Causes and Inevitability of the French

Revolution of 1789
1. Introduction
The principal causes of the French Revolution of 1789 do not lie in the prevailing economic, social, and
political circumstances, the completion of which was the French Revolution, but rather in the extension of the
capitalistic, social, and political system. Although it is largely agreed that in tapping any given historical vein
we are charting an intellectual field, modern historical research is in effect too competitive and particularistic
for anyone to begin by setting out their intellectual baggage. Moreover, there are some grounds for
questioning the catholicity of the narrowly rational approach to the study of the roles of extra-economic
motivations in general.

The culmination of the capitalistic extension of French society was the product of pre-Revolutionary
development and in the most rapid capitalistic economic development of any Continental society of
comparable size; and the economically powerful Third Estate—the commercial and industrial
sectors—established the commercial terms under which the majority of their fellow countrymen lived—if
they made things sufficiently cheaply for their poorer neighbors or their poorer neighbors labored for them in
return. The eighteen years that changed the Third Estate from one among three to the Third—i.e.,
bottom—Estate were years of capitalistic expansion in France.

2. Historical Background
Historically, events of the French Revolution were immediate and very evident. But the causes were all of a
long-term nature and lay deep. In so far as the causes of the French Revolution were concerned, they were a
logical corollary of the Enlightenment, leading to the ultimate transformation of a new philosophy – the
philosophy of revolution. Given the fact that the spark had lit up the fire of revolution in 1789, it becomes
necessary for us to look at the historical background of the revolution, with the help of which we can find out
the causes leading to revolution and the inevitability of the revolution. The historical background of the
revolution dated back to the civilization of France. The very basic cause of the French Revolution was the
Enlightenment of the 18th century. The philosophers of the age began to question the feudal society; the
ideas of liberty and equality began to be the fervor of the day: liberty for the individual, economics and
politics, and equality of opportunity and reward for those who undertook it. People became more and more
enlightened, and men of learning came forward who made changes through the age-old customs and the
vested interests of the old order. It was at this stage that the model embryology of the revolution began to
take shape.

3. Social Structure of France

Although the Roman Catholic Church would not be regarded as one of the three privileged orders, it was an
important aspect of the social structure. In those days, most intense believers in Christianity went to pray
very often and hence were aware that those who were most active in ecclesiastical affairs were the higher
clergy, the senior officials in the Church. There they might not meet the higher clergy personally, but at least
they would hear or read about them. These were the archbishops and bishops, endowed with large estates,
castles, and palaces, even garrisoned fortresses. They had developed sophisticated tastes in art, intellectual
matters, and personal comforts. Even before the production of creative literature, the various regional
dialects had seemed unable to contain the immensely rich vocabulary, let alone the ideas, in fields such as
agriculture, technological trades, the professions of law and university teaching, and the conduct of economic
and governmental affairs. Consequently, French in more ways than one resembled a Gothic building, rooted
in the French soil and also on a superstructure possessing a universal dimension. Little wonder that many
Frenchmen, prominent figures in the capacity of leading clerics, lawyers, and local government officials, had
developed a strong sense of loyalty to both French institutions and the Latin-speaking Church. Hence, the
clergy would remain both constitutive and supportive of the body politic.

3.1. The Estates System

The major cause of the French Revolution was the disputes between the different types of social classes in
French society. The French society was made up of three different social classes called estates. The First
Estate was made up of Church leaders, who were very wealthy. They did not have to pay any tax, but they
received income from taxes paid by all the other estates. The Second Estate was made up of nobles, who
were also wealthy and did not have to pay taxes, but collected taxes from the Third Estate to spend on
themselves instead of on the country. They were exempt from taxes and were appointed by the king to run
the country. The Third Estate was made up of big businessmen, tradesmen, lawyers, doctors, peasants, and
servants. They were taxed heavily by the king and nobles. Life was hard and long for them, especially the
peasants who lived in poverty. The majority of the country's population was made up of the working class
and the peasants.

3.2. Class Discontent

We can see some of the causes of the discontent of the classes themselves in the statements of certain
historians. These two, without suspecting it, explicitly make the same points that the Marxist and socialist
historians do. "What are the causes of the French Revolution?" one asks. "Our historians have given the
name of a love of liberty to this general sentiment. That it is called during the revolutionary period, but that
is not the cause of the overthrow of the ancient regime. It is the sight of the condition of the masses reduced
by their successive labors and the countless abuses of which the gentle were the plaything that prepared all
hearts for new institutions." The burden of the people, said another, was that they "no longer had the
strength to drag it." But these authorities, like all the others we have quoted, were far from understanding
the class warfare.

The three estates of the French monarchy were not divided in 1789 on the basis of property or industrial
occupation. The division was medieval and religious. The Third Estate was composed both of the peasants
and of the city workers - the whole group was heavily burdened and amerced for the benefit of the other two
estates of nobility and clergy. Such men as belonged to any of the professions set forth in an ordinance
which required the head of every family in France of the bourgeoisie or artisan class to remain in his native
place while a genealogical table of four generations is submitted to reputable local witnesses, was
transmitted through the intendants to the Chancellery in Paris, where the impatience for such services
exceeds all belief, is most eager to make himself acquainted with its peculiar marks and the documents
supporting them in the name, which is almost invariable, of one Pretre. The effect of this paper flourish was,
as noted in a great work, "somewhat ridiculous," no doubt, but actually very effective in preventing upwards
of 30,000 artisans or traders, whom it affected, from joining the lawyers, doctors, superior merchants, and
capitalists, petite or grosse, artillers, manufacturers, and husbandmen. Aside from the friponneries of the
law, which knows how to get around without breaking the pillars of society itself, the fierceness of the people,
or because in them to suppress it in the bud.

