Monthon V. P.

6
Causes of the French Revolution
At the time when France was very prosperous in foreign trades and have a large
population, it was during the 1700s, France was really an advanced country that their culture
has been praised by many countries around the world. But in reality, France was not that
successful as everybody thought. There was something that goes wrong too, and the problems
was created by bad harvests, high taxes, high prices, and disturbing questions raised by the
Enlightenment ideas of Locke, Rousseau, and Voltaire. And during 1770s, France had an Old
regime, which the French people was divided into three social classes.

The old regime was a system of division of classes and as Ive said there are three
estates or social classes. The first estate was made up of clergy of Roman Catholic Church.
The people in this estate owned about 10 percent of French land and provide education and
relief services to the poor and donate a little out of their incomes to the government as well.
The second estate is the rich estate which contains all the rich nobles. They are really rich that
they owned about 20 percent of the land even though there population was really less. Both
of the stage didnt like the Enlightenment ideas and they even disdain it too. But on the other
hand, this Enlightenment ideas spreads in the third estate which is the estate that contains
about 97 percent of the French population. It was really a big estate that divided into classes.
The first class is the middle class and mostly they are skilled workers, owner, merchants, and
artisans. Of course most of them were educated and agreed with the Enlightenment ideas
about liberty and equality. Another class is the lower class which is the poorest group of all
the three groups the third estates has. They are servants, laborers, and tradespeople. And the
last class of the third estate was the peasants that formed the largest class. It contains about 80
percent of French people. And the third estate was unhappy because during 1780s, they faced
the economic troubles such as; the government collects too much taxes that the business was
unprofitable.

Frances government had large amount of debt during the 1770s and 1780s. They said
part of the debt was caused by Louis XVI and his wife, they spend a lot in helping the
American Revolution in the war with the Britain. But the debt wasnt only caused by the him
and his wife, they also have the debt that passed from the previous king too. He used large
amount of money in war. Another problem is that the weather was bad and the farmer can't
grow enough crops. Because of that they didn't have enough product to sell and the price rises
up and it leads people to starvation too.

What makes Louis the weak leader is that; he didnt listen to the adviser about the
way to overcome the problems. And he didnt give his full effort to solve the problems. If his
wife is good enough she would have help her husband solve the problem, but on the other
hand, his wife didnt help him at all. Her advice was useless and her action was even make
the situation even worse.

Even though France had a very good appearance. Everybody thought this country was
really wealthy and their economy would be good too. All of that was wrong. During that time
France was not the country that you should look as a role model because the appearance
didnt really tell the actual facts about the country. If you really want to know you should
study deep into the history of the country and you will know how was France at that time, not
as good as everybody thought. Even me, at first I thought this country was prosperous since
the old time too.