The French Revolution

Essay by marysjaneeHigh School, 10th gradeA, November 2014

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Taylor Sicard

Global History

October 25, 2014

Mrs. Hewson

French Revolution

The French revolution was a period of time when the people found changes that needed to be reformed in their government. The French Revolution began in 1789 and ended in the late 1790's with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte. During this period, the French razed and redesigned their country's political landscape uprooting centuries old institutions like absolute monarchy. Like the American Revolution before it, the French revolution was influenced by Enlightenment ideas like popular sovereignty and inalienable rights. The people of France then seen that they needed immediate social, political and economic fragments of their society reformed.

Before the French Revolution France was in a major economic crisis. The French government kept spending more money than it was receiving by taxes. Most of this debt was created by King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. By 1786 the government realized the problem they were in, but they were already far into it by then.

At this time there was extreme poverty in France, even though some people in France were very rich a large amount of them were poor. The poor (also known as the third estate) were highly taxed and were paid just enough to get by. While the third estate is being taxed the most, the first two estates (the nobles and the clergy) were paid the most and barely taxed. The first two estates also comes up to 3% of the population of France and owned 45% of the land all together. The third estate that obtained 97% of the French population had to share 55% of the land as shown in document 2. This all resulted in the lack of production of bread (France's main food resource). The bakers could not pay the tailles and this...