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The unequal distribution of wealth and power among the three states or estates of French society became more acute in the eighteenth century. The clergy (first State) and the nobility (second State) were the privileged: they did not pay taxes, they owned most of the land, they received fees and alms from the peasants. The third State or plain State lacked privileges and had to pay taxes. -
In order to solve the unbridled luxury of the court, those of his wife - the Austrian Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) - and the fiscal crisis, Louis XVI (1754-1793), on the throne in 1774, authorized a tax reform for the privileged (nobility and clergy) to pay taxes. This produced what is known as the rebellion of the privileged, the total opposition of nobility and clergy to said reform. In 1787 and 1788 the two estates demanded the king summon to the General States
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Some of causes are Cultural The Enlightenment philosophy desacralized the authority of the King and the Church or in Social The emergence of an influential bourgeoisie which was formally part of the Third Estate too in Financial France's debt, aggravated by French involvement in the American Revolution, Economic The deregulation of the grain market, advocated by liberal economists, increased bread prices. Political Louis XVI faced virulent opposition from provincial parliament -
The ideas of the Enlightenment were among the bourgeoisie, a movement of thinkers who applied reason, believed in the dignity of human beings, denied that power came from God, proposed the separation of the three powers (Executive, Legislative and Judicial), and the equality of all citizens before the law, abolishing all privilege
It was a time of political and social rebellion in France that began in 1789 because of the inequalities that existed between the rich and poor. -
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On 14th of July 1789, the masses rose and seized the medieval fortress, known as The Bastilla. End of the Former Regime and the beginning of the French Revolution. A real social earth was caused both in France and throughout Europe, including far away from Russia, because of the takeover of the fortress-prison, image of the despotism of the French Monarchy. -
Napoleon was the general who welded the French armies into a combat force that defeated the other armies of Europe for 20 years, from 1795 to 1815. His division contained infantry, artillery, and cavalry. He assembled two or three divisions into a corps to make larger units for battle. He expanded France`s Empire.
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The terror will end in July of 1795, with a reaction that displaced the Jacobins and took Robespierre himself to the guillotine. The Convention elaborates a new Constitution, dissolves the Assembly and installs a Directory, executive power composed of five members. But in 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte, a general who had excelled in the defense of revolutionary France against Prussia and Austria, gives a coup that puts an end to the Directory and the French Revolution.
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Bonaparte evolved his politics: he started as a Republican but then concentrated all the powers. And although he defended aspects of the revolution (such as equality before the law and the development of the Civil, Criminal, and Mercantile codes, which support a regime of law), he exercised a personal power and ended up proclaiming himself emperor. -
Napoleon was defeated by the combined army of England, Prussia and Austria (Waterloo, June 1815), after which the kings decided, in the so-called Congress of Vienna (1815), restore the Old Regime, with the same dynasties that had been on the thrones, and curb in line with liberal ideas. But ideas cannot be locked up and in 1820 liberal revolutions were held in Spain, France, Germany, Portugal, Piedmont (northern Italy) Naples, the Russian Empire, and Greece. A new revolutionary wave came in 1830
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The generalized economic crisis in Europe and the workers' discontent led to a rapid and extensive wave of revolutions in 1848, also known as La Primavera de Los Pueblos they were dominated by force and did not succeed. In all these changes, the great winner is the bourgeoisie, for its influence in the different regimes, and the consolidation of the free market. Meanwhile, the European proletariat failed to maintain its conquests and continued with poor working conditions until the 20th century.