No One Factor Was Directly Responsible For The French Revolution

Almost echoing the problems faced with finance was Charles Foreign policy. Charles planned an attack on the Dutch in 1672 with help from the French. This required finance and with the payment of loans, Crown only had an income of £400,000. So, Charles declared the crown bankrupt, making it harder to secure future loans but making parliament give him £1.2 million to fund the attack on the Dutch. This shows the foreign policy being the reason for the difficulties faced by Charles, as a lot of the financial concerns were due to the need to fund wars.

One of the economic issues that caused the French Revolution is financial difficulties because in document A it states, ¨ The First Estate were the Clergy which meant that 1% of the people owned 10% of the land and paid no taxes.” It also states, “The Second Estate were the Nobles which meant 2% of the people owned 35% of the land and paid 2% of income in taxes.¨ Finally, it states, ¨The Third Estate were the middle class, peasants, and the city workers which meant 97% of the people owned 55% of the land and paid 50% of their income in taxes.¨ This shows that they were doing unfair taxes and soon they realized they were unable to meet their needs and becoming more poor.

The French Revolution is said to have a number of causes. It was a period of far-reaching social and political upheaval in France that lasted from 1789 until 1799, and was partially carried forward by Napoleon during the later expansion of the empire. The main causes of the French Revolution was the political, economic, and social problems happening in the society during this time. One of the causes of the French Revolution of the political tension going on during the time.

The three most important causes for the French revolution were the rising prices of food due to tallies and feudal taxes, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the demand of the Third Estate for equal representation in the government. Though these causes are all different they are all interconnected leading to French revolution.

First of all France was in debt because they lend money to America and King louie had gone a little crazy ,spending money. He and his predecessor fled

The French were already in debt and then decided to help the American Colonies in their revolt against the British which led to their debt crisis. The debt got so bad that King Louis XVI was on the verge of going bankrupt and was forced to call the Assembly of Notables in 1787. The Assembly of Notables did not work out because the king asks the Assembly to give up the majority of their privileges, but refused to offer a reason why. This secrecy

Governments had to raise taxes and start borrowing money from their own people, such as nobles. According to Jacob Soll in The Reckoning, the only way to lower the debt and interest rates in France was to tax the nobility. They were the greatest landowners and owned 90% of France’s

Millions of French people suddenly revolted against a society that their past families had accepted forever. Ways of life that once worked well for people became rigid and not suitable over time. New conditions/thought changed the minds of many people across the country. Suddenly, what had seemed so reasonable before had become outrageous and unnecessary. In the French’s case, it was the institutions of feudalism and monarchy that stopped working. There was great divide between nobility and commoners which further perpetuated the process of conflict. By the 1770’s, France was on the edge of a full on war. People were unhappy. There is political corruption everywhere. The clergy and aristocracy owned 30% of French land even though they were only 2% of the French population. Many enlightenment thinkers give up on the operation of their country. Montesquieu, a French scholar once said, “There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” While most people are suffering through poverty, the government is spending on luxuries and over taxing. The Third Estate barely gets any say and gets worse when Louis XVI locks them out of the assembly. The debt was made worse from spending in both the Seven Years War and The American Revolution. These events added up and eventually seemed impossible to fix and impossible to be prevented. However, several things could have been done to stop the

Unfortunately for France and the cause of freedom, resistance from the Court and special interests proved too powerful, and Turgot was removed from office in 1776. "The dismissal of this great man," wrote Voltaire, "crushes me. . . . Since that fatal day, I have not followed anything . . . and am waiting patiently for someone to cut our throats.? Turgot's successors, following a mercantilist policy of government intervention, only made the French economy worse. In a desperate move to find money in the face of an uproar across the country and to re-establish harmony, Louis XVI agreed to convene the Estates-General for May 1789. Meanwhile, the king's new finance minister, Jacques Necker, a Swiss financial expert, delayed the effects of mercantilism by importing large amounts of grain. On May 5, the Estates-General convened at Versailles. By June 17, the Third Estate had proclaimed itself the National Assembly. Three days later, the delegates took the famous Tennis Court Oath, vowing not to disband until France had a new constitution. However, the real French Revolution began not

During the 1700s, Kind Louis XIV had acquired a large quantity of national debt. The main reason for their debt was deficit spending. France was involved in the American Revolution and the Seven Year’s War, which they did not have the money to. They, instead, kept spending money they did not have. Versailles, a town outside of Paris, was also a contributor of the debt because King Louis XVI built the Palace of Versailles, and Versailles took 12% of the whole budget.

