French Revolution

The tumultuous series of events that began with the storming of the Bastille in 1789 and ended with Napoleon Bonaparte's overthrow of the French government in 1799 are collectively known as the French Revolution. The revolution is a watershed event in world history in every possible sense—social, political, economic—and it is from this event that historians date the modern period. The revolution eradicated the feudal-style Old Regime society and brought the French monarchy crashing down. With wide-scale popular participation and public debate, the revolutionaries redefined both the political system and the social structure and raised questions regarding the power and role of government, human rights, the nature of liberty and equality, and gender roles. The sweeping changes the French Revolution brought reverberate through today's society and ensure that it remains a popular subject for scholarship, literature, the fine arts, and political discussion.

The reasons why France, the most powerful and prosperous nation in 18th-century Europe with a population of roughly 25 million, experienced the first great social revolution are varied. There are some general issues that affected all of Western Europe, such as a worldwide population explosion that led to accelerated growth of urban areas and food shortages, the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, crop failures, and the development of international commerce. The French government was slow and ineffective in responding to these global trends. However, there are contributory factors that were unique to France. The first of these is the existence of the political culture that developed in France over the course of the century fueled by the ideas of the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, is an intellectual movement that focused on the belief that man, through the application of reason and science, would be able to control his own destiny. The thinkers of the Enlightenment, called philosophes, believed in natural law and man's ability to critique the world around him. This sanctioning of the right to question the status quo on all topics including religion, government, and social structure flew in the face of the dominant Old Regime institutions, such as the monarchy and the church, that were founded on privilege. Traditionally, French society was organized into three estates: the church as the first, the aristocracy the second, and everyone else in the third. The first two had many exclusive privileges. This revolution in thought paved the way for the ensuing political action of the revolution and the eradication of the privileged orders.

Also contributing to the outbreak of revolution was the monarchy itself. Bourbon King Louis XVI was not popular with his subjects. Louis XVI was an ineffective ruler who was weak and easily influenced by others. His queen, the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette, did not help his cause. She was unpopular due to her lavish court spending, her lack of sympathy for the plight of her subjects, and her image as the ultimate spoiled teenager. It was this poor leadership that was the monarchy's undoing in that Louis XVI was unable to deal with the third cause for the revolution, a severe fiscal crisis. This financial crisis was the immediate cause of the revolution and heightened the growing conflict between the monarchy and the aristocracy.

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