What happens when a country’s commoner population is worn-out, hungry and overtaxed by their King? And the peasants and commoners outnumber your ruling classes three to one? When they organize themselves because they are just tired of being hungry and watching as their children starve to death? You can only push your subjects for so long before they plan a revolt. The French Revolution was brought on by many factors but mostly because the king was out of touch.
Beginning in the late 1600s Europe had been experiencing the Age of Enlightenment. Previous to that the people were in a type of “intellectual enslavement” believing only what they were told by the clergy and upper classes (Cobban, 1964). With The Enlightenment came a new found free-thinking …show more content…
The Girondins wanted equal rights for minorities and the poorer colonies and felt that the king did not need to be executed. “They introduced the Maximum (government control of prices), taxed the rich, brought national assistance to the poor and to the disabled, declared that education should be free and compulsory, and ordered the confiscation and sale of the property of émigrés” (Britannica.com, 2015). The Jacobins were definitely more radical and felt that the king and his family needed to be put to death in order to keep the monarchy from ever coming back to power. The Jacobins turned against the Girondins and had twenty-two of their leaders executed to become the dominant party within the new regime (Carr, …show more content…
The French aided the colonists in their war against Britain, not because they felt that the colonists deserved the rights and representation they wanted, instead they helped because they were upset over their losses to the British in the Seven-Years-War. The King was looking to regain some face that he felt was lost during the conflict (Wilde, 2014). While the King was successful in helping the Americans defeat the British, and drive them out of the US, he also succeeded in growing the French deficit (Roberts et. all, 2013). The shape of continental Europe changed during the revolution as well; as Napoleon marched across the continent claiming victory after victory the size of France grew. It swallowed nations whole stretching the reach of the King as far west as modern day Poland, into Scandinavia and south into
Beginning in the late 1600s Europe had been experiencing the Age of Enlightenment. Previous to that the people were in a type of “intellectual enslavement” believing only what they were told by the clergy and upper classes (Cobban, 1964). With The Enlightenment came a new found free-thinking …show more content…
The Girondins wanted equal rights for minorities and the poorer colonies and felt that the king did not need to be executed. “They introduced the Maximum (government control of prices), taxed the rich, brought national assistance to the poor and to the disabled, declared that education should be free and compulsory, and ordered the confiscation and sale of the property of émigrés” (Britannica.com, 2015). The Jacobins were definitely more radical and felt that the king and his family needed to be put to death in order to keep the monarchy from ever coming back to power. The Jacobins turned against the Girondins and had twenty-two of their leaders executed to become the dominant party within the new regime (Carr, …show more content…
The French aided the colonists in their war against Britain, not because they felt that the colonists deserved the rights and representation they wanted, instead they helped because they were upset over their losses to the British in the Seven-Years-War. The King was looking to regain some face that he felt was lost during the conflict (Wilde, 2014). While the King was successful in helping the Americans defeat the British, and drive them out of the US, he also succeeded in growing the French deficit (Roberts et. all, 2013). The shape of continental Europe changed during the revolution as well; as Napoleon marched across the continent claiming victory after victory the size of France grew. It swallowed nations whole stretching the reach of the King as far west as modern day Poland, into Scandinavia and south into