Before the revolution France was ruled under the Ancien Regime system, meaning the country and all its people were under the reign of an absolute monarch. This was a tradition that had been upheld through the years and the Royal family had enjoyed a life funded by the people of France, the royal family’s lifestyle unaffected by the situation outside their palace. The Palace, Versailles, was built by king Louis XIV and the expenses for building this “village” was very high, and in later years the cost for its upkeep would play a significant role in Frances financial difficulties. In order for these difficulties to be overcome France needed a tax reform. The government had a very high tax rate on the poorest of their people, the Third Estate, and they were still not getting enough money to get out of their

However, there was another important factor during these times. France suffered from harsh economic problems. Poor farm harvests by farmers hurt the economy, and trade rules from the Middle Ages still survived, making trade difficult. However, the most serious problem was the problem facing the government during this time. The French government borrowed much money to pay for the wars of Louis XIV. Louis still borrowed money to fight wars and to keep French power alive in Europe. These costs greatly increased the national debt, which was, at the time, already too high.<br><br>When King Louis XVI came into power, he realized that these problems existed. At first he did not know what to do, until he found a man by the name of Robert Turgot. He eased the financial crisis of France, but he had difficulties when he tried to introduce a major reform, that of taxing the nobles. He had such difficulties because the king could not tax the nobles unless the Parliament approved of the new tax laws. The people in the courts that voted on these laws were the nobles, called nobles of the robe, and therefore rejected Turgot's reform. After Turgot was rejected, the king fired him from his office. This led Louis XVI to summon the Estates General in 1789. The Estates General was the place where representatives from each social class could be represented. Here, many issues would be discussed, and at this time in

The high costs of maintaining the army and navy exacerbated the situation, along with the lavish lifestyle of King Louis XVI and his queen, Marie-Antoinette. Louis appointed Charles de Calonne as comptroller-general to solve France’s financial crisis. Calonne knew that the only way to get France out of debt was to fairly distribute the tax burden among the three estates. Of course, this did sit well with the nobility and Calonne was dismissed after giving his presentation at the Assembly of Notables. In a desperate act, Louis called the Estates General. The Estates General was an ancient practice that had not been called since 1614. Events there would prove to be the beginning of the revolution proper. France suffered under years of inept and self-serving monarchs. Louis XVI was preceded by his grandfather, Louis XV. It was his loss of public opinion and war spending that put his grandson in such a precarious position in the years after his reign. The rule of Louis XVI would prove to be a doomed one. He was ousted after a comparatively short 17 years. The outdated political system gave way to a constitutional monarchy, and when that failed, the French Republic. This Republic however would not prove to last. Feudalism was the whole of existence for rural commoners in the time before the revolution. Farmers had no right to the land they worked and lived on. Serfs were beholden to their manor lord

Before 1661 the French economy was in ruins. The economy had been greatly damaged by the 30 years war and there was also great corruption among the nobility.

The inflated opinion the French monarchy had about themselves and other nobles lent itself to how they contributed to and handled the economic downturn in France for centuries prior to the French Revolution. Forming the foundation of many of France’s financial issues, the monarchial system granted royals and the nobles who surrounded them the ability to feel as if they are intended to be superior to the rest of France, a mentality that would last until the French Revolution began. With this monarchial system, each king of France from 1610 to 1789 would contribute in both positive and negative ways, depending greatly on the Chief Ministers they appointed. [ADD]