Causes of French ion

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Causes of the French Revolution 1

Causes of the French Revolution

The Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire

The Causes of the French Revolution were those significant

historical factors that led to the revolution of 1789 in France.

Although France in 1789 faced economic difficulties, mostlyconcerning the equitability of taxation, it was one of the richest and

most powerful nations of Europe.[1] The French people also enjoyed

more political freedom and a lower incidence of arbitrary punishment

than any of their fellow Europeans. However, Louis XVI, his

ministers, and the widespread French nobility had become immensely

unpopular. This was a consequence of the fact that peasants and, to a

lesser extent, the bourgeoisie, were burdened with ruinously-high taxes

levied to support wealthy aristocrats and their sumptuous, often

gluttonous, lifestyles.[2]

The fall of the ancien rgime in France may be blamed, in part, on itsown rigidity. Aristocrats were confronted by the rising ambitions of the

merchants, tradesmen and prosperous farmers, who were allied with aggrieved peasants, wage-earners and

intellectuals influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers. As the revolution proceeded, power devolved

from the monarchy and the privileged-by-birth to more-representative political bodies, like legislative assemblies,

but conflicts among the formerly-allied republican groups became the source of considerable discord and bloodshed.

A growing proportion of the French citizenry had absorbed the ideas of 'equality' and 'freedom of the individual' as

presented by Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Turgot, and other philosophers and social theorists of the Enlightenment. The

American Revolution demonstrated that it was plausible for Enlightenment ideas about how a government should be

organized could actually be put into practice. Some American diplomats, like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas

Jefferson, had lived in Paris where they consorted freely with members of the French intellectual class. Furthermore,

contact between American revolutionaries and the French troops who served as anti-British mercenaries in North

America helped spread revolutionary ideals to the French people. After a time, many of the French began to attack

the undemocratic nature of their own government, push for freedom of speech, challenge the Roman Catholic

Church, and decry the prerogatives of the nobles.[3]

In summary, a number of factors led to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Deep structural causes combined with

factors peculiar to the period. Revolution was not due to a single event but a series of events that, together,

irreversibly changed the organization of political power, the nature of society, and the exercise of individual

freedoms.

Enlightenment Ideas

Note that there is controversy about how deeply, by 1789, Enlightenment ideas had been able to penetrate the

various classes of French society. There is also disagreement as to the degree to which these ideas were adopted

simply as high-minded cover for bourgeois self-interest. The idea that the Revolution was a mechanism that enabled

an experiment in democratic ideas is the most commonly accepted one.

For example, shortly after the Revolutions of 1848, Karl Marx[4][5][6] wrote in theNeue Rheinische Zeitung that in

both the English Revolution of 1648 and in the French Revolution:
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Montesquieu

" ... the bourgeoisie as a class headed the movement. The

proletariat and the non-bourgeois strata of the middle class had

either not yet evolved interests which were different from those

of the bourgeoisie or they did not yet constitute independent

classes or class divisions. Therefore, where they opposed the

bourgeoisie, as they did in France in 1793 and 1794, (that is tosay, during the Reign of Terror) they fought only for the

attainment of the aims of the bourgeoisie, albeit in a

non-bourgeois manner. The entire French terrorism was just a

plebeian way of dealing with the enemies of the bourgeoisie:

absolutism, feudalism and philistinism."

Based on this evidence, the traditional view of the revolution as

"Enlightenment philosophy made manifest" may be inaccurate.

Economics and financesFrance in 1789, although it faced some difficulties, was one of the

most economically capable nations of Europe. The French population exceeded twenty-eight million; of Europe's

178 to 188 millions, only Imperial Russia had a greater population (37 to 41 millions). [7] France was also among the

most urbanized countries of Europe,[8] the population of Paris was second only to that of London (approximately

500,000 v. 800,000),[7] and six of Europe's thirty-five largest cities were French.[9]

Other measures confirm France's inherent strength. France had 5.3 million of Europe's approximately thirty million

male peasants.[10] Its area under cultivation,[10]productivity per unit area,[11] level of industrialization, and gross

national product[12] (about 14% of the continental European product, excluding Russia, and 610% above the level

elsewhere in Europe [13] ) all placed France near the very top of the scale. In short, while it may have lagged slightly

behind the Low Countries, and possibly Switzerland, in per capita wealth, the sheer size of the French economy

made it the premier economic power of continental Europe.

