Catholic Church and the French State that lasted until it was abrogated by the Third Republic via the separation of church and state on 11 December 1905. The persecution of the Church led to a counter-revolution known as the Revolt in the Vendée, whose suppression is considered by some to be the first modern genocide.

Intrigues and radicalism

Factions within the Assembly began to clarify. The aristocrat Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès and the abbé Jean-Sifrein Maury led what would become known as the right wing, the opposition to revolution (this party sat on the right-hand side of the Assembly). The "Royalist democrats" or ''monarchiens'', allied with Necker, inclined toward organising France along lines similar to the British constitutional model; they included Jean Joseph Mounier, the Comte de Lally-Tollendal, the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre, and Pierre Victor Malouet, comte de Virieu.

The "National Party", representing the centre or centre-left of the assembly, included Honoré Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Bailly; while Adrien Duport, Barnave and Alexandre Lameth represented somewhat more extreme views. Almost alone in his radicalism on the left was the Arras lawyer Maximilien Robespierre. Abbé Sieyès led in proposing legislation in this period and successfully forged consensus for some time between the political centre and the left. In Paris, various committees, the mayor, the assembly of representatives, and the individual districts each claimed authority independent of the others. The increasingly middle-class National Guard under La Fayette also slowly emerged as a power in its own right, as did other self-generated assemblies. The Assembly abolished the symbolic paraphernalia of the ''Ancien Régime''— armorial bearings, liveries, etc. – which further alienated the more conservative nobles, and added to the ranks of the ''émigrés''. On 14 July 1790, and for several days following, crowds in the Champ de Mars celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with the ''Fête de la Fédération''; Talleyrand performed a mass; participants swore an oath of "fidelity to the nation, the law, and the king"; the King and the royal family actively participated.

The electors had originally chosen the members of the Estates-General to serve for a single year. However, by the terms of the Tennis Court Oath, the ''communes'' had bound themselves to meet continuously until France had a constitution. Right-wing elements now argued for a new election, but Mirabeau prevailed, asserting that the status of the assembly had fundamentally changed, and that no new election should take place before completing the constitution.

In late 1790, the French army was in considerable disarray. The military officer corps was largely composed of noblemen, who found it increasingly difficult to maintain order within the ranks. In some cases, soldiers (drawn from the lower classes) had turned against their aristocratic commanders and attacked them. At Nancy, General Bouillé successfully put down one such rebellion, only to be accused of being anti-revolutionary for doing so. This and other such incidents spurred a mass desertion as more and more officers defected to other countries, leaving a dearth of experienced leadership within the army.

This period also saw the rise of the political "clubs" in French politics. Foremost among these was the Jacobin Club; 152 members had affiliated with the Jacobins by 10 August 1790. The Jacobin Society began as a broad, general organization for political debate, but as it grew in members, various factions developed with widely differing views. Several of these fractions broke off to form their own clubs, such as the Club of '89.

Meanwhile, the Assembly continued to work on developing a constitution. A new judicial organisation made all magistracies temporary and independent of the throne. The legislators abolished hereditary offices, except for the monarchy itself. Jury trials started for criminal cases. The King would have the unique power to propose war, with the legislature then deciding whether to declare war. The Assembly abolished all internal trade barriers and suppressed guilds, masterships, and workers' organisations: any individual gained the right to practice a trade through the purchase of a license; strikes became illegal.

In the winter of 1791, the Assembly considered, for the first time, legislation against the ''émigrés''. The debate pitted the safety of the Revolution against the liberty of individuals to leave. Mirabeau prevailed against the measure, which he referred to as "worthy of being placed in the code of Draco". But Mirabeau died on 2 April 1791 and, before the end of the year, the new Legislative Assembly adopted this draconian measure.

Royal flight to Varennes

Louis XVI, egged on by Marie Antoinette and other members of his family, opposed the course of the Revolution, but rejected the potentially treacherous aid of the other monarchs of Europe. He cast his lot with General Bouillé, who condemned both the emigration and the Assembly, and promised him refuge and support in his camp at Montmédy. On the night of 20 June 1791, the royal family fled the Tuileries Palace dressed as servants, while their servants dressed as nobles.

However, late the next day, the King was recognised and arrested at Varennes (in the Meuse ''département''). He and his family were brought back to Paris under guard, still dressed as servants. Pétion, Latour-Maubourg, and Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave, representing the Assembly, met the royal family at Épernay and returned with them. From this time, Barnave became a counselor and supporter of the royal family. When they returned to Paris, the crowd greeted them in silence. The Assembly provisionally suspended the King. He and Queen Marie Antoinette remained held under guard.

Completing the constitution

As most of the Assembly still favoured a constitutional monarchy rather than a republic, the various groups reached a compromise which left Louis XVI as little more than a figurehead: he was forced to swear an oath to the constitution, and a decree declared that retracting the oath, heading an army for the purpose of making war upon the nation, or permitting anyone to do so in his name would amount to abdication.

However, Jacques Pierre Brissot drafted a petition, insisting that in the eyes of the nation Louis XVI was deposed since his flight. An immense crowd gathered in the Champ de Mars to sign the petition. Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins gave fiery speeches. The Assembly called for the municipal authorities to "preserve public order". The National Guard under La Fayette's command confronted the crowd. The soldiers responded to a barrage of stones by firing into the crowd, killing between 13 and 50 people.

In the wake of this massacre the authorities closed many of the patriotic clubs, as well as radical newspapers such as Jean-Paul Marat's ''L'Ami du Peuple''. Danton fled to England; Desmoulins and Marat went into hiding.

