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... miles stated the Third Estate was everything in the sense it was a complete nation, which would survive without the other two orders. Meanwhile poverty and disconnection spread. Communications were poor and economic life was sluggish and such improvements such as good harvest were being torn away by climatic deterioration and the rising population. Poverty was the most recognizable social problem.
With the misery of rural housing and the poor appearance of the peasantry were contributing to disconnection throughout the land. All the girls are without stockings 6 Hours were long and the price rise of bread was considered the worst times for public order. 7 When jobs failed they turned to the streets for begging. However, the important aspect was the economy couldnt provide decent living conditions for the people. Anger towards the well-off spread. Hatred grows more bitter and the state is divided into two classes: the greedy and the insensitive, and the murmuring malcontents 8 Frances system of government was still the absolute system as Louis XVI had built a century before when France was a powerful and important country. Under his weak successors, the system had lost a greater deal of vigor and its ability to command the respect and loyalty of its subjects, whether privileged or not.
In 1763, it had to surrender most of its overseas Empire to Britain. The Bourbon Family ruled France. King Louis XVI (1754 - 93) was a shy, awkward misfit who was a lazy monarch known for his orgys was mostly the subject to viscous rumors around France. Sir, another orgy where a noble princess appeared with the heir to the throne, where an anti-cockade was flourished and where undercover conspiracy was loudly rehearsed. 9 He headed an extravagant and pleasure-loving court more than a conscientious one.
France had a monarchy that carried within it decay; an aristocracy that, though privileged and mostly wealthy, was deeply resentful of its long exclusion from office; a bourgeoisie, though enjoying increasing prosperity, was denied the social status and share in government equality with its wealth; and the peasants who (in part at least) were becoming more independent and literate, yet were still regarded as a general burden who were overtaxed and despised. These tensions were becoming sharper as the century went on. The French peasant was heavily burdened on taxation and in years of bad harvest and depression, they were intolerable. This was the problem that grew more intense (as well as violent) as the century went along. These resentments were heavily aggravated in the latter years of the ancien regime.
As were the hardships of the middle class whom became more resentful of the extravagance and tyranny of the court and government to whose wealth they contributed heavily. It was nevertheless the financial crisis that led to the fall of the ancient regime. The 18 th century Enlightenment may be represented as a new way of thinking about mankind and the environment. The proponents of this intellectual movement were primarily men of letters- men like Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau. Their views stemmed from the scientific revolution of the previous century.
They were convinced that all creation was similarly rational, so that it was possible for man to uncover laws which regulated society, politics, economy and even morality. These laws would teach mankind what they are but what they should do and ought to be. In France in the early 1700 s and onwards despotism, feudalism, religion and clericalism as well as other matters of the day become the object of their criticism and satire. It allowed the French public freedom of speech, religious toleration, injustice, abuse of power and any other views they held against the monarch or government. Why was it allowed? Some radical ideas never did pass the censor, but views on such things, as religion and government were suprisingly allowed. 9 It is hard to access their influence after 1789, yet all the foundation documents of the Revolution- the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of 1791 clearly reveal the debt owed to Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire.
The National Assembly estimated that one in ten French person was poor. Historians believe it was more like one in five or even one in three. The number of poor depended on the state of the harvest. If the harvests failed, soaring prices meant that many urban peasants or artisans who leased small lots of land were vulnerable to a shortage of food.
In bad years like 1769, 1776, 1783 poverty spread far beyond the most vulnerable core of the destitute. On top of these cyclical depressions, came sudden catastrophe of 1787 - 9 which brought poor harvests and shortages and the prices of wheat doubled within two years in the north and reaching record levels 10 in the summer of 1789. The crisis hit the bulk of the peasantry both as consumers and producers: as wine growers, dairy farmers, and wheat growers. From agriculture, it spread to industry; and unemployment, already developing due to a free trade treaty with Britain in 1786, reached disastrous proportions in Paris and the textile centers of Lyons and the north.