Debt

It was debt that led to the long-running fiscal crisis of the French government. On the eve of the revolution, France

was effectively bankrupt. Extravagant expenditures on luxuries by Louis XVI, whose rule began in 1774, were

compounded by debts that were run up during the reign of his even-more-profligate predecessor, Louis XV (who

reigned from 1715 to 1774). Heavy expenditures to conduct the losing Seven Years' War against Britain

(17561763), and France's spiteful attempt to poke a finger in the eye of the British by backing the Americans in

their War of Independence, ran the tab up even further.Louis XV and his ministers were deeply unhappy about Britain's victory in the Seven Years War, and, in the years

following the Treaty of Paris, they began drawing up a long-term plan that would involve constructing a larger navy

and building an anti-British coalition of allies. In theory, this would eventually lead to a war of revenge and see

France regain its colonies from Britain. In practice, it resulted in a mountain of debts.

Louis XV had spent liberally to establish Versailles as a showplace city worthy to be the French capital, in function

if not in fact. There, he built a Ministry of War, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (where the Treaty of Paris (1783)

ending the American Revolutionary War was signed), and a Ministry of the Navy.

In Louis XV's high council, theparti dvot("devout" party), led by the Comte d'Argenson, secretary of state for war,

and theparti philosophique ("philosophical" party), which supported the Enlightenment philosophy and was led by

Machault d'Arnouville, controller-general of finances, vied for power.
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On the advice of his mistress, the marquise de Pompadour, the king supported the policy of fiscal justice designed by

d'Arnouville. In order to finance the budget deficit, which amounted to 100 million livres in 1745, Machault

d'Arnouville created a tax of 5% on all revenues (the vingtime), a measure that affected the privileged classes as

well as the rest of the population. Still, expenditures outpaced revenues.[14]

Ultimately, Louis XV failed to overcome these fiscal problems, mainly because he was incapable of harmonizing the

conflicting parties at court and arriving at coherent economic policies. Worse, Louis seemed to be aware of theforces of anti-monarchism threatening his family's rule, yet he failed to do anything to stop them. [15] Louis XV's

death in 1774 saw the French monarchy at its nadir, politically, morally, and financially.

Under the new king, Louis XV's grandson, Louis XVI, radical financial reforms by his ministers, Turgot and

Malesherbes, angered the nobles and were blocked by the parlements who insisted that the king did not have the

legal right to levy new taxes. So, in 1776, Turgot was dismissed and Malesherbes resigned. They were replaced by

Jacques Necker, who supported the American Revolution and proceeded with a policy of taking out large

international loans instead of raising taxes.

Jacques Necker

France sent Rochambeau, Lafayette and de Grasse, along with large

land and naval forces, to help the Americans. French aid proved

decisive in forcing the main British army to surrender at the Battle ofYorktown in 1781.[16] The Americans gained their independence, and

the war ministry rebuilt the French army. However, the British sank the

main French fleet in 1782, and France gained little, except for the

colonies of Tobago and Senegal, from the Treaty of Paris (1783) that

concluded the war. The war cost 1,066 million livres, a huge sum, that

was financed by new loans at high interest rates, but no new taxes were

imposed. Necker concealed the crisis from the public by explaining

only that ordinary revenues exceeded ordinary expenses, and by not

mentioning the loans at all.[17]

When Necker's tax policy failed miserably, Louis dismissed him, and

replaced him, in 1783, with Charles Alexandre de Calonne, who

increased public spending in order to 'buy' the country's way out of

debt. This policy also failed, so Louis convened the Assembly of

Notables in 1787 to discuss a revolutionary new fiscal reform proposed by Calonne. When the nobles were told the

extent of the debt, they were shocked. However, the shock did not motivate them to rally behind the plan but to

reject it. This negative turn of events signaled to Louis that he had lost the ability to rule as an absolute monarch, and

he fell into depression.[18]