Meanwhile, a new threat arose from abroad: Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II, Frederick William II of Prussia, and the King's brother Charles-Philippe, comte d'Artois, issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, which considered the cause of Louis XVI as their own, demanded his absolute liberty and implied an invasion of France on his behalf if the revolutionary authorities refused its conditions. The French people expressed no respect for the dictates of foreign monarchs, and the threat of force merely hastened their militarisation.

Even before the "Flight to Varennes", the Assembly members had determined to debar themselves from the legislature that would succeed them, the Legislative Assembly. They now gathered the various constitutional laws they had passed into a single constitution, showed remarkable strength in choosing not to use this as an occasion for major revisions, and submitted it to the recently restored Louis XVI, who accepted it, writing "I engage to maintain it at home, to defend it from all attacks from abroad, and to cause its execution by all the means it places at my disposal". The King addressed the Assembly and received enthusiastic applause from members and spectators. With this capstone, the National Constituent Assembly adjourned in a final session on 30 September 1791.

Mignet argued that the "constitution of 1791... was the work of the middle class, then the strongest; for, as is well known, the predominant force ever takes possession of institutions... In this constitution the people was the source of all powers, but it exercised none."

Legislative Assembly (1791–1792)

Failure of the constitutional monarchy

Under the Constitution of 1791, France would function as a constitutional monarchy. The King had to share power with the elected Legislative Assembly, but he still retained his royal veto and the ability to select ministers. The Legislative Assembly first met on 1 October 1791, and degenerated into chaos less than a year later. In the words of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: "In the attempt to govern, the Assembly failed altogether. It left behind an empty treasury, an undisciplined army and navy, and a people debauched by safe and successful riot." The Legislative Assembly consisted of about 165 Feuillants (constitutional monarchists) on the right, about 330 Girondists (liberal republicans) and Jacobins (radical revolutionaries) on the left, and about 250 deputies unaffiliated with either faction. Early on, the King vetoed legislation that threatened the ''émigrés'' with death and that decreed that every non-juring clergyman must take within eight days the civic oath mandated by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Over the course of a year, such disagreements would lead to a constitutional crisis.

Constitutional crisis

On the night of 10 August 1792, insurgents and popular militias, supported by the revolutionary Paris Commune, assailed the Tuileries Palace and massacred the Swiss Guards who were assigned for the protection of the king. The royal family ended up prisoners and a rump session of the Legislative Assembly suspended the monarchy; little more than a third of the deputies were present, almost all of them Jacobins.

What remained of a national government depended on the support of the insurrectionary Commune. The Commune sent gangs into the prisons to try arbitrarily and butcher 1400 victims, and addressed a circular letter to the other cities of France inviting them to follow this example. The Assembly could offer only feeble resistance. This situation persisted until the Convention, elected by universal male suffrage and charged with writing a new constitution, met on 20 September 1792 and became the new ''de facto'' government of France. The next day it abolished the monarchy and declared a republic. This date was later retroactively adopted as the beginning of Year One of the French Republican Calendar.

War and Counter-Revolution (1792–1797)

The politics of the period inevitably drove France towards war with Austria and its allies. The King, many of the Feuillants and the Girondins specifically wanted to wage war. The King (and many Feuillants with him) expected war would increase his personal popularity; he also foresaw an opportunity to exploit any defeat: either result would make him stronger. The Girondins wanted to export the Revolution throughout Europe and, by extension, to defend the Revolution within France. The forces opposing war were much weaker. Barnave and his supporters among the Feuillants feared a war they thought France had little chance to win and which they feared might lead to greater radicalization of the revolution. On the other end of the political spectrum, Robespierre opposed war, preferring to consolidate and expand the Revolution at home. The Austrian emperor Leopold II, brother of Marie Antoinette, may have wished to avoid war, but he died on 1 March 1792. France preemptively declared war on Austria (20 April 1792) and Prussia joined on the Austrian side a few weeks later. The invading Prussian army faced little resistance until checked at the Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), and forced to withdraw.

The new-born Republic followed up on this success with a series of victories in Belgium and the Rhineland in the fall of 1792. The French armies defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Jemappes on 6 November, and had soon taken over most of the Austrian Netherlands. This brought them into conflict with Britain and the Dutch Republic, which wished to preserve the independence of the southern Netherlands from France. After the king's execution in January 1793, these powers, along with Spain and most other European states, joined the war against France. Almost immediately, French forces faced defeat on many fronts, and were driven out of their newly conquered territories in the spring of 1793. At the same time, the republican regime was forced to deal with rebellions against its authority in much of western and southern France. But the allies failed to take advantage of French disunity, and by the autumn of 1793 the republican regime had defeated most of the internal rebellions and halted the allied advance into France itself.

The stalemate was broken in the summer of 1794 with dramatic French victories. They defeated the allied army at the Battle of Fleurus, leading to a full Allied withdrawal from the Austrian Netherlands. They followed up by a campaign which swept the allies to the east bank of the Rhine and left the French, by the beginning of 1795, conquering Holland itself. The House of Orange was expelled and replaced by the Batavian Republic, a French satellite state. These victories led to the collapse of the coalition against France. Prussia, having effectively abandoned the coalition in the fall of 1794, made peace with revolutionary France at Basel in April 1795, and soon thereafter Spain, too, made peace with France. Of the major powers, only Britain and Austria remained at war with France. It was during this time, that ''La Marseillaise'', originally ''Chant de guerre pour l'Armée du Rhin'' ("War Song for the Army of the Rhine"), was written and composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792 and adopted in 1795 as the nation's first anthem.