4. Economic Factors
The French economic system of the old regime has been widely regarded as the chief cause of the French
Revolution. During the 18th century, especially, this denial of industrial opportunity was becoming more and
more painful as the population increased. While Paris swelled into a city of from 100,000 to 600,000 people,
depending on the season of the year, the needs of the working men multiplied rapidly. There was an increase
in demand for clothes, fuel, and other articles which could not be supplied from the owner's estate. The guild
system prohibited commercial operations by outside industries. The transportation system was expensive
and uncertain. There was a cumbersome system of tariffs and internal customs barriers. The masses of
people, living as they did at the whim of chance, were not deceived about the sources of their hard lives.

Nor was the general public confused about the chaotic nature of financing the state. Taxes were collected by
methods so ancient that even the king's officials could see that they were wasteful, as they certainly were
oppressive. On the intelligence not only of official collectors and various ranks of nobility, who farmed out the
business, but of the simple peasantry, often was thrown the assignment of determining the amount for which
each taxpayer was to be assessed. Additionally, there were special taxes varying with different financial
demands. No one was exempt save the church and nobility. The burden was becoming intolerable. The
proportion of the national revenue, which was derived from taxes, between 1733 and 1788, is estimated to
have risen from approximately 1% to 19%, yet the liability for the major number of business enterprises was
less than 2% of that figure. While the masses paid, the nobility inherited.

4.1. Financial Crisis

The revolution influenced change in the notorious 'corrupt regime'. In the years leading up to the revolution,
existing political institutions were incapable of adapting the political structures of pre-industrial society to
fuel social change. The corrupt political elite, including King Louis XVI, religious leaders, and the aristocracy,
were incapable of creating social and political reform. The ease with which government revenue should have
been gained was contrasting to that by which it was lost. By 1789, Louis was forced to call the meeting of
the Estates General, marking the first time the body had been summoned since 1614.

The first and near-superficial cause was the financial crisis, which began in 1787 and was regarded as a
mere 'bump in the road' along the way of Louis XVI's reign. But the monarchy was set to be overthrown,
which makes it apparent that significant problems were present before 1787. The source of the mistrust of
the system was the lack of money. This was not inherently a significant problem because at no point during
the reign of Louis were citizens at a loss for thought as to where the government's expenditure could be
reduced. In 1769, it was claimed that the funds needed to bring the government back to full financial
stability could be created with trivial monetary measures. The common people were convinced of such a
standpoint, provided that the clergy and nobility suffer tenure and pay taxes.
4.2. Taxation and Inequality

Note that inequality has always been high during the different phases of the long-run cycle. Redistributions,
however, varied across periods, and at least in the centuries preceding the revolution, there was an
increasing tendency towards a more regressive fiscal system. Reasons for this are, above all, the increasing
importance of indirect taxation, notably the main beneficiary of such increased revenues, the land tax, and
the privilege of fiscal immunity of the rich, which allowed them to avoid increases in direct taxation, while
the poor mainly consumed articles not accruing considerable indirect taxes. Privileges, legal and fiscal, were
largely the origin and thus the maintaining cause of the dramatic reduction in political power and wealth of
the old nobility.

4.3. Impact of the American Revolution

The inspiration of the new ideas of the Enlightenment and the success of the liberal colonists in North
America, combined with France's commitment to revolutionary liberalism overseas in 1778, added to the
revolutionary fervor. Since early in the war, French secret agents had gathered flattering information about
America's native Indians, whose life and culture offered an idealized contrast with despotically governed
European peoples. All Americans already knew at first hand, far better than the French or any other people,
that a recent liberation from European exploitation could free such peoples to pursue happiness and
prosperity. The French had begun to more seriously envision their own potential liberation from the British-
German monarchies, who worked to insulate France from any success of American independence.

French soldiers directly involved in the success of American independence absorbed important aspects of
those libertarian ideologies. They brought some of those ideas back to France. The thirteen states, newly
united and yearning for national independence and security, also intimately inspired the French by
successfully challenging Britain, history's most powerful empire to date, demonstrating that the impossible
becomes feasible, given the coalescence of national will and the favor of transcendent power. It seemed
logical that France, guided by the same transcendent power that inhabited and inflamed the numerous
young men of the Enlightenment who were already returning to France in growing numbers, could also
emancipate themselves, could attain their historical destiny of ascending and dominating their rightful place
in global history, and could reform their country so that it conformed to the enlightened model proposed.

5. Political Factors
The political scenario of France had been noisy for many years, but especially in the decade before 1789,
many questions were indeed at stake. Louis XVI had been advised by his grandfather that he did not need to
learn too many things, for letters and taxes, one or the other, would come gravitating to the monarchy. In
short, Louis XVI had no reason to be worried about his duties. The question of vexation is why, in 1789, he
was forced to re-establish the Estates General after 161 years of peace. The chequered sum we can adduce
on the brink of social and economic policy, on which no one had any doubts, was wrong. Did the Americans
set him a bad example? Was a new spark ignited when citizens in the Faubourg Saint Antoine found out that
gunpowder was cheaper than bread? In any case, the basic impression widely spread among both French
and foreigners was that King Louis XVI did not know which way to turn.

