How Did Louis Xiv Contribute To The French Revolution

The general good of the world is often compromised by the temptations that precipitate explosive emotions like anger. Every feeling a person undergoes could not exist without its catalyst, the trigger that sets these feelings in motion. When people allow their emotions to guide them through situations, change, whether big or small, always results. This law of life proved no different through the preceding events leading to the French Revolution. The French monarchy and the wealthy individuals who sat among the royals in France in 1789 lived lavishly in a time of debt that was earned through France’s heavy assistance with the American Revolution. This left the vast majority of the French feeling discarded and unheard because they suffered at
On top of this, the king of France while this occurred, Louis XIV, pursued his own pleasure with his riches rather than using them to save the country from their impending economic crisis. His contribution to the country’s deficit spending did not help France. In addition to the debt caused by war and careless deficit spending, “bad harvests sent food prices soaring” bringing “hunger to the poorer peasants and [the Third Estate]” (Esler 213). This describes how the entire Third Estate further suffered for a small population of France, causing fury among them. On top of being the only people that paid taxes, they had to pay extra for small portions of food or they starved. Their jobs were not sufficient for the high demand for money the government asked for because of the financial crisis they were in. The dormant status of the people in power in trying to issue reforms to fix the country’s situation was another factor that deeply enraged the people of the Third Estate, leading them to act based on their anger. To illustrate, the heirs of Louis XIV also had a careless or unassertive mindset about the state of the economy and what the government
As suggested, a meeting of the Estates-General was called to vote on reforms. The voting system was not fair because there was only one vote per estate. Despite the population of the people in the Third estate being extremely large, they only had one vote as compared to the two in the First and Second estate, biased to France’s absolute monarchy. The stubbornness of the First and Second estates is further pronounced when Necker sought it beneficial to tax the First and Second estates, but “the nobles and high clergy forced the king to dismiss [Necker]” (Esler 213). This further provides a cause for the Third Estate’s unrest, ultimately leading to the storming of the Bastille. The urges backed by human emotions obstruct the path of the world’s goodness, and these urges would be insignificant without their corresponding triggers. The drive behind the Parisians who stormed the Bastille could only handle so many triggers before their anger took