National Convention (1792–1795)

Execution of Louis XVI

In the Brunswick Manifesto, the Imperial and Prussian armies threatened retaliation on the French population if it were to resist their advance or the reinstatement of the monarchy. This made Louis appear to be conspiring with the enemies of France. 17 January 1793 saw Louis condemned to death for "conspiracy against the public liberty and the general safety" by a close majority in Convention: 361 voted to execute the king, 288 voted against, and another 72 voted to execute him subject to a variety of delaying conditions. The former Louis XVI, now simply named ''Citoyen Louis Capet'' (Citizen Louis Capet), was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793 on the ''Place de la Révolution'', former ''Place Louis XV'', now called the Place de la Concorde. Royalty across Europe was horrified and many heretofore neutral countries soon joined the war against revolutionary France.

Economy

When war went badly, prices rose and the ''sans-culottes'' — poor labourers and radical Jacobins – rioted; counter-revolutionary activities began in some regions. This encouraged the Jacobins to seize power through a parliamentary ''coup'', backed up by force effected by mobilising public support against the Girondist faction, and by utilising the mob power of the Parisian ''sans-culottes''. An alliance of Jacobin and ''sans-culottes'' elements thus became the effective centre of the new government. Policy became considerably more radical, as "The Law of the Maximum" set food prices and led to executions of offenders. This policy of price control was coeval with the Committee of Public Safety's rise to power and the Reign of Terror. The Committee first attempted to set the price for only a limited number of grain products but, by September 1793, it expanded the "maximum" to cover all foodstuffs and a long list of other goods. Widespread shortages and famine ensued. The Committee reacted by sending dragoons into the countryside to arrest farmers and seize crops. This temporarily solved the problem in Paris, but the rest of the country suffered. By the spring of 1794, forced collection of food was not sufficient to feed even Paris and the days of the Committee were numbered. When Robespierre went to the guillotine in July of that year the crowd jeered, "There goes the dirty maximum!"

Reign of Terror

The Committee of Public Safety came under the control of Maximilien Robespierre, a lawyer, and the Jacobins unleashed the Reign of Terror (1793–1794). According to archival records, at least 16,594 people died under the guillotine or otherwise after accusations of counter-revolutionary activities. A number of historians note that as many as 40,000 accused prisoners may have been summarily executed without trial or died awaiting trial.

On 2 June 1793, Paris sections — encouraged by the ''enragés'' ("enraged ones") Jacques Roux and Jacques Hébert – took over the Convention, calling for administrative and political purges, a low fixed price for bread, and a limitation of the electoral franchise to ''sans-culottes'' alone. With the backing of the National Guard, they managed to persuade the Convention to arrest 31 Girondin leaders, including Jacques Pierre Brissot. Following these arrests, the Jacobins gained control of the Committee of Public Safety on 10 June, installing the ''revolutionary dictatorship''. On 13 July, the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat — a Jacobin leader and journalist known for his bloodthirsty rhetoric — by Charlotte Corday, a Girondin, resulted in further increase of Jacobin political influence. Georges Danton, the leader of the August 1792 uprising against the King, undermined by several political reversals, was removed from the Committee and Robespierre, "the Incorruptible", became its most influential member as it moved to take radical measures against the Revolution's domestic and foreign enemies.

Meanwhile, on 24 June, the Convention adopted the first republican constitution of France, variously referred to as the French Constitution of 1793 or Constitution of the Year I. It was progressive and radical in several respects, in particular by establishing universal male suffrage. It was ratified by public referendum, but normal legal processes were suspended before it could take effect.

War in the Vendée

In Vendée, peasants revolted against the French Revolutionary government in 1793. They resented the changes imposed on the Roman Catholic Church by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) and broke into open revolt in defiance of the Revolutionary government's military conscription. This became a guerrilla war, known as the War in the Vendée. North of the Loire, similar revolts were started by the so-called Chouans (royalist rebels).

After the defeat at Savenay, when regular warfare in the Vendée was at an end, the French general Francois Joseph Westermann penned a letter to the Committee of Public Safety stating

"There is no more Vendée. It died with its wives and its children by our free sabres. I have just buried it in the woods and the swamps of Savenay. According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all. The roads are sown with corpses. At Savenay, brigands are arriving all the time claiming to surrender, and we are shooting them non-stop... Mercy is not a revolutionary sentiment."''

However, some historians doubt the authenticity of this document and others point out that the claims in it were patently false — there were in fact thousands of (living) Vendean prisoners, the revolt had been far from crushed, and the Convention had explicitly decreed that women, children and unarmed men were to be treated humanely. It has been hypothesized that if the letter is authentic, that may have been Westermann's attempt to exaggerate the intensity of his actions and his success, because he was eager to avoid being purged for his incompetent military leadership and for his opposition to ''sans-culotte'' generals (he failed to avoid that, since he was guillotined together with Danton's group).

The revolt and its suppression (including both combat casualties and massacres and executions on both sides) are thought to have taken between 117,000 and 250,000 lives (170,000 according to the latest estimates). Because of the extremely brutal forms that the Republican repression took in many places, certain historians such as Reynald Secher have called the event a "genocide". This description has become popular in the mass media, but it has attracted much criticism in academia as being unrealistic and biased.