The theological-political question of the divine right of kings had been stressing that the world be it in one
way, and with much confusion of tongues, for many centuries. The fact that most of his kings danced the
minuet around this principle of divine right was no trouble for Jesus Christ and his Vicar on earth. By what gift
had Louis XVI, who called himself a man cherished by the gods, suddenly lost the gift of leadership and a
feeling for proper and menial tasks? The most astonishing spectacle was the disintegration of routine so
widely copied as almost to acquire the status of universal law. The components of this French society, which
had with a kind of dumb confidence marched in the furrows of boredom, discovered, to their great surprise,
that change is possible. And this event disconcerted sovereigns' cores by planting a seedbed of confusion.

5.1. Weakness of the Monarchy

The political and social order in the eighteenth century was dominated by the absolute monarchy, which
limited the autonomy of noble and commoner elites. Confronted by the monarch's weakening authority, both
groups increasingly refused to fulfill their financial obligations to the Crown. The frequent opposition of the
various parts of society opposed to royal power led to a growing antagonism between society and the
absolute monarchy. This conflict ultimately found its outcome in the Revolution. The crisis of the traditional
order, the growing burdens on all parts of society, as well as the preparation and implementation of political
reforms, pointed to the inevitability of the revolution in 1789.

Insufficient intrinsic potential of the dynasty: Successive Valois and Bourbon dynasties increased the power
of the monarchy at the expense of the other estates while failing to build its independent authority. Several
kings were unable to assert themselves on the political scene and were forced to compromise with the
various parts of society. To maintain peace and order within the realm and to pursue the royal power's
objectives, the dynasty had to resort to extraordinary legal procedures from which the subjects' rights were
excluded. Faced with unexpected situations, the dynasty found it difficult to reach a consensus with the
elites and handle these events while respecting the legal order. The dynasty was therefore unable to
establish a tradition of legitimate government based on regular procedures. The dynastic division of the
Crown between Valois and Bourbons was resolved in Bourbon's favor because he was backed by the Bourbon
coalition. The dynasty's triumph was only relative and left many problems at stake. The Bourbon dynasty
failed to fulfill its historical mission. It did not balance the interests of the various parts of society and bring
them within its fold. The dynasty was unable to improve the distribution of wealth and build a nation with its
own history.

5.2. Influence of Enlightenment Ideas

The men who overthrew the ancien régime in France on July 14, 1789, were believers in the
Enlightenment. Just what political system they wanted in place of the old one was, they were unable to
agree, but it is certain that they had a clear and definite idea of the kind of constitution they sought to
create. The sudden enthusiasm for their cause contained, for the most part, neither the ideas nor the
intentions of those who so passionately supported them. Yet if the actual revolutionaries invited to see the
monarchy and the fiscal system of the ancien régime was made in the cold, unheroic light of day, it is
impossible to deny that the revolution the French were pushing towards was one largely in accord with the
spirit of the age. What impelled them forward was not so much the reality of life - any enthusiastic fiddler,
tender lover, or earnest ship's captain might have exhibited as much courage, vigor, and determination: how
much rather it was their dream of what life ought to be - the life they thought a perfect being ought to lead
that gave their efforts so much of a griffin quality.

The importance of the intellectual tendencies common in the rest of the eighteenth century of the world to
the French revolution consists in their influence not so much on the particular leaders of the movement as
upon the mass of men who were its driving force. All their lives, most of the notable men who for some forty-
odd years extended the challenge of a quarter of their fellows condemned to see the day of birth, renounced
but were rewarded. Largely as a result of the entirely original mental training that lit up the characteristic
human activities of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the peculiar race of learned and thoughtful
men who appeared everywhere across the face of Europe towards the latter end of the eighteenth century.
All of these apostles of the new era were like angels of vengeance, having first looked upon the face of their
auditors as upon the face of a book and thereafter scourging them with clear intellect and incisive words.
Their portraits saw much sharpening in the track of the kiln's fire: they saw without winking the emptiness of
many political and social canons, shaking their heads in great dismay because they were used for thrones
and exorcising the demon on the altars.

5.3. Failure of Reforms

There was no lack of good intentions, but implementation was poor. The delegation of royal powers to
provincial governors made them barons of the old feudal cast. Their interests lay in protecting the old order
and not in fostering private enterprise. Unchallenged by national authority, these provincial governors
showed gross disregard for human rights. What was provided as a safety valve became a cause of
discontent. As long as the economic situation of the masses remained what it was, talk of reforms failed to
satisfy. The popular demand for reform was for recognition of reality. Act rehabilitation was not enough.
Society required a new political structure that would harness its energy to the service of all. Complicated, no
doubt, was the nature and direction of the changes desired, but the fact remained that essential validity
underlying each popular demand remained sound. The growing consciousness of this basic dilemma for the
reform-minded intellectual was an important factor in accelerating the approach of the revolution. The
editors of the Encyclopaedia and the Physiocrats may have been men of the Enlightenment, seeking a better
social order, divorced from their landowning interests, but they certainly failed to see in what they were
advocating any system that threatened the status quo.

6. Cultural Influences
No examination of these causes would be complete without considering the other influences that were a
permanent part of French culture. To comprehend and appreciate them, we must go back at least to the
ancient Romans, whose love of order and justice was influential in shaping the French national character.
Roman tradition gained respect in the Middle Ages and persisted as a crucial part of the French national
culture. Roman rule was a period of peace and orderly government for the entire country. Even when crises
resulted from weak ruling officials, it was expected that the gentry would rise to the occasion and restore
order. Within this centralized power structure, it was the King of France who was the natural and legal source
of all inspiration. It was the King who approved the holding of great 'numbered events,' such as royal
processions, every time war was averted, or whenever national rejoicing was called for. The ancient Roman
traditions of the executive branch of government, including the concept of popular election, made it easier
for the people to support a popular prince if their representative recognized their problems.

