Bread And The French Revolution

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The French Revolution was a pivotal period because it brought about social, economic and religious changes in France. The absolutism of the monarchy was overthrown. The National Assembly, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, and the march of the women to Versailles initiated a significant period known as the French Revolution.
High inflation caused a steep rise in prices of such staples as bread which led to the physical hunger of the lower class people, and unequal taxation angered the merchant and working populations of France. This was a violent revolution which saw the people taking power. A new republic was born out of the blood of the French Revolution, but its own people paid a price in the process. It was an event that
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Under Lafayette, six thousand armed women, accompanied by the National Guard, marched on Versailles. The marched was provocative and destabilizing; it symbolized the level of frustration among the people and their suffering during a period of great hunger. Bread was the essential source of food for the French and it was hard to square that the poor had so little while the royals lived in luxury at the expense of the poor. The Monarchy was clueless and showed no shame having daily banquets and wasting food while the people in the streets were dying of hunger. The women marched so that their King Louis XVI could no longer ignore their …show more content…
The philosophies of Voltaire, Rousseau and Rationalism were popular all over the Western World and played a major role in the rebuilding of France.
Before and during the French Revolution the country was bankrupt, so The Assembly needed to find different ways to raise money. One economic solution was to appropriate and use Roman Catholic Church properties as collateral to issue a new paper currency. As a result of the French Revolution the Roman Catholic Church was restructured; thousands of priests were deported; monasteries were expropriated and the Christian calendar was outlawed.
The Ancienne Regime’s Divine Right to rule collapsed and gave way to a Democratic system of local governments under a national legislature and a chief executive elected by universal male suffrage. The new system included social rights of association and public education. It was new laws were secular laws and no longer based on religious authority. Class privileges were abolished; the right to property, liberty and life were to be recognized and secured by government. The churches’ and nobility’s exemption from taxes was ended. Equal rights meant that getting ahead in public office was based on talent and no longer just a birth right. Freedom of the press was legally protected.

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