Facing local revolts and foreign invasions in both the East and West of the country, the most urgent government business was the war. On 17 August, the Convention voted for general conscription, the ''levée en masse'', which mobilized all citizens to serve as soldiers or suppliers in the war effort.

The result was a policy through which the state used violent repression to crush resistance to the government. Under control of the effectively dictatorial Committee, the Convention quickly enacted more legislation. On 9 September, the Convention established ''sans-culottes'' paramilitary forces, the ''revolutionary armies'', to force farmers to surrender grain demanded by the government. On 17 September, the ''Law of Suspects'' was passed, which authorized the charging of counter-revolutionaries with vaguely defined crimes against liberty. On 29 September, the Convention extended price-fixing from grain and bread to other household goods and declared the right to set a limit on wages.

The guillotine as a symbol

The guillotine became the symbol of a string of executions. Louis XVI had already been guillotined before the start of the terror; Queen Marie Antoinette, Barnave, Bailly, Brissot and other leading Girondins, Philippe Égalité (despite his vote for the death of the King), Madame Roland and many others were executed by guillotine. The Revolutionary Tribunal summarily condemned thousands of people to death by the guillotine, while mobs beat other victims to death.

At the peak of the terror, the slightest hint of counter-revolutionary thoughts or activities (or, as in the case of Jacques Hébert, revolutionary zeal exceeding that of those in power) could place one under suspicion, and trials did not always proceed according to contemporary standards of due process. Sometimes people died for their political opinions or actions, but many for little reason beyond mere suspicion, or because some others had a stake in getting rid of them. Most of the victims received an unceremonious trip to the guillotine in an open wooden cart (the tumbrel). In the rebellious provinces, the government representatives had unlimited authority and some engaged in extreme repressions and abuses. For example, Jean-Baptiste Carrier became notorious for the ''Noyades'' ("drownings") he organized in Nantes; his conduct was judged unacceptable even by the Jacobin government and he was recalled.

Another anti-clerical uprising was made possible by the installment of the Republican Calendar on 24 October 1793. Against Robespierre's concepts of Deism and Virtue, Hébert's (and Chaumette's) atheist movement initiated a religious campaign to dechristianize society. The climax was reached with the celebration of the flame of Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November. The Reign of Terror enabled the revolutionary government to avoid military defeat. The Jacobins expanded the size of the army, and Carnot replaced many aristocratic officers with younger soldiers who had demonstrated their ability and patriotism. The Republican army was able to throw back the Austrians, Prussians, British, and Spanish. At the end of 1793, the army began to prevail and revolts were defeated with ease. The Ventôse Decrees (February–March 1794) proposed the confiscation of the goods of exiles and opponents of the Revolution, and their redistribution to the needy.

In the spring of 1794, both extremist ''enragés'' such as Hébert and moderate Montagnard ''indulgents'' such as Danton were charged with counter-revolutionary activities, tried and guillotined. On 7 June Robespierre, who had previously condemned the ''Cult of Reason'', advocated a new state religion and recommended the Convention acknowledge the existence of the "Supreme Being".

Thermidorian Reaction

On 27 July 1794, the Thermidorian Reaction led to the arrest and execution of Robespierre, Louis de Saint-Just, and other leading Jacobins. The new government was predominantly made up of Girondists who had survived the Terror, and after taking power, they took revenge as well by persecuting even those Jacobins who had helped to overthrow Robespierre, banning the Jacobin Club, and executing many of its former members in what was known as the White Terror.

In the wake of excesses of the Terror, the Convention approved the new "Constitution of the Year III" on 22 August 1795. A French plebiscite ratified the document, with about 1,057,000 votes for the constitution and 49,000 against. The results of the voting were announced on 23 September 1795, and the new constitution took effect on 27 September 1795.

The Constitutional Republic: The Directory (1795–1799)

The new constitution created the ''Directoire'' () and the first bicameral legislature in French history. The parliament consisted of two houses: the ''Conseil des Cinq-Cents'' (Council of the Five Hundred), with 500 representatives, and the ''Conseil des Anciens'' (Council of Elders), with 250 senators. Executive power went to five "directors," named annually by the ''Conseil des Anciens'' from a list submitted by the ''Conseil des Cinq-Cents''. Furthermore, the universal suffrage of 1793 was replaced by limited suffrage based on property.

With the establishment of the Directory, contemporary observers might have assumed that the Revolution was finished. Citizens of the war-weary nation wanted stability, peace, and an end to conditions that at times bordered on chaos. Those who wished to restore the monarchy and the ''Ancien Régime'' by putting Louis XVIII on the throne, and those who would have renewed the Reign of Terror were insignificant in number. The possibility of foreign interference had vanished with the failure of the First Coalition. The earlier atrocities had made confidence or goodwill between parties impossible. The same instinct of self-preservation which had led the members of the Convention to claim so large a part in the new legislature and the whole of the Directory impelled them to keep their predominance. However, many French citizens distrusted the Directory, and the directors could achieve their purposes only by extraordinary means. They habitually disregarded the terms of the constitution, and, even when the elections that they rigged went against them, the directors routinely used draconian police measures to quell dissent. Moreover, to prolong their power the directors were driven to rely on the military, which desired war and grew less and less civic-minded.

Other reasons influenced them in the direction of war. State finances during the earlier phases of the Revolution had been so thoroughly ruined that the government could not have met its expenses without the plunder and the tribute of foreign countries. If peace were made, the armies would return home and the directors would have to face the exasperation of the rank-and-file who had lost their livelihood, as well as the ambition of generals who could, in a moment, brush them aside. Barras and Rewbell were notoriously corrupt themselves and screened corruption in others. The patronage of the directors was ill-bestowed, and the general maladministration heightened their unpopularity.