Within the Latin Church, dissension was growing. Many wanted to reform their church, for they felt it had not
fulfilled its basic obligations. Many of the customs were ancient and were, in fact, out of date. Recent
theological failures in the eyes of many were influenced by the prospect of immediate and heavenly
contracts for works that would forgive the sins of all the faithful. Divine worship was deteriorating into
magical rites. If religious rites were supported now only by individual folk faith and were steeped in
superstition, could it be possible that the faithful were living so far in error? It was not long before believers
began to seek God's will in their tempers and in their everyday life, against religious authorities.

6.1. Rise of Enlightenment Philosophy

1. "Enlightenment" refers to the newly acquired knowledge and illumination, which greatly influenced and
aroused the socio-political consciousness of the people in France and all over Europe from the middle to the
end of the 18th century. Influential books, essays, and dissertations produced from this enlightened and free
political atmosphere directly or indirectly formulated a new political attitude of the people, and hence the
period itself was called the era of Enlightenment. The philosophers, academicians, and thinkers of the time,
who enlightened and nurtured this consciousness, were called the Philosophes. The popular motto of the era,
voiced by them, was "Dare to Know." They had a genuine belief and faith in the confirmations that if people
know everything, then all that exists, all of the traditions and rules, the sources of the lighter, useless,
perverse, or incorrect will disappear.

2. The Philosophes aimed to depromote mythological superstitions and unfounded dogmas from the domains
of demonological belief, religion, and church. Curiously enough, as the name of the age indicates, the source
and bedrock of the culture of the Philosophes was ancient Greece, especially the Athenian philosophy of
Socrates and the democratic city-state created by the rational thought of Pericles and Aristides. The
Philosophes believed that this culture was original and pure enough to be universal. However, the 18th-
century philosopher was different from the predecessors; he was modern. The starting point of his thoughts
was the inalienable independence of human reason. In contrast to the supernaturalists, they saw that
people, living incongruously under the illogical ordinances in the atmosphere created by God and served by a
class made of colleagues who used allusion and power, had the ability to think independently of other
assumptions or speculative beliefs.

6.2. Role of the Press

The newspaper served predominantly as a vendor of the news for which it was not a deliverer of comment.
But we have already reached the stage in its history where we must emphasize its function as one of the
leading factors tending to create a French public opinion, or rather to establish the unique property
possessed by the French nation of personifying a collective public opinion. It was the first time that a
newspaper had been published for a period of at least a month, if not longer, without a cessation of
publication. To grasp the nature of the change that came so gently and insidiously over the acceptance of
newspapers in the lives of the ordinary Frenchman, and to realize the subtlety of its silent and sulky tyranny,
it is necessary to appreciate that grown men of the professional or mercantile classes could have lived, have
grown to proud and sometimes even pompous maturity, without reading a newspaper from the beginning to
the end of their lives.

By the time that this unambitious and modestly materialistic social phenomenon was well underway, the
influence of the press, along with that of the philosophes and the Encyclopedists, had already succeeded in
polarizing French public opinion to an extent never before accomplished by any group of men. The
overwhelming mass of the population might still be socially sulking in silent apathy or, in mere animal
stupidity, finding little the matter, but those who were living subscribers to the newspapers, reading them,
trying to write for them, or making the little editor's petty personals the matter of their evening's discussion,
were growing vehement and intolerant.

6.3. Public Opinion and Political Clubs

Public opinion was ferociously critical of the existing regime, and ideas for its improvement were only too
easy to suggest and advocate. The development of periodical journalism, especially the great increase in the
number of newspapers published in Paris during the second half of the eighteenth century, ensured that
public opinion was well informed. Able bourgeois of the Enlightenment readily handed on to the masses the
criticism of the existing regime and the buzz of political conversation. Pioneers in critical analysis, they
forced educated persons in all social groups to think about politics, if only because of the interest all people
take in items of sensation. And, surprise, surprise, though these journalists and other champions of the
Enlightenment had no intention of precipitating a revolution, they prepared the springs of public opinion. As
a result, Louis XVI was often criticized, sometimes abused, and seldom thanked.

A significant corollary of the development of public opinion was its encouragement of the formation of
political clubs. Some critics of the regime formed themselves into reflective groups in order to organize more
effective resistance. Little remains of these clubs because many purposefully limited the number of their
members and exercised considerable caution, and also because imaginative contemporaries were disposed
to see malevolent intention, especially in press reports of the activities of forbidden societies. Accidents, like
that which prompted the stretch of the lit de justice of November 18, 1773, opened the public’s eyes to
the existence of these clandestine groups. Their investigative activities against the Jesuits followed an
accepted principle of critical organization. Meetings for conversation were always political, a profitable,
though suspect, extension of the fashionable intellectual discussion on philosophical, literary, or purely
scientific topics. To frequent these debates, speculations, and endless exchanges, with a certain amount of
joking, there was no need to be liable to subversive temptation. At the end of this spectrum was
Mademoiselle Les Roche Bois-Lambert’s drawing room in Narbonne. A popular resort of non- or anti-
governmental elements, it hosted frequent general assemblies of supporters of Tiers Parti ideologies from
neighboring states. During the same era when the Loménie de Briennes were trying to extinguish the
flames of discontent, churchmen, judges, and magistrates in the large royal states of the south met in Paris
to present a petition to the King.

