Causes and Effects of the French Revolution of 1786 - 1789

June 7, 2025, 7:51 pm

By: Enworo Daniel

The pre-revolutionary French era also known as the Ancien Régime was divided into there social classes, the First Estate - this consist of the Clergy, the Second Estate - The Nobles, they were the royals and aristocrats, the Third Estate - the peasant, farmers and commoners also known as the Bourgeoisie. Each class has an amount of representation in what was called the Estates-General, the third estate made up of 75% of the French population at the time while the other two were the 25%. There was untold hardship on the members of the third estate as they were heavily taxed and the other two estates were relieved from tax paying. This made the members of the third Estates-General call for a meeting to address the situation. However the meeting didn't go as planned and the third estate felt that they were not being heard and treated as second class citizens, and this made them take laws into their hands.

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A number of factors led to the rise of the French Revolution and they are as follows; Heavy taxation on the third estate, Bad harvests; food items became scarce especially bread and salt, The weakness of Louis XVI their king and the last king of France as he was perceived as weak a s unfit to rule. The lavish lifestyle of Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette. They stormed the Bastille, a prison and a symbol of strength and authority in France, released the prisoners and this marked the beginning of the French Revolution, went ahead and executed Louis XVI their king and Marie Antoinette their queen by guillotine.

All these events led to the eradication of the Estate system and equality for all French people, a constitutional approach started in the leadership of France and the people were generally happy at the reforms as it laid a foundation of democracy in France and served as an example to other nation states in Europe