The constitutional party in the legislature desired toleration of the nonjuring clergy, the repeal of the laws against the relatives of the émigrés, and some merciful discrimination toward the émigrés themselves. The directors baffled all such endeavours. On the other hand, the socialist conspiracy of Babeuf was easily quelled. Little was done to improve the finances, and the assignats continued to fall in value.

The new régime met opposition from remaining Jacobins and the royalists. The army suppressed riots and counter-revolutionary activities. In this way the army and its successful general, Napoleon Bonaparte eventually gained total power.

On 9 November 1799 (18 Brumaire of the Year VIII) Napoleon Bonaparte staged the ''coup of 18 Brumaire'' which installed the Consulate. This effectively led to Bonaparte's dictatorship and eventually (in 1804) to his proclamation as ''Empereur'' (emperor), which brought to a close the specifically republican phase of the French Revolution.

Symbolism in the French Revolution

The French Revolution was a time of upheaval, especially towards traditional ideology, in almost every sense: the current monarch, King Louis XVI, was executed; the Catholic Church was all but abolished; a new calendar was created; and a new Republican government was established. In order to effectively illustrate the differences between the new Republic and the old regime, the leaders needed to implement a new set of symbols to be celebrated instead of the old religious and monarchical symbolism. To this end, symbols were borrowed from historic cultures and redefined, while those of the old regime were either destroyed or reattributed acceptable characteristics. These revised symbols were used to instill in the public a new sense of tradition and reverence for the Enlightenment and the Republic.

Fasces

Fasces, likes many other symbols of the French Revolution, are Roman in origin. Fasces are a bundle of birch rods containing an axe. In Roman times, the fasces symbolized the power of magistrates who could order the beating of a criminal, representing union and accord with the Roman Republic. The French Republic continued this Roman symbol to represent state power, justice, and unity. During the French Revolution the fasces image is seen in conjunction with many other symbols. This is seen with many emblems of the French Revolution. Though seen throughout the French Revolution, perhaps the most well known French reincarnation of the fasces is the Fasces surmounted by a Phrygian cap. This image has no display of an axe or a strong central state; rather, it symbolizes the power of the liberated people by placing the Liberty Cap on top of the classical symbol of power.

Liberty cap

The Liberty cap, also known as the Phrygian cap, or pileus, is a brimless, felt cap that is conical in shape with the tip pulled forward. The cap was originally worn by ancient Romans and Greeks. The cap implies ennobling effects, as seen in its association with Homer’s Ulysses and the mythical twins, Castor and Pollux. The emblem’s popularity during the French Revolution is due in part to its importance in ancient Rome: its use alludes to the Roman ritual of manumission of slaves, in which a freed slave receives the bonnet as a symbol of his newfound liberty. The Roman tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus incited the slaves to insurrection by displaying a pileus as if it were a standard. The pileus cap is often red in color. This type of cap was worn by revolutionaries at the fall of the Bastille. According to the Revolutions de Paris, it became "the symbol of the liberation from all servitudes, the sign for unification of all the enemies of despotism." The pileus competed with the Phrygian cap, a similar cap that covered the ears and the nape of the neck, for popularity. The Phrygian cap eventually supplanted the pileus and usurped its symbolism, becoming synonymous with republican liberty.

Liberty Tree

The Liberty Tree, officially adopted in 1792, is a symbol of the everlasting Republic, national freedom, and political revolution. It has historic roots in revolutionary France as well as America, as a symbol that was shared by the two nascent republics. The tree was chosen as a symbol of the French Revolution because it is a symbol of fertility in French folklore, which provided a simple transition from revering it for one reason to another. The American colonies also used the idea of a Liberty Tree to celebrate their own acts of insurrection against the British, starting with the Stamp Act riot in 1765. The riot culminated in the hanging in effigy of two Stamp Act politicians on a large elm tree. The elm tree began to be celebrated as a symbol of Liberty in the American colonies. It was adopted as a symbol that needed to be living and growing, along with the Republic. To that end, the tree is portrayed as a sapling, usually of an oak tree in French interpretation. The Liberty Tree serves as a constant celebration of the spirit of political freedom.

Hercules

The symbol of Hercules was first adopted by the Old Regime to represent the monarchy. Hercules was an ancient Greek hero who symbolized strength and power. The symbol was used to represent the sovereign authority of the King over France during the reign of the Bourbon monarchs. However, the monarchy was not the only ruling power in French history to use the symbol of Hercules to declare its power.

During the Revolution, the symbol of Hercules was revived to represent nascent revolutionary ideals. The first use of Hercules as a revolutionary symbol was during a festival celebrating the National Assembly’s victory over federalism on 10 August 1793. This Festival of Unity consisted of four stations around Paris which featured symbols representing major events of the Revolution which embodied revolutionary ideals of liberty, unity, and power. The statue of Hercules, placed at the station commemorating the fall of Louis XVI, symbolized the power of the French people over their former oppressors. The statue’s foot was placed on the throat of the Hydra, which represented the tyranny of federalism which the new Republic had vanquished. In one hand, the statue grasped a club, a symbol of power, while in the other grasping the fasces which symbolized the unity of the French people. The image of Hercules assisted the new Republic in establishing its new Republican moral system. Hercules thus evolved from a symbol of the sovereignty of the monarch into a symbol of the new sovereign authority in France: the French people. This transition was made easily for two reasons. First, because Hercules was a famous mythological figure, and had previously been used by the monarchy, he was easily recognized by educated French observers. It was not necessary for the revolutionary government to educate the French people on the background of the symbol. Additionally, Hercules recalled the classical age of the Greeks and the Romans, a period which the revolutionaries identified with republican and democratic ideals. These connotations made Hercules an easy choice to represent the powerful new sovereign people of France.