7. Immediate Causes
The deficit spending of Louis XVI, the costly involvement in the American Revolution, and the personal
extravagance of Marie Antoinette were all important contributors to the financial crisis as well as the growing
resentment of the nobility, who were largely able to avoid taxation. By the end of the 1780s, the monarchy
was financially and morally bankrupt. After suffering rapidly deteriorating economic conditions, the bad
harvest of 1788 affected everyone, not just the peasants, although that was what some believed, and their
viewing everything as attacks by the monarchy helped set in place the final steps that caused revolution.
The deregulation of the grain market implemented to solve the economic problem, the provision of limited
and unconstitutional special advantages to particular manufacturers to stimulate the economy, and the
harassment suffered by the bourgeoisie caused by the necessary raising of taxes to cover the grants all
provided inspiration for the more literate revolutionaries that change was needed and could be achieved.

Several months before the Revolution, Louis XVI stated that he saw the necessity for reform, but for reform
from which he alone would benefit. Then in May 1789, in his opening speech at the Estates-General, he
claimed that the proposed changes were not his ideas: "In matters of principle and essential regulations, I
already think that things should remain as they are, but it has nonetheless seemed wise to regulate and
modify, when needs be, certain details to make them acceptable and proportionate to present conditions."
Unfortunately, this hypocritical and arrogant refusal to recognize the necessity for serious reform led France
increasingly into political and social turmoil until the Revolution was unavoidable. The French Revolution was
the continuation of a trend that had been growing in France for centuries, that of loosening ties between the
people and the monarchy while strengthening the powers of the various parlements of the country.

7.1. The Estates-General of 1789

Declaration of the Convocation of the Estates-General in Versailles, December 27th, 1788. His Majesty
ordered that each bailiwick of France be convened in order to hold the first assembly of its order, so that
these representatives might communicate to him, on behalf of their bailiwick, the wishes, complaints, and
grievances of the people, as defined in His Majesty's proclamation and in the ordinance published by His
Majesty regarding the manner of holding the assemblies. The bailiwick of Mons, for the point of conducting,
calling, and holding the meetings, and the collection and scrutiny of the proceedings of the assembly of its
order in accordance with the decree, the King in his council appointed Mr. de Tollin, master of requests,
formerly intendant of the generality of Mons, to act as President of this meeting.

The city of Mons, at its expense, provided and erected the necessary scaffolding in the town hall, in which
this assembly met. A few days before this, the Vice President of the bailiwick had noticed that the places of
the third estate and the seat destined for the king's commissioners, which had until then adjoined the local
chapter, had been removed, so he immediately gave notice and requisitioned the Provost for the arrest of
ringleaders of this disorderly act and immediately received a detailed response from the King's Council. In
reply to an unforeseen incident, which I have just received notice of through my comments made to the
administration and then to the commissioners of my order, concerning the disappearance of the iron seat
intended for the commissioners of the king and those of Hainault, which was on each side of the local
chapter, the complaints made by the President of the first assembly of my order, the reporting of the
commission, the report of the bailiwick of Mons, and the testimony of witnesses.

7.2. Storming of the Bastille

With the call to arms from Camille Desmoulins, the inhabitants of Paris were finally roused to action. They
stormed the Hôtel des Invalides, from which they obtained a few arms. By the afternoon of the 14th,
inexorably pushing their way forward, they directed their movements toward the Bastille, that ancient
symbol of royal despotism, the eternal terror of the people. With cries of “Down with the Bastille,â€​ in
vain did the Governor of the fortress try to lay down the drawbridges, to quit the place in the name of the
Court, which would allow nothing to be done, and then to order his few remaining soldiers to resist the
rebels. The peasants who composed the body of the assailants, badly armed and even worse trained, and all
in a red-hot paroxysm of frenzy, rushed up to the foot of the walls. They succeeded in cutting the cords of the
drawbridges and crossed them. The numerous artillery of the fortress was the only thing that might have
repulsed the attack, but instead of directing it against the assailants, the governor, the garrison, and the
invalids stationed around the fortress began to use it against the drawbridges, as if to blow them up, set fire
to, and destroy all possibility of retreat, and then fled, one knows not where, with putrid servility, that putrid
slough, from which every stifled people has managed to emancipate itself in moments of irritation and
frenzy, and which has come into violent contact once again with its subject, and has stirred up the lees of the
cesspool, inflamed, and caused them to overflow.

At nightfall, the city of Paris, the mistress of despotism, found herself metamorphosed into a sort of
pandemonium. The majority of the prisoners were released from the dungeons. The fortress was taken over.
By ten o’clock in the evening, the walls of this once-dreaded castle had disappeared. In their place, a
precipice had been formed where one saw an infernal-looking multitude, more luckless, more hunger-bitten,
shriveled, more pitiable, and more abandoned, more decrepit and more foul than so many legions of
beggars. One can imagine what this indescribable mass must have been like when we say that we saw very
many women forcing men to drink and other balm. A somber legion, more somber than furies in torment,
kept back the unfortunate beggars. Mysterious words, the necessity of securing the Island of Paris, or the HÃ
´tel des Affects, frightened them. At the sight of the timid yet determined attitude of the city militia on
parade, the mutineers, exasperated and despondent, threw down their bottles of liquid fire, understood the
difficulty of their predicament, and received succor from the Garde bourgeois while we were abandoning the
city.

These prisoners had all been accused of crimes more or less serious, most of them true, especially the venal
servants of the tyrants. It was a truly inhuman law which permitted them to be thus destroyed without cause,
without being able to face their accusers, without defense, without palliation, without mitigation. It was more
worthy of execution in the Americas than in a free country. However, why not admit that in Paris this was the
first flag to the winds, the first gleam of light and the golden prelude of future liberty? That was where the
wise, opulent, adroit Paris of tomorrow weltered in riot and tumult, rather like the agitation in a fish tank
every morning at the break of day.

