Background and Reasons for The Beginning of The Great French Revolution

The power of the king, the nobles and the Church

• While King Louis XVI was still a powerful monarch, he was believed to be more “enlightened” than those who ruled before him.

• Louis XVI knew about enlightenment, but still didn’t really do much in the way of reform, as nobles had lower taxes, while everyone else (mostly peasants) had to pay higher taxes.

• The king’s greatest supporter was the Roman Catholic Church, as nearly all of the French followed this church.

• The church, in support of their king, did not approve of any ideas that would challenge the ancien régime (old regime).

Regional divisions and financial troubles

• There were many different regions in France, which led to people in those regions becoming very different in many kinds of ways:

o The languages differed in the northern and southern regions of France.

o The law systems in the different regions varied greatly.

o Many of the towns in the regions had their own traditions when it came to government, so they didn’t necessarily follow exactly what the king had told them to do.

• A bigger problem than the regional divisions in France were the financial problems, due to the many wars that France had fought in a short time span.

• Problems escalated when nobles along with the Church denied any reforms that were created wanting to put higher taxes on the wealthier people.

• While the king was an absolute monarch, he did not have the power to put any taxes on the people without the consent of the nobles and the Church.

• Along with financial problems came agricultural ones, as there were repeated bad harvest leading to famine and poverty.

• More people wanted change, and the very little to almost nothing that the king did was a leading factor to the discontent of the people, and eventually the revolution.

• Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI’s wife, was very unpopular with the French people and was just another reason for the French to be unhappy with how they were being treated.

The Enlightenment

• Some of the very few constructive parts of the French Revolution were arguably inspired by the Enlightenment (a movement of intellectuals during mainly the 18th century, where people wanted to find the real reasons for all kinds of questions in social sciences).

• While the French Revolution shares some types of ideas present in the Enlightenment, many historians are split on whether the Enlightenment was the main cause of the revolution, or if it was based on just how bad the economy of France was at the time.

Short-term causes of the French Revolution

• The belief of the nobles that reforms should harm themselves was the most notable reason for the birth of the revolution.

• The main change that the middle class wanted was for the idea that nobles were taxed lightly and everyone else was taxed heavily to come to an end. With this, there came a lot of aggression for the nobility and the government.

• Louis XVI called a meeting of the Estates General, which was composed of the three different estates, or classes, of the French society:

o The Catholic Church was the First Estate. The representatives of the First Estate were higher up on the ladder of the Church, and the ordinary Church members were not able to represent the Church.

o The nobles made up the Second Estate. A large majority of nobles sided with the Church and were in protest of reform. There were few nobles that actually wanted change in France.

o The rest of France (middle class and lower class) made up the Third Estate. While there were more peasants in France than middle class members, the middle class were the vast majority of the Third Estate. This meant that the group was mostly inspired by the middle class, not the peasants.

• The Estates General was very disorganized, as there hadn’t been one in over one hundred years, and nearly everyone was unaware of how this meeting worked.

• The Third Estate believed they deserved a larger number of votes because of how many people belonged to this social class over the other two. At first, Louis XVI agreed to give them double the number of votes, though, when the time came for the actual voting, the king reverted back to the original rules.

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