During the more radical phase of the Revolution from 1793 to 1794, the usage and depiction of Hercules changed. These changes to the symbol were due to revolutionary leaders believing the symbol was inciting violence among the common citizens. The triumphant battles of Hercules and the overcoming of enemies of the Republic became less prominent. In discussions over what symbol to use for the Seal of the Republic, the image of Hercules was considered but eventually ruled out in favor of Marianne. Hercules was on the coin of the Republic. However, this Hercules was not the same image as that of the pre-Terror phases of the Revolution. The new image of Hercules was more domesticated. He appeared more paternal, older, and wiser, rather than the warrior-like images in the early stages of the French Revolution. Unlike his 24 foot statue in the Festival of the Supreme Being, he was now the same size as Liberty and Equality. Also the language on the coin with Hercules was far different than the rhetoric of pre-revolutionary depictions. On the coins the words, "uniting Liberty and Equality" were used. This is opposed to the forceful language of early Revolutionary rhetoric and rhetoric of the Bourbon monarchy. By 1798, the Council of Ancients had discussed the "inevitable" change from the problematic image of Hercules, and Hercules was eventually phased out in favor of an even more docile image.

Role of women

Women had no political rights in pre-Revolutionary France; they couldn’t vote or hold any political office. They were considered "passive" citizens; forced to rely on men to determine what was best for them in the government. It was the men who defined these categories, and women were forced to accept male domination in the political sphere. The ''Encyclopédie'', published by a group of philosophers over the years 1751–1777, summarized French male beliefs of women. A woman was a "failed man," the fetus not fully developed in the womb. "Women’s testimony is in general light and subject to variation; this is why it is taken more seriously than that of men" as opposed to men, upon whom "Nature seems to have conferred… the right to govern." In general, "men are more capable than women of ably governing particular matters". Instead, women were taught to be committed to their husbands and "all his interests… [to show] attention and care… [and] sincere and discreet zeal for his salvation." A woman’s education often consisted of learning to be a good wife and mother; as a result women were not supposed to be involved in the political sphere, as the limit of their influence was the raising of future citizens.

When the Revolution opened, some women struck forcefully, using the volatile political climate to assert their active natures. In the time of the Revolution, women could not be kept out of the political sphere; they swore oaths of loyalty, "solemn declarations of patriotic allegiance, [and] affirmations of the political responsibilities of citizenship." Throughout the Revolution, women such as Pauline Léon and her Society of Revolutionary Republican Women fought for the right to bear arms, used armed force and rioted.

Even before Léon, some liberals had advocated equal rights for women including women's suffrage. Nicolas de Condorcet was especially noted for his advocacy, in his articles published in the ''Journal de la Société de 1789'', and by publishing ''De l'admission des femmes au droit de cité'' ("For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship For Women") in 1790.

Feminist agitation

The March to Versailles is but one example of feminist militant activism during the French Revolution. While largely left out of the thrust for increasing rights of citizens, as the question was left indeterminate in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, activists such as Pauline Léon and Théroigne de Méricourt agitated for full citizenship for women. Women were, nonetheless, "denied political rights of ‘active citizenship’ (1791) and democratic citizenship (1793)."

Pauline Léon, on 6 March 1792, submitted a petition signed by 319 women to the National Assembly requesting permission to form a garde national in order to defend Paris in case of military invasion. Léon requested permission be granted to women to arm themselves with pikes, pistols, sabers and rifles, as well as the privilege of drilling under the French Guards. Her request was denied. Later in 1792, Théroigne de Méricourt made a call for the creation of "legions of amazons" in order to protect the revolution. As part of her call, she claimed that the right to bear arm would transform women into citizens.

On 20 June 1792 a number of armed women took part in a procession that "passed through the halls of the Legislative Assembly, into the Tuilleries Gardens, and then through the King’s residence." Militant women also assumed a special role in the funeral of Marat, following his murder on 13 July 1793. As part of the funeral procession, they carried the bathtub in which Marat had been murdered as well as a shirt stained with Marat’s blood.

The most radical militant feminist activism was practiced by the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women, which was founded by Léon and her colleague, Claire Lacombe on 10 May 1793. The goal of the club was "to deliberate on the means of frustrating the projects of the enemies of the Republic." Up to 180 women attended the meetings of the Society. Of special interest to the Society was "combating hoarding [of grain and other staples] and inflation."

Later, on 20 May 1793, women were at the fore of a crowd that demanded "bread and the Constitution of 1793." When their cries went unnoticed, the women went on a rampage, "sacking shops, seizing grain and kidnapping officials."

Most of these outwardly activist women were punished for their actions. The kind of punishment received during the Revolution included public denouncement, arrest, execution, or exile. Théroigne de Méricourt was arrested, publicly flogged and then spent the rest of her life sentenced to an insane asylum. Pauline Léon and Claire Lacombe were arrested, later released, and continued to receive ridicule and abuse for their activism. Many of the women of the Revolution were even publicly executed for "conspiring against the unity and the indivisibility of the Republic".