Britain too had a great debt from these conflicts, but Britain had far more advanced fiscal institutions in place to deal

with it. France was a wealthier country than Britain, and its national debt was no greater than the British one. In each

country the servicing of the debt accounted for about one-half the annual expenditure of the government. Where they

differed was in the effective rates of interest. In France, the debt was financed at almost twice the interest rate as the

debt across the Channel. This demanded a much higher level of taxation and less flexibility in raising money to deal

with unforeseen emergencies. (See also Eden Agreement.)

Edmund Burke, no friend of the revolution, wrote in 1790: " ... the public, whether represented by a monarch or by a

senate, can pledge nothing but the public estate; and it can have no public estate except in what it derives from a just

and proportioned imposition upon the citizens at large." Because the nobles successfully defended their privileges,

the king of France lacked the means to impose a "just and proportioned" tax. The desire to do so led directly to the

decision in 1788 to call the Estates-General into session.

[19]
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The financial strain of servicing old debt and the excesses of the current royal court caused dissatisfaction with the

monarchy, contributed to national unrest, and culminated in the French Revolution of 1789.

Taxation

Since it was one of the major trading nations, France needed to raise most of its tax revenue internally, rather than

through customs tariffs. Taxes on commerce consisted of internal tariffs among the regions of France. This set up anarbitrary tax-barrier (sometimes, as in Paris, in physical form) at every regional boundary, and these barriers

prevented France from developing as a unified market. Collections of taxes, such as the extremely unpopular salt tax,

the gabelle, were contracted to private collectors ("tax farmers"), who, like all farmers, preoccupied themselves with

making their holdings grow. So, they collected, quite legitimately, far more than required, remitted the tax to the

State, and pocketed the remainder. These unwieldy systems led to arbitrary and unequal collection of France's

consumption taxes. (See also Wall of the Farmers-General, Jean Chouan, Octroi, Claude Nicolas Ledoux, and the

Indian salt tax.)

Htel de la gabelle (House of the Salt Tax) in Bernay, Eure, Upper Normandy, built in

1750 by Brant and Ange-Jacques Gabriel.

Peasants were also required to pay a

tenth of their income or produce to the

church (the tithe), a land tax to the state(the taille), a 5% property tax (the

vingtime), and a tax on the number of

people in the family (capitation).

Further royal and seigneurial

obligations might be paid in several

ways: in labor (the corve), in kind, or,

rarely, in coin. Peasants were also

obligated to their landlords for: rent in

cash (the cens), a payment related to

their amount of annual production (thechampart), and taxes on the use of the

nobles' mills, wine-presses, and

bakeries (the banalits). In good times,

the taxes were burdensome; in harsh

times, they were devastating. After a

less-than-fulsome harvest, people would starve to death during the winter.

Many tax collectors and other public officials bought their positions from the king, sometimes on an annual basis,

sometimes in perpetuity. Often an additional fee was paid to upgrade their position to one that could be passed along

as an inheritance. Naturally, holders of these offices tried to reimburse themselves by milking taxpayers as hard aspossible. For instance, in a civil lawsuit, judges required that both parties pay a bribe (called, with tongue-in-cheek,

the pices, the spices); this, effectively, put justice out of the reach of all but the wealthy.

The system also exempted the nobles and the clergy from taxes (with the exception of a modest quit-rent, an ad

valorem tax on land). The tax burden, therefore, devolved to the peasants, wage-earners, and the professional and

business classes. Further, people from less-privileged walks of life were blocked from acquiring even petty positions

of power in the regime. This caused further resentment.
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Failure of reforms

During the reigns of Louis XV (17151774) and Louis XVI (17741792), several ministers, most notably Turgot

and Necker, proposed revisions to the French tax system so as to include the nobles as taxpayers, but these proposals

were not adopted because of resistance from theparlements (provincial courts of appeal). Members of these courts

bought their positions from the king, as well as the right to transfer their positions hereditarily through payment of an

annual fee, thepaulette. Membership in such courts, or appointment to other public positions, often led to elevationto the nobility (the so-called Nobles of the Robe, as distinguished from the nobility of ancestral military origin, the

Nobles of the Sword.) While these two categories of nobles were often at odds, they both sought to retain their

privileges.

