French Revolution

At the end of Frances revolution in 1799, the French citizens got what they wanted. Starting with the storming of the Bastille, the French revolution lasted three years. With the revolution finally coming to an end, the French people got a new leader that they long awaited, a new government and constitution, and all together a whole different country. While at the time, people were arguing whether or not the revolution was a necessary event. A little bit more than two hundred years later, we now know that it was a necessary event. The French revolution was a necessary event, because there was widespread hunger that needed to be changed, they got rid of a king and queen that was disloyal to their country, and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was written. During and before the French Revolution, hunger was everywhere. In Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens shows how bad the situation in France was by saying “… was the sigh, Hunger. IT was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil (Dickens 34, source D).” Also, with the prices of bread rising, most people relied on what they can grow; they sometimes even ate grass, to keep them alive. With a King and Queen that only cared about themselves, there is no doubt that hunger is the first reason why the French Revolution was a necessary

Cited: “Declaration of the Rights of Man-1789.” The Avalon Project. 2008 Lillian Goldman Law Library. 22 July 2009. Web. Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities New York: Signet Classic, 2007. Print. Lacey, Robert, ed. “The Ancien Regime” The French Revolution Jackdaw Portfolio No. 147 Amawalk, NY: Jackdaw Publication, 1976. Print.