These are but a few examples of the militant feminism that was prevalent during the French Revolution. While little progress was made toward gender equality during the Revolution, the activism of French feminists was bold and particularly significant in Paris.

Women writers

While some women chose a militant, and often violent, path, others chose to influence events through writing, publications, and meetings. Olympe de Gouges wrote a number of plays, short stories, and novels. Her publications emphasized that women and men are different, but this shouldn’t stop them from equality under the law. In her "Declaration on the Rights of Woman" she insisted that women deserved rights, especially in areas concerning them directly, such as divorce and recognition of illegitimate children. De Gouges also expressed non-gender political views; even before the start of the terror, Olympe de Gouges addressed Robespierre using the pseudonym "Polyme" calling him the Revolution’s "infamy and shame." She warned of the Revolution’s building extremism saying that leaders were "preparing new shackles if [the French people’s liberty were to] waver." Stating that she was willing to sacrifice herself by jumping into the Seine if Robespierre were to join her, de Gouges desperately attempted to grab the attention of the French citizenry and alert them to the dangers that Robespierre embodied. In addition to these bold writings, her defense of the king was one of the factors leading to her execution. An influential figure, one of her suggestions early in the Revolution, to have a voluntary, patriotic tax, was adopted by the National Convention in 1789.

Madame Roland (aka Manon or Marie Roland) was another important female activist. Her political focus was not specifically on women or their liberation. She focused on other aspects of the government, but was a feminist by virtue of the fact that she was a woman working to influence the world. Her personal letters to leaders of the Revolution influenced policy; in addition, she often hosted political gatherings of the Brissotins, a political group which allowed women to join. While limited by her gender, Madame Roland took it upon herself to spread Revolutionary ideology and spread word of events, as well as to assist in formulating the policies of her political allies. Though unable to directly write policies or carry them through to the government, Roland was able to influence her political allies and thus promote her political agenda. Roland attributed women’s lack of education to the public view that women were too weak or vain to be involved in the serious business of politics. She believed that it was this inferior education that turned them into foolish people, but women "could easily be concentrated and solidified upon objects of great significance" if given the chance. As she was led to the scaffold, Madame Roland shouted "O liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!" Witnesses of her life and death, editors, and readers helped to finish her writings and several editions were published posthumously. While she did not focus on gender politics in her writings, by taking an active role in the tumultuous time of the Revolution, Roland took a stand for women of the time and proved they could take an intelligent active role in politics.

Though women did not gain the right to vote as a result of the Revolution, they still greatly expanded their political participation and involvement in governing. They set precedents for generations of feminists to come.

Legacy

The French Revolution has received enormous amounts of historical attention, both from the general public and from scholars and academics. The views of historians, in particular, have been characterized as falling along ideological lines, with liberal, conservative, communist, and anarchist scholars—among others—disagreeing over the significance and the major developments of the Revolution. Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the Revolution was a manifestation of a more prosperous middle class becoming conscious of its social importance. Other thinkers, like the conservative Edmund Burke, maintained that the Revolution was the product of a few conspiratorial individuals who brainwashed the masses into subverting the old order—a claim rooted in the belief that the revolutionaries had no legitimate complaints. Other historians, influenced by Marxist thinking, have emphasized the importance of the peasants and the urban workers in presenting the Revolution as a gigantic class struggle. In general, scholarship on the French Revolution initially studied the political ideas and developments of the era, but it has gradually shifted towards social history that analyzes the impact of the Revolution on individual lives.

Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, and the end of the early modern period, which started around 1500, is traditionally attributed to the onset of the French Revolution in 1789. The Revolution is, in fact, often seen as marking the "dawn of the modern era". Within France itself, the Revolution permanently crippled the power of the aristocracy and drained the wealth of the Church, although the two institutions survived despite the damage they sustained. After the collapse of the First Empire in 1815, the French public lost the rights and privileges earned since the Revolution, but they remembered the participatory politics that characterized the period, with one historian commenting: "Thousands of men and even many women gained firsthand experience in the political arena: they talked, read, and listened in new ways; they voted; they joined new organizations; and they marched for their political goals. Revolution became a tradition, and republicanism an enduring option." Some historians argue that the French people underwent a fundamental transformation in self-identity, evidenced by the elimination of privileges and their replacement by rights as well as the growing decline in social deference that highlighted the principle of equality throughout the Revolution. Outside France, the Revolution captured the imagination of the world. It had a profound impact on the Russian Revolution and its ideas were imbibed by Mao Zedong in his efforts at constructing a communist state in China.

See also

Related pages

Biens nationaux

Dual revolution

History of democracy

Jean-Nicolas Pache – Liberté, égalité, fraternité

La Révolution française (film)

List of people granted honorary French citizenship during the French Revolution

List of revolutions and rebellions

Military career of Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleonic code

Rise of nationalism in Europe

Timeline of the French Revolution

Audio files

Other revolutions or rebellions in French history

Camisard Rebellion, French Huguenots (1710–1715)

Haitian Revolution, Haiti colony (1791–1804)

July Revolution (1830)

Canut revolts of the July Monarchy

French Revolution of 1848

Resistance to the coup of 1851

Paris Commune of 1871

French Army Mutinies (1917)

French Resistance during World War II

May 1968 in France, a noteworthy rebellion, though not quite a revolution

References

Works cited

Levy, Darline Gay and Harriet B. Applewhite. "Women and Militant Citizenship in Revolutionary Paris," in Rebel Daughters, ed. Sara e. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine (New York: Oxford University Press 1992).