Because the need to raise taxes placed the king at odds with the nobles and the upper bourgeoisie, he appointed as

his finance ministers, "rising men" (to use Franois Mignet's insightful term), usually of non-noble origin. These

commoners, Turgot, Chrtien de Malesherbes, and Jacques Necker lobbied for reforms in taxation and other moves

toward moderation, such as Necker's attempts to reduce the lavishness of the king's court. Each one failed. Instead,

the 'parkinsons law' of bureaucratic overextended waste prevailed, to the detriment of the gentry and other

non-seigneurial classes.

In contrast, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, appointed finance minister in 1783, restored lavish spending reminiscent

of the age of Louis XIV. By the time Calonne brought together the Assembly of Notables on 22 February 1787 to

address the financial situation, France had reached a state of virtual bankruptcy; no one would lend the king money

sufficient to meet the expenses of the royal court and the government. According to Mignet, the loans amounted to

1.64 billion livres, and the annual deficit was 140 millions. Calonne was succeeded by his chief critic, tienne

Charles de Lomnie de Brienne, archbishop of Sens, but the fundamental situation was unchanged: the government

had no credit. To address this, the Assembly of Notables sanctioned "the establishment of provincial assemblies,

regulation of the corn trade, abolition of corves, and a new stamp tax", but the assembly dispersed on 25 May 1787

without actually installing a longer-term program with prospects for success.

Famine

French bread

These problems were all compounded by a great scarcity of food in the

1780s. A series of crop failures caused a shortage of grain,

consequently raising the price of bread. Because bread was the main

source of nutrition for poor peasants, this led to starvation. The two

years previous to the revolution (178889) saw meager harvests and

harsh winters, possibly because of a strong El Nio cycle [20] caused by

the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland.[21]

The Little Ice Age also affected farmers' choices of crops to plant; inother parts of Europe, peasant farmers had adopted the potato as its

staple crop, but the French generally refused to eat potatoes because

they had stigmatized them as an exotic 'dirty food' or the 'food of the

devil'. Nonetheless, during times of famine and upheaval, the potato

was a wise alternative to cereal crops. Potatoes are more resistant to

cold temperatures, and, as a root crop, they survive hailstorms and

even scorched-earth warfare.[22]

In 1789, a normal worker, a farmer or a laborer, earned anywhere from

fifteen to thirty sous per day; skilled workers received thirty to forty. A family of four needed about two loaves of

bread a day to survive. The price of a loaf of bread rose by 67 percent in 1789 alone, from nine sous to fifteen. Many

peasants were relying on charity to survive, and they became increasingly motivated by their hunger. The 'bread
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riots' were the first manifestations of a roots-based revolutionary sentiment. Mass urbanization coincided with the

beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and more and more people moved into French cities seeking employment.

The cities became overcrowded with the hungry, destitute, and disaffected, an ideal environment for revolution.

See also: The "Great Fear"

TransparencyH.F. Helmolt argued that the issue was not so much the debt per se, but the way the debt was refracted through the

lens of Enlightenment principles and the increasing power of third-estate creditors, that is, commoners who held the

government's paper.

Properly speaking, the people ought to have been accustomed to the fact that the French government did

not fulfill its financial obligations, for since the time of Henry IV, that is, within two centuries, it had

failed to meet its obligations fifty-six times. In earlier days such catastrophes had not been announced

and publicly discussed. Now all France, which for two generations had been worked upon by the party

of rationalism, shared the outcry against the financial situation. [23]

The struggle with theparlements and nobles to enact reformist measures displayed the extent of the disintegration ofthe Ancien Rgime. In short order, Protestants regained their rights, and Louis XVI was pressured to produce an

annual disclosure of the state of his finances. He also pledged to reconvene the Estates-General within five years.

