What was the importance of the financial weakness of the Monarchy in causing the French Revolution?

AS and A Level History

Bernardo Teixeira

10 Mee

History – Mr. Briggs

What was the importance of the financial weakness of the Monarchy in causing the French Revolution?

In 1978 the French Revolution had finally started. It was caused by many factors from years before. The first reason and considered main reason, was the Debt accumulated during the Seven Years War and the American War of Independence, where the government used an exorbitant quantity of money for supporting a major army and navy. The second reason was the taxation of the time, where the Monarchy failed to diminish the taxes of the population. Finally the Enlightenment period, where people named Philosophes, generally criticized the absolute Monarchy and the clergy as well as questioning the equality in the country specially in the taxation division. To which point the financial crisis of the absolute monarchy in France can be considered to be the main cause of Revolution.

As Louis XVI came to power in 1774, he began to adopt a new policy where France would build up a major army and navy. His intentions were to prove the whole world that by that time, France was one of the major powers. Even if the deal wasn’t worthwhile, and even if the government had to accumulate a huge amount of debt and raise the taxation, the French army and navy were activated. The main example of useless exploit of the army and navy were in the American War of Independence against Britain, which took place during 1775 to 1783, where the French government used a lot of money in American Campaigns. For Example in Yorktown in 1781, 227 million livres were spent (147 million livres just for the navy). In total 1.3 Billion Livres were spent in the American War of Independence. If France has the same economic power as Britain, this wouldn’t be such a problem as the British government had the power to increase taxation for supplying a war and not threatening a political crisis, this couldn’t be done in France, because there was massive corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency in the government. For this, 91% of the money invested in the war was taken from loans. This increased drastically the debt of France. This made it impossible for Louis XVI to reduce taxes as promised. What happened was that peasants had to work doubled to pay the taxes, which were acquired to fund a war in which they had no point in fighting.

Through the French System of Taxes, the entire burden eventually fell on the peasants, who were obliged to pay a greater percentage of taxes in comparison to the nobles. This was very bad for the economy of France, as it wasn’t able to grow as peasants were left with very few money. The “taille personnelle”, which was the basic tax, consisted of a sum of the annual earnings of one. This tax was the one which raised most money for the Monarchy although the nobles were exempt from it. As the nobles were not obliged to pay, people, from ...

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Through the French System of Taxes, the entire burden eventually fell on the peasants, who were obliged to pay a greater percentage of taxes in comparison to the nobles. This was very bad for the economy of France, as it wasn’t able to grow as peasants were left with very few money. The “taille personnelle”, which was the basic tax, consisted of a sum of the annual earnings of one. This tax was the one which raised most money for the Monarchy although the nobles were exempt from it. As the nobles were not obliged to pay, people, from the third estate, began seeing the system as being unfair and they began to dislike it. The “taille réelle”, which was a land tax was also mainly paid by the third estate, this resulted in almost extracting all their money only with taxes. The third estate was also to follow their seignural dues, which clearly favoured the nobles. The third estate, which sold their land, were obliged to pay a percentage of the sale price to the seigneur (feudal lord), in this case the noble which bought their land. Sometimes, the peasants had to pay to use the corn mill or olive or wine press, this was what most annoying in the seigneural dues. Nevertheless, what most made the third estate people annoyed was that this excessive quantity of money they had to pay for taxes was rarely used for the benefit of the population. It was mainly used t pay debts and to fund continental military campaigns, such as the Seven Years War and the American war of Independence. This system was clearly making the major part of the population, the third estate, infuriated. For this reason, when Louis XVI came to power, he made the nobles pay some small dues of the “taille personnelle” under the capitation (poll tax) and vingtième (one-twentieth of the annual value of most income). These measures weren’t sufficient to end with inequality in the taxation system, as the nobles still manipulated and controlled the system. The small effect of the imposed new measures of louis XVI resulted in the “cahiers de dolèances”, which was a petition sent by the peasants to Louis asking to improve their conditions.

During the 17th century the bourgeoisie, the middle class, grew substantially and some flourished economically. Some were able to gain ennoblement; the nobles saw this as a threat. For this, the process of “buying” nobility became much more complicated. Many of the middle - classes were frustrated because the system that educated them gave no opportunity whatsoever just because they weren’t nobles. The peasants, which weren’t educated as the bourgeoisie, also had their own thoughts but they were confronted by the rural nobility. The peasants now clearly saw the system as being corrupt. They saw feudal lords and nobles as parasites, which had many privileges with few works, due to the hard work of the peasants themselves, which had their money sucked by the heavy taxations they had to pay which clearly favoured the nobles. These thoughts that were now seen by the peasants were not just by means of the corruption of the taxation system, but they were directly relationed to the ideas of French philosophers, ideas that were later known to have come during the “Enlightenment”. These ideas were basically criticism towards the absolute monarchist system at France by that time, the nobles and the clergy, the ideas expressed how the system was clearly manipulated towards these estates. The main ideas consisted of changing the absolute monarchy system to a parliamentary monarchy, such as Britain. Most philosophers saw the British government as the one to be copied, because of how well it worked. Baron de Montesquieu, one of the most famous enlightened philosophers, believed, the model of England, with its parliament, independent judges and constitution would be perfect for imitation. Althoug the philosophers had no say in the revolution, their ideas were very important for the people to begin to want immediate changes, and for revolutionary feelings to sprout inside them.

As it can be seen, the three factors above were essential for the end of the ancien régime. All of them: the exorbitant debt, the unequal taxation system, the unfair absolute monarchy and the enlightenment, were all extremely important for the revolution to happen. In my point of view, a combination of all of them was the result of the French Revolution, meaning they have equal importance. Therefore, I conclude the financial weakness of the absolute monarchy was important for the Fall of the Bastille only to a certain extent, although as important as it was, I believe that if France didn’t have one of these factors, such as a corrupt taxation system, maybe the revolution wouldn’t have occurred. Meaning I think have equal importance.