7.3. Formation of the National Assembly

The solution to the economic crisis in France, which had become urgent, in turn led only to new and acute
political struggles. The treasury was empty, and to cover its needs, the government was obliged to summon
the Estates-General to consider the chief problem: how to place the financial burden on the wealthy part of
the population rather than on the overburdened lower estates, which had nothing left to hand over. The king
also had another reason, which was even more important to him for convening the Estates-General. He
considered that he was the real master of the situation, while others doubted this. The summoning of the
Estates-General, by veiling the monarchy with the forms of constitutionalism, helped to protect it. The
ideology of the epoch required this.

The ancient French representation did not embrace anything but the court, which was the king personally as
a real competitor. Therefore, on October 17, 1788, the royal order reserved the number of members of the
decking court who would be mandatories and the number of them for three estates. This decision was
Eurocentric. It caused contradictory reactions in France. The curbs and stoppers advanced by the power led
to the spontaneity of the street. The king appealed to the role played by the clergy, middle-class, baron, and
city electors dissatisfied with the system of everyone summoned to the written stage and, of course,
numerous arrived in Paris.

8. Was the French Revolution Inevitable?

Many people have asked: was the catastrophe of the French Revolution a foregone conclusion? Was the
social injustice inevitable? Events move in stages, and, in retrospect, any step on the way to the Revolution
could have been avoided. The question, therefore, cannot be answered with an unequivocal yes or no. It
becomes a question of probabilities. In 1789, a domestic crisis took a course that no contemporary
recognized as the only logical conclusion of the then existing circumstances. There was no inevitability in the
unfolding of events. All the same, this French Revolution in its phase of intensity did not seemingly occur
because an isolated accident took an unexpected turn. The Revolution came in the way it did because
certain forces and institutions had been acting upon each other for a long time.

There are always forces making for change and forces of stability. And the pre-Revolutionary hubbub should
not obscure the fact that many things disapproved of today were quite stable then. The stability and the
conservatism were not simply the attitude of those in power. Traditional society agreed with and took a hand
in the preservation of the then existing setup. The swift and drastic changes, the upheaval, destruction, and
terror that have formed the picture of the French Revolution all came as a shock. Furthermore, the forces
that brought the established social system to the state it was in the 1780s had not all borne fruit in that
decade. Not until that last decade did the domestic crisis reach the boiling point. In that particular sense,
and for that particular moment, the French Revolution of 1789 was not inevitable.

8.1. Analysis of Historical Trends

So, why did the French Revolution erupt in 1789 and why did it take such a violent and radical form? In order
to answer these questions, it is necessary to trace the specific societal and historical development of France.
In so doing, it will become apparent that the Revolution was neither accidental nor spontaneous but instead
the product of long-term and deep-rooted developments. The French historian and his followers have done
much to investigate these latter causes. However, this group tends to go to the opposite extreme and to
formulate causal series. In addition, several of them clearly have a present and a future-oriented viewpoint.
They cannot help but seek the origin of the Revolution of 1789 in a series of manifestations of "the spirit of
the Revolution" and present these as "warnings" and "preparations." Indeed, representative spokesmen of
this group consider the outbreak of the Revolution to have been none other than the inevitable result of "the
burden of the past - the weight of past offenses and hatred."

The French Revolution of 1789 erupted in consequence of a combination of long-term social, economic, and
political developments in the French monarchy. There is not one specific cause which can therefore be
stated as the catalyst for the upheaval. Furthermore, the pattern which the Revolution took cannot be
explained from one original impulse. The Revolution was not only caused by long-term societal development
but also resulted in fundamental societal change, giving progress a new meaning. The example of the French
Revolution showed that society did not have to be that way, but that it could also be organized differently.
The French Revolution accelerated this development, laying the foundation for the society of our time. It is
therefore not coincidental that so much attention is paid to this particular revolution. It is considered the
mother of all revolutions.

8.2. Counterfactual Considerations

It is customary among professional historians to dismiss entirely any speculation about the worth of the
events of the French Revolution of 1789—be they alleviatory or detrimental. Counterfactual arguments,
although often interesting puzzles, indicate on the whole a lack of understanding of the vast forces that led
to the Revolution. Indeed, such arguments can be had for any historical occurrence. What if the plague of the
Middle Ages had not killed off half of Europe? What if the hundreds of emperors or kings had lived or died in
those crucial battles? And yet, who argues the answer to such a question has any value or may in some
sense be beneficial? The primary question we should ask of the Revolution is not what might have happened
if it had failed to occur, but rather what were its substantial consequences that occur in fact?

Very little doubt exists as to the immense importance of much of the Revolution. It would be even more
imprudent to underestimate the Revolution’s ultimate casualties—the three centuries of political
absolutism and arbitrary power—and the colossal cost in human lives and treasures paid by contemporary
and subsequent European peoples. Clearly, any residual effect the Revolution might have had in quenching
the thirst for political liberty, under the guise of which men might otherwise die more freely, is non-
measurable and necessarily unimportant. Had the Revolution taken a different course, Europe’s politique
likely would have mattered little, and one might also argue that the Revolution might not have occurred at
all. The historian, by inference, does assign large roles to historical events and must discuss the effect of the
Revolution, had it followed a different path, by considering the various stages of the Revolution that could
have led to one of the several possible outcomes. For the purpose of intellectual curiosity, one might ask
more specifically the question of whether, or by what mechanism, such an unleashed force would have
seized the state and imposed upon it the demands of social change.

