What would induce a French peasant or tradesman to pick up a hoe or shovel and

attack a fortified barrier? What pleasure was there for the people of Paris in
witnessing thousands of gristly beheadings at the base of a contraption consisting
of a sharp blade weighted by a heavy block of wood that fell from a height and
sliced the victim's head off cleanly, where the head fell into a basket in what
must have been a truly disgusting sight?

It is difficult for us modern folks to understand the chaos and violence of the
days of the French Revolution, especially with our traditions of orderly
transference of power through the ballot box. It is doubly difficult to imagine
how a change of government could also result in the systematic elimination of
former political enemies and even entire towns of a rebellious population.

That chaos and barbarism was the stuff the French Revolution was made of. At its
end, over 30,000 were executed, a half a million imprisoned, and the French people
eventually looked at what they helped bring about and stepped back. They turned
power over to another despot, Napoleon Bonaparte.

There were many causes of the French Revolution that swept away the French
monarchy, threw France into five years of turmoil, civil war, and eventually
brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power. These causes were historic, economic,
cultural and philosophical. Historically, although France was still a rich and
powerful nation, disastrous adventures in the New World, loss of Canada, and the
costly support of the American Revolution drained the French treasury. King Louis
XVI was, in short, broke.

Louis' need for revenue was in the France of 1789 at the root of the country's
economic and fiscal difficulties; nevertheless, Louis XVI was still generally
popular, but his nobility and ministers were not. Exempt from taxation by virtue
of their purchased titles and privileges, the tax burden was not shared equally
among the French. Moreover, the clergy received their cut with the annual
"tithing," and municipal authorities extorted their share as well.

The same year that George Washington was sworn in as the first President on the
newly formed United States of America (1789), France was still an absolute
monarchy. The King's absolute prerogatives were, of course, curtailed by the
powers and prerogatives of his nobility and the clergy, both remnants of
feudalism. In France's stratified society, too, the peasantry envied the towns
folk's greater privileges, and the towns folk wanted a larger slice of the
economic opportunities promised by what would soon become the breakdown of
feudalism and rise of the large cities.

Philosophically, the new ideas of 18th Century thinkers were spreading from within
France and outward from America, whose Declaration of Independence became the
basis of the French Revolution's eventual adoption of its own declaration of
citizens' rights. French soldiers, who served in America, also brought back
republican ideas and the experience of a life without monarchy.

In the end, the immediate cause of the French Revolution was the struggle between
the people's representatives and the King's nobles. The King and his nobles failed
to adapt to changing times, and unlike Great Britain's monarchs, failed to
gracefully cede their privileges and power. Unfortunately for France "the people's
representatives" were led by the likes of Murat and Robespierre, whose unflinching
fanaticism destroyed their enemies, and in the end, themselves.