The French Revolution came about through many causes that included financial problems and food scarcity. France was in financial crisis due to their participation in the seven years war and American Revolution. By 1789, France encountered bankruptcy because of the country’s indiscriminate inequitable system of taxation. France at the time was a nation where society was dominated by class. The clergy and nobility were exempted from taxation leaving peasants who were barely scraping by to also suffer heavy taxation. This led to the system government not being able to levy enough tax to deficit.
The second cause of this event; food scarcity was also a huge problem. Crop failure, famine and harsh winters led to high prices of bread, which was the main food source for peasants. The poor conditions in the rural had forced rural residents to move into Paris, and the city was overcrowded and filled with the hungry and disaffected. Therefore peasants suffered incredibly from economic and agricultural problems. The fact that the peasants were angered by the increased tax and agricultural problems had caused an even greater problem towards the financial crisis.
Furthermore, French Revolution had not only caused catastrophe to the country, but had also affected the people involved in this event, especially the peasants in France. The French Revolution began because people of the Third Estate (poorest French citizens) wanted more share in government and fairer taxes and they were also displeased with the way the government and king worked. The king was never in favour of the peasants and so during the Revolutionary Era of France, the kings caused peasants to have a lack of food and were forced to pay high taxes. Moreover, when the Reign of Terror in 1793 began, it resulted in the execution of many innocent people along with King Louis XVI. Besides causing death, the French Revolution which was then ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte after King Louis XVI had died, turned everyone in France into a non-Catholic or non-Christian.
The French Revolution was of great importance in history. Although it was a tragic matter, it was what helped shape the 19th century, peoples’ lives, their beliefs and the societies in which they lived. It was also the first significant revolution in history to advance the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity and all humanistic ideas of the French and Europeans. Many things of what we have today were invented during the French Revolution. For example the famous invention, the guillotine which was invented by Joseph Guillotine, who had his own head chopped off with his own invention. The French Revolution was also the first time a population against the Monarchy and established a Republic.
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