8.3. Lessons from Other Revolutions

Popular protests leading to major change have occurred wherever people have felt subordinated or
otherwise seriously oppressed. When the oppression became severe, new movements materialized. In the
event, major changes traditionally went by the name of "revolution." To those participating, the revolution
seemed imminent and its success inevitable. But when the post-revolutionary stages are considered, and in
particular the role of relative success and failure in shaping the revolution's outcome and aftermath, the
notion of inevitability needs reconsideration.

The essential experiences of any notable revolution are the same, yet differences resulting from varied
circumstances affect progress and the post-revolutionary welfare state. Such factors represent the crucial
but slight mediating influences between apparent inevitabilities and palpable results. It is how these are
played off or how they threaten the possibility of success for the revolutionaries themselves that makes all
the difference.

The French Revolution was the most important revolution because it produced the liveliest republic whose
policies transformed French institutions that in turn set the trend for modernity. However, this was not
readily evident when the revolution began, and the eventual course of events was beyond prediction. While
the future is always uncertain, a sensible medium-range perspective can, at the very least, help the
revolutionaries themselves play the odds to their advantage. This is at the level of high stress, when the
revolutionaries, in a life-and-death struggle, are in a position to know and maybe use such knowledge. The
middle way is the modus vivendi, the classic compromise for achieving relative proportionality, yet this
historic halfway house hardly ever satisfied freedom-seekers and rarely persists in the long haul.
9. Consequences of the Revolution
What were the main consequences of the French Revolution? The most prominent result of the Revolution
was that it replaced the old monarchy with a republic based on the Enlightenment principles of liberty,
equality, and power from the people. Another major consequence was the redistribution of property from the
hands of the clergy and nobles to those of the bourgeoisie. In 1790, the National Assembly took possession
of the Church property and sold it to the bourgeoisie. In 1793, the Jacobins took from the nobles the vast
estates that they had acquired by force, fraud, and privilege. The rich peasants thus became property
owners, but the poor peasants remained in misery. The Revolution also established political power in the
hands of the bourgeoisie, held in check by the financial aristocracy. The Montagnards and Enragés' power
antagonized the bourgeoisie.

The Revolution also broke down organized religion by gathering Church priests and bishops under the control
of the state. It replaced ecclesiastical laws and procedures with the laws and procedures of the state that
contributed to several generations of insecurity. It replaced a rigid society with one open to the impulse of
individual progress and liberal thinking. In foreign policy, the Revolution also aimed at expanding its borders
beyond those of France. This process transcended Napoleon's dramatic changes. For a country to become
democratic, it took a series of conquests that expanded the territory and the fronts of the democratic
Revolution, which later became the fronts of the French state. That is still true today: one cannot be a good
democrat and refuse to grant democratic rights to one's closest neighbors. Finally, we can add that the
Revolution ultimately destroyed its army, the legacy of the ancient regime, and replaced it with a bourgeois
one. In the course of history, and during subsequent revolutions, the army's small pieces of the bourgeoisie
blanched off such a precipitate of vested interest.

9.1. Political Changes

The utter failure of the efforts of Louis XV and Louis XVI to solve the ever-increasing financial problems of the
monarchy was due to the opposition of a number of privileged groups that were determined to see the
monarchy rather than their own privileges go under. These privileged groups were the priests, the
aristocracy, and just below them, the unprivileged groups of lawyers and professional people, which made up
the remainder of the privileged classes. Although they enjoyed only the limited and uncertain privilege of a
particular office, they also enjoyed the even greater privileges of tax exemption. Each of these groups was
able, thanks to its equivalence of interests, to checkmate any weak attempt to change their privileged status.
Since the king was, except fitfully, unable or unwilling to take any real interest in the functioning of his
government and show the force necessary to get his will accepted and carried out, fantasy, self-interest,
weakness, and inertia combined to paralyze the state and doubly assured its eradication in the Revolution.

9.2. Social Reforms

Faced with these disorders, the ministers tried in vain to awake the government from its long torpor. Tithes
still had to be paid in full, even at a time of shortage. In remote areas, they caused the greatest resentment,
and when collection was attempted, disasters occurred. In Dauphiné, where their collection had been
decided on during some public outbursts, suppression was no less difficult. Rebellion broke out in several
parishes, during which the inspectors were insulted, beaten, and imprisoned. Their release had to be
negotiated. Rebellion lasted for a long time, and the people abstained from producing or shipping any of their
agricultural products. Finally, when even the most ordinary workmen refused to proceed with sidewalk and
road repairs, the municipality was forced to take back its citations regarding tithes.

9.3. Economic Impact

The late 18th century has given way to latter-day commentators reflecting upon the difference a shortage of
time or space can make. It is fashionable to stress the lead factors: expenditures greatly exceeding
revenues, the pyramid of debt funding, and the unfunded mandates on the French state from the various
non-interest-bearing debts that had accumulated over years of emergency government. It would be churlish
to deny the importance of these considerations. Still, it should be remarked that the overall fiscal position of
France did not dramatically worsen over the 1780s. There was nothing inherently extraordinary about the
granting of budgets running annual deficits worth 5% of GDP. What changed in the run-up to the Revolution
was a sudden pervading fear that France would find itself unable to borrow at anything other than punitive
terms.

