CBA Essay

The French Revolution was caused by many significant factors like Frances large population, and the elections to the Estates-General; however, the foremost cause of instability during the Revolution was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy of 1790. “At the beginning of the eighteenth century, France had 20 million people living within its borders, a number equal to nearly 20 percent of the population of non-Russian Europe. Over the course of the century, that number increased by another 8 to 10 million, as epidemic disease and acute food shortages diminished and mortality declined.”As population increased during the eighteenth century, peasant landholdings tended to become smaller, and the gap between rich and poor grew. The months leading up to the convening of the Estates-General coincided with the worst subsistence crisis France had suffered in many years; a spring drought was followed by a devastating hailstorm that ruined crops in much of the northern half of the country. France was ruled by Louis XVI, a King who believed he had ‘Divine Right’ to rule France. Louis XIV was a poor leader and was easily influenced by his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette. At the time, there was a parliament in France known as the States-General, which consisted of representatives from each of the main classes or the three “estates” being the nobility, the clergy and the peasant who represented the third estate. However, “Louis XVI’s decision to convene the Estates-General in May 1789 became a turning point in French history.” This parliament was useless as not only did the nobility and the clergy hold much more power than the peasants but the parliament held almost no power itself, only having small legislative power, as from 1614 to 1789 the parliament never met so all the power of France was vested in the King. It also produced an entirely new concept of sovereignty with extremely far-reaching implications. The foremost cause of instability during the Revolution was the