Marquise de Maintenon "Instruction to the Nuns of St. Louis," in Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women. ed. Anne R. Larsen and Colette H Winn. (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 2000), 321.

Scott, Joan Wallach. "A Woman Who Has Only Paradoxes to Offer," in Rebel Daughters, ed. Sara e. Melzer and Leslie W. Rabine (New York: Oxford University Press 1992).

Walker, Leslie H. "Sweet and Consoling Virtue: The Memoirs of Madame Roland" Eighteenth-Century Studies, French Revolutionary Culture (2001): 403–419.

"Women." The Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert. University of Michigan Library, n.d. Web. 10/29/09. < http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/>.

Further reading

Baker, Keith M. ed. ''The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture'' (Oxford, 1987–94) ''vol 1: The Political Culture of the Old Regime,'' ed. K.M. Baker (1987); ''vol. 2: The Political Culture of the French Revolution,'' ed. C. Lucas (1988); ''vol. 3: The Transformation of Political Culture, 1789–1848,'' eds. F. Furet & M. Ozouf (1989); ''vol. 4: The Terror,'' ed. K.M. Baker (1994). excerpt and text search vol 4

Blanning, T.C.W. ''The French Revolutionary Wars 1787–1802'' (1996).

Censer, Jack R. "Amalgamating the Social in the French Revolution." ''Journal of Social History 2003'' 37(1): 145–150. Issn: 0022-4529 Fulltext: in Project Muse and Ebsco

Doyle, William. ''The Oxford History of the French Revolution'' (1989). online complete edition; also excerpt and online search from Amazon.com

Doyle, William. ''The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.'' (2001), 120pp; online edition

Doyle, William. ''Origins of the French Revolution'' (3rd ed. 1999) online edition

Dunne, John. "Fifty Years of Rewriting the French Revolution: Signposts Main Landmarks and Current Directions in the Historiographical Debate," ''History Review.'' (1998) pp 8+ online edition

Englund, Steven. ''Napoleon: A Political Life.'' (2004). 575 pages; the best political biography excerpt and text search

Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. ed. ''The Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History'' (ABC-CLIO: 3 vol 2006)

Frey, Linda S. and Marsha L. Frey. ''The French Revolution.'' (2004) 190pp online edition

Furet, François. ''The French Revolution, 1770–1814'' (1996) excerpt and text search

Furet, François and Mona Ozouf, eds. ''A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution'' (1989), 1120pp; long essays by scholars; conservative perspective; stress on history of ideas excerpt and online search from Amazon.com

Hunt, Lynn. ''The Family Romance of the French Revolution.'' (1992)

Hunt, Lynn. "Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution." (1984)

Germani, Ian and Robin Swayles. ''Symbols, myths and images of the French Revolution''. University of Regina Publications. 1998. ISBN 9780889771086

Griffith, Paddy. ''The Art of War of Revolutionary France 1789–1802,'' (1998); 304 pp; excerpt and text search

Jones, Colin. ''The Longman Companion to the French Revolution'' (1989)

Jones, Colin. ''The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon'' (2002) excerpt and text search

Kates, Gary. ''The French Revolution'' (2nd ed. 2005), 308pp; essays by scholars; excerpts and online search from Amazon.com

Lefebvre, Georges. ''The French Revolution'' (2 vol 1957) classic Marxist synthesis. complete online edition vol 1; also excerpt and online search from Amazon.com

Neely, Sylvia. '' A Concise History of the French Revolution'' (2008)

Palmer, Robert R. ''The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–1800.'' (2 vol 1959), highly influential comparative history; vol 1 online

Paxton, John. ''Companion to the French Revolution'' (1987), hundreds of short entries.

Rothenberg, Gunther E. "The Origins, Causes, and Extension of the Wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon," ''Journal of Interdisciplinary History,'' Vol. 18, No. 4, (Spring, 1988), pp. 771–793 in JSTOR

Rude, George F. and Harvey J. Kaye. ''Revolutionary Europe, 1783–1815'' (2000), scholarly survey excerpt and text search

Schroeder, Paul. ''The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848.'' 1996; Thorough coverage of diplomatic history; hostile to Napoleon; online edition

Schwab, Gail M., and John R. Jeanneney, eds. ''The French Revolution of 1789 and Its Impact'' (1995) online edition

Scott, Samuel F. and Barry Rothaus. ''Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 1789–1799'' (2 vol 1984), short essays by scholars

Schama, Simon. ''Citizens. A Chronicle of the French Revolution'' (1989), highly readable narrative by scholar excerpt and text search

Sutherland, D.M.G. ''France 1789–1815. Revolution and Counter-Revolution'' (2nd ed. 2003, 430pp excerpts and online search from Amazon.com

External links

"French Revolution" in the ''Catholic Encyclopedia''

Open University course

Entry on Encyclopedia.com from the Columbia Encyclopedia

Primary source documents from The Internet Modern History Sourcebook

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, a collaborative site by the Center for History and New Media (George Mason University) and the American Social History Project (City University of New York)

The Origins of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: The Moderate Stage, 1789–1792, and The French Revolution: The Radical Stage, 1792–1794, three essays from The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History

Vancea, S. The Cahiers de Doleances of 1789, Clio History Journal, 2008.

english.republique.de A large collection of links

Category:Republicanism in France Category:18th-century rebellions Category:18th-century revolutions

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