Explain why the French monarchy faced Financial crisis in the 1770s. (12 mark)
The French monarchy faced financial crisis due to huge royal expenditure especially on war and court expenses, which increased the deficit of the country. The monarchy, funded by taxes were not receiving all the money due to a highly corrupt taxation collection system and failure of harvests and unemployment meant that taxes were harder to collect.
France had been involved in many wars between the years 1740 to 1783, especially in 1776 onwards when it was helping the American revolution. This included funding where France was spending millions of livres on the Americans just to show Britain, their natural enemy how strong they were despite collapsing in financial turmoil. The American war of independence cost them 1066 million livres all together, money which they simply did not have. This led to financial crisis for the monarchy because the deficit was now so huge and from the lack of an elected parliament, raising loans was too hard of an option for Necker as consequently other countries did not have lenders confidence seeing France in such a terrible state. The war meant that too much was being spent on foreign policy and not enough on the people of France and throughout the 18th century, the French monarchy had been funding on many wars which built up debt which only added to the costs of the American war of independence. This affected the monarchy as even they had to cut back on expensive royal court luxuries seeing the turmoil that the economy was in and although Louis XVI was king, and that many royal were against war, he was pressured into helping the American war of independence which was soon to increase financial crisis for all.