The economy was in the doldrums. Perhaps with a decade of peace, Louis XVI could have enjoyed a return to
orthodoxy. But the seven lean years had served to alert everybody that not only was the fiscal policy
standing still, but the real economy was in reverse. And the wealth production of France was held back both
by the government's need to extract either cash or peasants from the countryside, depending upon its
immediate financing needs, and by the uncertainties created by the moment of political balance. Major gains
are to be had from policies that convince people they are finally in for better times. The Ancien Régime
was at best ambivalent and at worst doing everything in its power to make sure better times lay in the
future.
10. International Reactions
The revolution generated the declaration and war by the King of Hungary and Bohemia and the Emperor of
the same name. The primary cause for this action was undoubtedly the King's paramount concern to
rehabilitate Austria's 'honor,' which had been damaged by constant efforts on behalf of the revolution to
force Austria to desist from any anti-French action. The second cause, a consequence of the first, was to
induce France to give up the systems of alliances and the principles followed since which assured French
friendship. Allied with Prussia, the Austrians imposed an armistice on the rebels of the Austrian Netherlands.
The King of Hungary told France that he agreed to control Belgium and he rejected the French proposal
based on the principle of uti possidetis. He was stating his intention to make Belgium independent with the
King because, his letters said, he did not want the southern ports to remain forever under French
sovereignty.

This declaration of intentions alarmed Vergennes, much more exposed than his interlocutors to the ultras'
attack on the French-friendly policy that he had always praised in the Austrian Netherlands. The
advertisement of the perturbation the Government of the Republic felt attached to its messages to its
Ministers abroad does not escape notice. Recently, his colleagues at the Council asked him not to find it
insensitive of him to express himself with too much zeal during a meeting of a Council soon reconstituted.
They remonstrated with him because his fervor, added to that with which they heard the other members of
the Council show themselves for the Allies and the House of Austria, did not appear to him always inoffensive
to a canton whose principles made him more sensible to the state of things beyond the limits of his territory
than to what had to do with domestic well-being.

10.1. Responses from European Monarchies

The French Revolution took the world by surprise. When the States General met in 1789, no one could have
predicted that resolutions calling for freedom, equality, and fraternity would come from it. The question
facing the European powers was how to respond to this really unprecedented phenomenon. Initially,
however, few saw it as a threat, and some even considered compensation for the czarist army deaths during
the War for American Independence. To be sure, the European monarchies fully anticipated that a victorious
revolution might well come to Paris and might present itself as a model to their own subjects. But they were
not persuaded that the Revolution was inevitable, or that it represented a general call for irreconcilable
change.

Initially, at least, it is not clear that the French Revolution was all that intrusive in the internal affairs of other
European states. The leading figures of the opposition and the first emigrants were relatively few in number,
and they made an initial miscalculation in predicting the tide of the opposition still believed the Revolution
was no more than the latest act in a continuing judicial conflict. After the fall of the Bastille, many felt that
the Third Estate had indeed been oppressed, and many considered the storming of the fortress a popular
response. Only later, with the flight to Varennes, did it become clear to the king, and to the other monarchs,
that the Revolution was indeed revolutionary.

10.2. Influence on Global Revolutionary Movements

The French Revolution was truly a revolution for the world, whose influence long outlasted the events in
France. Though it crumbled the Old Regime in France and severely damaged the structure of traditional
society, it lured Europeans from the Atlantic to the Ural Mountains. France was the epicenter of a
revolutionary tidal wave that engulfed religion-backed governments with feudal systems and dynasties
throughout the Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and even Christian worlds. Revolutionary occurrences
linked to the French Revolution arose in areas such as Ireland, Holland, Belgium, the Swiss cantons, and
caused a revolutionary tide in Latin America and countries as far away as India, the Philippines, and Korea.
French revolutionary-style movements of various kinds were happening in different places around the world.

The revolution of 1789 had a far-reaching impact on revolutionary movements in countries around the world.
The French Revolution succeeded in spreading ideas and principles far and wide. These principles and ideas,
neither fully measured nor understood, could not but have a two-pronged effect in areas or states where a
means of resisting colonial rule or reforming national life was essential. As the vassals of sinners, the
revolutionaries' principles had been conceived as a goal for humanity, whether to free oppressed nations and
societies or to inspire the oppressed to carry their conventions. The French Revolution influenced humanity
as a European movement, attained by their important deeds, enormous crimes, and terrible losses, toward
nobility's disappearance and partial or complete stabilization. Indeed, the Revolution of 1789 shattered the
whole obsolescence and legend of an ancient tradition. The French Revolution was indeed an event of a
universal nature, having an effect in altering the world's face.

11. Conclusion
Concluding this volume on the French Revolution, it has been argued that it was of utmost importance to the
development not only of Europe but also of the world, to ensure that the governing structures we now
possess, and wish to maintain, are legitimate in the minds of the vast majority. We can conclude that the
French Revolution, though it seemed a failure in 1799, has had a profound and beneficial impact on the
spread and nurturing of democracy in the world. The collective participation of the people of the country
through the extension of the suffrage, the immutable freedom of the individual, guaranteed personal rights,
and the extension of open, non-corrupt and efficient justice, participation in scientific advances, and some
protection from arbitrary intrusion in personal privacy. This democratic model was truly established through
the glacial convulsions of America's Constitutional Assembly and the intervention of England's Protectorate.

The French Revolution is thus no longer, if it ever was, the ghoulish ghost of reaction, or indeed an
instrument of international ideology. It is, however, beholding to no externally imposed democratic structure,
nor any untested popular majority in conducting the affairs of the state. It did not, because it could not,
deliver France or Europe representative government for more than a few years during its second phase. It
represents an important landmark in the creation of modern Europe. And as such, we must decide whether
the labels we attach to its behaviors and institutions are those we would wish Europe to wear in its twentieth-
century ensemble. Clothes, as so many philosophers have agreed, have a habit of portraying the person
beneath; confident, stylish, outward-looking and youthful. Let us ensure that our European clothes are in
existence we can live and move and have our being.