Because this massive debt overwhelmed all of his financial consultants, Louis XVI was forced to give in to the demands of the Parlement of Paris and convene the Estates, General. Also Marie Antoinette, who was brought up in indulgence as an Austrian princess, after their marriage became, in the French commoners’ eyes, the primary symbol of the French royalty’s extravagance and excess. She was hindering their payment of loans both Louis XVI and his predecessors had. Thought she didn’t have power of anything more than any other French queen until the reforms were rejected, she still had power over his purse, and carried on her indulgent life even when the country was declaring bankruptcy.
This was another target that France used in their feud against their youthful king. He had an Austrian queen, in an attempt to reconcile differences between the two countries, but with many French people against his wife, Louis was led to ignore those citizen’s opinions and carry on, not worrying about how he could be wrong in having a queen like Mary Antoinette. This in turn may explain why the French started to despise Louis xvi, and in the end turn to executing him.
Complaints about the king, taxing, and voting in the Estates General were on the increase. The bourgeoisie were well informed of their legal weakness and conscious of the rights that other people in other nations, such as the new United States of America, were receiving as a right of a drastic change in judgment. The most important causes of the French Revolution, therefore, were these: the constant unprofessional conduct of the French government and the subsequent unfairness in the distribution of wealth, the incredible hardship that the populations of the Third Estate were subject to, and, finally, the Enlightenment principles finally reaching the thinkers of the day.
The ruling parties in France had long since overstepped their boundaries in terms of levying taxes. The Old Regime had become antiquated and impractical, unfit for the growing size of the country and for the well-being of the people. Feudalism had existed for centuries, but it was time for a change. King Louis XVI and his teams of advisors were forced to develop elaborate taxation schemes to pay the inflation on the national debt, which was partly the fault of his predecessors, who had spent colossal amounts of money on Versailles, amongst other things. More than fifty percent of the total budget was directed toward this renumeration.
Tax collection, however, was a debacle. Taxes mixed from region to region, and most of the taxes were collected by private businessmen. They would lend the taxes to the government and then accumulate the taxes directly; they then paid themselves both the principal and the interest on the loan and sent the rest to the government. They were liberated to hold back as much as they wanted, so the Third Estate was paying far more in taxes than truly went to the government. What's worse is that the assets of the country were not centralized; there were hundreds of offices paying out money. By the 1780's, no one had any idea as to what the total asset and liability profile of the nation looked like.
The financial crisis precipitated a steep inflationary rise in prices. This inflation was good news for French manufacturing and mercantilism because it resulted in a significant shot of capital into emerging industrial and mercantile businesses. It played hell, however, with the peasantry. Not only did the peasants have to pay higher prices for the basics of life, but landlords began raising fees on the peasantry when they saw their purchasing power decrease. By 1789, over 80 percent of an average peasant's household income went to purchasing bread alone, just bread. In that same year, unemployment in many parts of France was over 50%.This, of course, meant practically bleeding the poorest, most disadvantaged people in the country dry of what little capital they had. As time went on, the Churches and the nobles, making up only three percent of the territory, gathered to them upwards of half of the land in the country; they then turned their sights on the largest portion of the French people, and began to take whatever they could from them.
Louis was blamed for this as he was that kept the taxes and even added some on to pay off his debts. On top of the taille, the corvée, the tithe and capitation, the vingtieme was called on even when France wasn’t at war.
In 1787, Louis's financial ministers, Charles de Calonne and Loménie de Brienne, tried to initiate a series of reforms to stop the complete financial ruin of the French government. They wanted new taxes. The Parlements, which had the authority to raise taxes, want something in return: more regional independence. The aristocracy wouldn't budge on the matter; when Louis calls a select group of nobles together to sell him on the reforms, they flat out declined to consider the matter. They insist, rather, that the only governmental body that can support the new taxes is the Estates General, which hadn't been called since 1614. So Louis XVI decided in 1789 to convene the Estates, General, and an ancient assembly consisting of three different estates that each represented a portion of the French population. If the Estates, General could agree on a tax solution, it would be implemented. However, since two of the three estates; the clergy and the nobility, were tax, exempt, the achievement of any such result was unlikely.
Furthermore, the out of date rules of order for the Estates, General gave each estate a single vote, despite the fact that the Third Estate, consisting of the general French public, was many times larger than either of the first two. Feuds quickly broke out over this discrepancy and would prove to be contradictory. Realizing that its numbers gave it an automatic advantage, the Third Estate declared itself the sovereign National Assembly. Within days of the announcement, many members of the other two estates had switched allegiances over to this revolutionary new assembly.
On May 5, 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates General. Almost immediately, it became apparent that the 1614 arrangement would not sit well with its present members. Although Louis XVI granted the Third Estate greater numerical representation, the Parlement of Paris stepped in and invoked an old rule mandating that each estate receive one vote, regardless of size. As a result, though the Third Estate was vastly larger than the clergy and nobility, each estate had the same representation, one vote. Inevitably, the Third Estate’s vote was doubled to accommodate the difference in population. Louis XVI could be commentated on his good intentions in light of this event. Knowing very well that a revolution was imminent, he let there be an equal ration of representatives, thus editing a tradition to mace it democratic.
The fact that the Estates General hadn’t been summoned in nearly 200 years probably says a thing or two about the extent of the situation. The First and Second Estates, clergy and nobility, respectively, were too closely related in many matters. Both were linked to the royalty and shared many similar privileges. As a result, their votes often went the same way, automatically neutralizing any effort by the Third Estate. Additionally, in a country as secularized as France at the time, giving the church a full third of the vote was ill-advised: although France’s citizens would ultimately have their revenge, at the time the church’s voting power just fostered more animosity. There were numerous philosophers in France speaking out against religion and the mindless following that it supposedly demanded, and many resented being forced to follow the decisions of the church on a national scale.
In a way if it weren’t for Louis making his decision to give more votes to the 3rd estate, there would be no upheaval from the 1st and 2nd estates. On the other hand the revolt of the 3rd estate would affect him. He was stuck in the middle with no was of compromise. Things got worse when the third estate segregated. The Third Estate itself varied greatly in socioeconomic status: some members were peasants and labourers, whereas others had the occupations, wealth, and lifestyles of nobility. These disparities between members of the Third Estate made it difficult for the wealthy members to relate to the peasants with whom they were grouped. Because of these rifts, the Estates, General, though organized to reach a peaceful solution, remained in a long-lasting inside feud. It was only through the efforts of men such as Sieyès that the members of the Third Estate finally realized that fighting among them was fruitless and that if they took advantage of the estate’s massive size, they would be a force that could not be ignored.
In conclusion, I believe the French Revolution was an astonishingly convoluted affair; it was principally lit by the antagonisms between the first two and the Third Estate, antagonisms rooted in decades of abuse and frustration and not a “despot” who was trying to fix his families mistakes along with his own. Louis xvi may have made some decisions that would make any other monarch twitch with distaste but his intentions were good , and considering his age and his power , he was an adequate king for a place that certainly had a revolution in its midst.
Total : 1980 words
