The Causes of the French Revolution

The causes of the French revolution can be split into two main groups: the underlying and the immediate.

The Underlying causes of the French Revolution came from different groups such as: Intellectual, Social, Political, Economic, Development of debates, and just the King and the Queen. After the American Revolution soldiers would come back to France speaking of wonderful event and influencing the upper class, like nobles, on equality and liberty. Now on the Social side of the coin the society of France is still based on the pyramid of the Estates and it seems not to be matching reality so with that there were a lot of resentments from the French for that. In Political sense the Bourgeoisie, which were in the Third Estate but was very smart, wanted a better say in the government. Economic was one of the big causes since France was in a national debt because of the American Revolution they had to try and raise taxes, but not salaries. This made a problem for those of the Third Estate because they could not pay them because of the time they were having a bad harvest year so not only do they become poorer but they become hungry. Also, there were developments of political background happening in coffeehouses around France. They would bash down some of the things they would think not to be right and would cause an uprising. The king and Queen was some of the talk of these debates. Everyone thought that the King, Louis XVI, was doing fine but rather his Wife, Marie Antoinette, was not since everyone thought she was using way too much money.

The Immediate causes of the French Revolution where from the assembly that King summoned to fix the tax problems. The noble people gathered to hear of the new taxes but they refused to approve them. This event began a revolt which then the king had no choice but to summon the Estates General. This was done on 1787, the Estates General has not been called since 1614 and by getting approval from a group lessens the absolute power that the King has. At this meeting they tried to figure out what they could do to pretty much make everyone happy. The nobles and Bourgeoisie wanted things like limited powers of king, individual liberties, and a representative body. The problem with all of this was voting however. The Third estate deadlocked the voting for 6 weeks demanded it was done by individual vote rather an Estate vote. After this a writer known as Abbe Sieyes wrote a piece named “What is the Third Estate?” which stated that the Third Estate was everything and was treated like nothing and all they want is to become something. The last immediate causes were the Storming of Bastille and the Great Fear but those will be explained later. (483)