Despite the pretense that France operated under an absolute monarchy, it became clear that the royal government

could not successfully implement the changes it desired without the consent of the nobility. The financial crisis had

become a political crisis as well,[24] and the French Revolution loomed just beyond the horizon.

Notes

[1] Norman Gash, Reflections on the revolution - French Revolution (http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n13_v41/ai_7722321),

National Review, July 14, 1790, accessed online 4 July 2007: "Yet in 1789 France was the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful state in

Western Europe."[2] For an overview of the time see, for example, F. A. M. MignetHistory of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 (1824, available on

Project Gutenberg (http://www. gutenberg.org/etext/9602)): speaking of his arrival for the first session of the Estates, "the king

appeared The hall resounded with applause on his arrival." Later, July 27, 1789, nearly two weeks after the storming of the Bastille,

"when Louis XVI. had left his carriage and received from Bailly's hands the tricolor cockade, and, surrounded by the crowd without guards,

had confidently entered the Htel de Ville, cries of "Vive le roi!" burst forth on every side. The reconciliation was complete; Louis XVI

received the strongest marks of affection."

[3] The Origins of the French Revolution (http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture11a.html)

[4] Karl Marx, The Bourgeoisie and the Counter-Revolution' (http://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/12/15.htm), Neue

Rheinische Zeitung No. 169, Translated by the Marx-Engels Institute, Transcribed for the Internet by [email protected], 1994

[5] Browse French Revolution Texts (http://chnm.gmu. edu/revolution/browse/texts/)

[6] French Revolution (http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist7.html)

[7] Bairoch 1989, p. 941

[8] Bairoch 1989, p. 942

[9] Bairoch 1989, p. 943

[10] Bairoch 1989, p. 945

[11] Bairoch 1989, p. 946

[12] Bairoch 1989, p. 949

[13] Bairoch 1989, pp. 959963

[14] Kenneth N. Jassie, "We Don't Have a King: Popular Protest and the Image of the Illegitimate King in the Reign of Louis XV". Consortium

on Revolutionary Europe 1750-1850: Proceedings 1994 23: 211-219. Issn: 0093-2574

[15] The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, (1715-99), a scholarly bibliography by Colin Jones (2002) pp. 124, 132-33, 147

[16] Jonathan R. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787 (1975)

[17] On finance see William Doyle, Oxford History of the French Revolution (1989) p 67-74

[18] John Hardman, Louis XVI, Yale university Press, New Haven and London, 1993 p126

[19] The French Revolution (http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/History/DF_revolution.shtml)[20] Richard H. Grove, Global Impact of the 178993 El Nio,Nature 393 (1998), 318-319.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nature_%28journal%29http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nature_%28journal%29http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/History/DF_revolution.shtmlhttp://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist7.htmlhttp://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/browse/texts/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/12/15.htmhttp://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture11a.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tricolor_cockadehttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jean_Sylvain_Baillyhttp://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9602http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fran%C3%A7ois_Mignethttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Reviewhttp://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n13_v41/ai_7722321http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Absolute_monarchyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=French_States-Generalhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rationalismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Henry_IV_of_Francehttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Third_Estatehttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Fear%23Causes_and_course_of_the_revoltshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Industrial_Revolutionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Urbanization


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[21] Wood, C.A., 1992. "The climatic effects of the 1783 Laki eruption" in C. R. Harrington (Ed.), The Year Without a Summer? Canadian

Museum of Nature, Ottawa, pp. 5877

[22] Little Ice age: Big Chill (http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&showId=173249). History Channel (http://www.history.

com/)

[23] H.F. Helmolt,History of the World, Volume VII, Dodd Mead 1902, p. 120121.

[24] Helmolt, p. 121.

References

Bairoch (1989). "L'economie francaise dans le contexte european a la fin du XVLLLe siecle".Revue Economique

40 (6): 939964.
http://www.history.com/http://www.history.com/http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&showId=173249


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