Causes of The French Revolution

Causes of the French Revolution
In 1774, Louis XVI of the Bourbon family of kings ascended the throne of France. He was 20 years old
and married to the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette. Upon his accession, the new king found an
empty treasury. Long years of war had drained the financial resources of France. Added to this was
the cost of maintaining an extravagant court at the immense Palace of Versailles. Under Louis XVI,
France helped the thirteen American colonies to gain their independence from the common enemy,
Britain. The war added more than a billion livres to a debt that had already risen to more than 2
billion livres. Lenders who gave the state credit, now began to charge 10 per cent interest on loans.
So the French government was obliged to spend an increasing percentage of its budget on interest
payments alone. To meet its regular expenses, such as the cost of maintaining an army, the court,
running government offices or universities, the state was forced to increase taxes. Yet even this
measure would not have sufficed.
French society in the eighteenth century was divided into three estates, and only members of the
third estate paid taxes. The society of estates was part of the feudal system that dated back to the
Middle Ages. The term Old Regime is usually used to describe the society and institutions of France
before 1789. Peasants made up about 90 per cent of the population. However, only a small number
of them owned the land they cultivated. About 60 per cent of the land was owned by nobles, the
Church and other richer members of the third estate. The members of the first two estates, that is,
the clergy and the nobility, enjoyed certain privileges by birth. The most important of these was
exemption from paying taxes to the state. The nobles further enjoyed feudal privileges. These
included feudal dues, which they extracted from the peasants. Peasants were obliged to render
services to the lord and to work in his house and fields ñ to serve in the army or to participate in
building roads. The Church too extracted its share of taxes called tithes from the peasants, and
finally, all members of the third estate had to pay taxes to the state. These included a direct tax,
called taille, and a number of indirect taxes which were levied on articles of everyday consumption
like salt or tobacco. The burden of financing activities of the state through taxes was borne by the
third estate alone.
The population of France rose from about 23 million in 1715 to 28 million in 1789. This led to a rapid
increase in the demand for foodgrains. Production of grains could not keep pace with the demand.
So, the price of bread which was the staple diet of the majority rose rapidly. Most workers were
employed as labourers in workshops whose owner fixed their wages. But wages did not keep pace
with the rise in prices. So, the gap between the poor and the rich widened. Things became worse
whenever drought or hail reduced the harvest. This led to a subsistence crisis, something that
occurred frequently in France during the Old Regime
In the past, peasants and workers had participated in revolts against increasing taxes and food
scarcity. But they lacked the means and programmes to carry out full-scale measures that would
bring about a change in the social and economic order. This was left to those groups within the third
estate who had become prosperous and had access to education and new ideas. The eighteenth
century witnessed the emergence of social groups, termed the middle class, who earned their
wealth through an expanding overseas trade and from the manufacture of goods such as woollen
and silk textiles that were either exported or bought by the richer members of society. In addition to
merchants and manufacturers, the third estate included professions such as lawyers or
administrative officials. All of these were educated and believed that no group in society should be
privileged by birth. Rather, a person’s social position must depend on his merit. These ideas
envisaging a society based on freedom and equal laws and opportunities for all, were put forward by
philosophers such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Two Treatises of Government,
Locke sought to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right. Rousseau carried the idea
forward, proposing a form of government based on a social contract between people and their
representatives. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu proposed a division of power within the
government between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. This model of government was
put into force in the USA, after the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Britain. The
American constitution and its guarantee of individual rights was an important example for political
thinkers in France. The ideas of these philosophers were discussed intensively in salons and coffee-
houses and spread among people through books and newspapers. These were frequently read aloud
in groups for the benefit of those who could not read and write. The news that Louis XVI planned to
impose further taxes to be able to meet the expenses of the state generated anger and protest
against the system of privileges.

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