The wage earners and small consumers, in both villages and towns were compelled by the rapid rise in food prices to increase their daily expenditures on bread to level far beyond their means. Thus, peasants and urban tradesmen and workers- not to mention manufacturers- were drawn together in a connection of hostility towards the government, landlords, merchants and speculators. Eric. R Wolf states the peasant revolts were defensive. It needed more than economic hardship, social discontent to make a revolution. To give unity to the discontents and hope to the widely varying social classes there had to be a body of ideas (as peasants were content in letting others start the revolution), like a revolutionary psychology or game plan- the grounds were prepared for other means rather than ambitions.
Wolf states that peasants were often spectators of political struggles and the peasants were slow to rise because they were too far away to understand what was happening in the city. They suffer from three crisis: demographic, ecological and power and authority. In the first instance, by writers of the Enlightenment who, as Bourke and Tocqueville were quick to note, weakened the defenses of the ancien regime. The ideas of writers, such as Rousseau, were absorbed by the eager reading public. The writings let people know what was really happening with political, social and economical subjects throughout France.
The Skocpol states that social revolutions occurred in these modernizing bureaucracies, (i. e. - France) which both grieving peasantry's suffered because they didnt have the organizational skills. When the Bastille was taken over by thousands of angry Parisians on July 14, 1789, a series of elected governments took control of France. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed along with thousands of other counter revolutionaries in the Reign of Terror. In France under the reign of terror no one was spared, it hung above every head and struck impartially, arbitrary and swift as the blade of Death. 11 The Revolution resulted in, among other things, the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the establishment of the first republic. Although it brought, democratic ideals France didnt become a democracy.
The Revolution was generated by a vast complex of causes, most important of which was the inability of the ruling classes of nobility, clergy and bourgeoisie to come to grips with the problems of state, the unstable nature of the monarch, the unreasonable taxation of the peasantry, drain of the workers, the intellectual excitement of the Age of Enlightenment, and the example of the American Revolution. Recent scholarship tends to downplay the social struggle and highlight political, cultural, ideological and personality factors in the unfolding of the conflict. The Revolution itself produces an equally extensive amount of consequences. The Revolution was also responsible for destroying the feudal privileges of the nobles. Serfdom was abolished, feudal dues and tithes were eliminated, the large feudal estates ere broken up and the principle of equal liability to taxation was introduced. With sweeping distribution of wealth and landholdings, France became the European nation with the largest proportion of small independent landowners.
Other social and economic reforms initiated during this period included eliminating imprisonment for debt, introducing the metric system and abolishing the rule of primogeniture in the inheritance of land. An additional area that the revolution played an important part was that of religion. 12 The revolution paved the way for the separation of state and church. The more fragile results of the revolution were symbolized in its slogan, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. These ideals became the policies of liberal reforms in Europe in the 19 th century and remain the present day passwords for democracy. The causes of the French revolution have been endlessly debated. The French Revolution may be approved as an entire part of a permanent revolution whose origins are both economic and political.
Assessment of impact has resulted in two successive changes. The Marxist, which portrayed the revolution as bringing about the final end to the feudal system making the way for the emergence of the modern capitalist society. I believe the French Revolution shouldnt excepted as a significant historical event. Although the supreme power was transferred from king to nation and although the revolutionaries wanted to remove the obstacles to the development of a market economy, it appears that France in 1815 wasnt so very different to France in 1789.
It remained essentially pre-industrial society dominated by a landed elite. It was only later that a radical social transformation occurred. The French Revolution is one of the foundation conscious and in civil status for Jews and Protestants. Competition for power had left bitter division within the elite and expressed the ambitions and goals of other groups, stones of coexisting political culture and the modern state. The French Revolution's classic status can be a drawback, as it encourages us to think greatly about which historical research we dont support.
The French Revolution, however, created tension and an intense sense of insecurity throughout France. It brought about a free society dominated by the middle class and landowners and it brought about great changes in the society and government in France.
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