causes of french revoultionary war Essay -- essays research papers

The causes of the French whirling, the uprising which brought the regime of King Louis XVI to an end, were manifold. France in 1789 was one of the richest and most force knocked out(p)ful nations in Europe only in Great Britain and the Netherlands did the common people have more freedom and less(prenominal) chance of arbitrary punishment. Nevertheless, the ancien rgime was brought down, partly by its own rigidity in the face of a changing world, partly by the ambitions of a rising bourgeoisie, allied with aggrieved peasants and wage-earners and with individuals of all classes who were influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment. As the revolution proceeded and as power devolved from the monarchy to legislative bodies, the conflicting interests of these initially allied groups would become the obtain of conflict and bloodshed.Absolutism and privilegeFrance in 1789 was, at least in theory, an authoritative monarchy, an increasingly unpopular form of g everywherenment at the tim e. In practice, the kings ability to act on his theoretically absolute power was hemmed in by the (equally resented) power and prerogatives of the grandness and the clergy, the remnants of feudalism. Similarly, the peasants covetously eyed the relatively greater prerogatives of the townspeople.The large and growing middle class and some of the nobility and of the working class had absorbed the ideology of equality and freedom of the individual, brought around by such philosophers as Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Turgot, and other theorists of the Enlightenment. The example of the American Revolution showed them that it was plausible that Enlightenment ideals about governmental organization might be put into practice. Some of the American revolutionaries, such as Benjamin Franklin, had stayed in Paris, where they were in frequent contact with the French intellectuals furthermore, contact between the American revolutionaries and the French troops who had assisted them resulted in the spread of revolutionary ideals to the French. many a(prenominal) in France attacked the undemocratic nature of the government, pushed for freedom of speech, and challenged the Catholic Church and the prerogatives of the nobles. there is controversy over exactly how deeply Enlightenment ideals penetrated the various classes, and over the degree to which these ideals were simply cover for bourgeois self-interest. For example, Karl Marx writing in ... ...parlements objected to this as ministerial tyranny. In response, several nobles including Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orleans suffered banishment, resulting in a further series of conflicting decrees by the king and the parlements. The conflict spilled out of the courts (and beyond the nobility) with disturbances in Dauphin, Brittany, Provence, Flanders, Languedoc, and Barn.Despite ancien rgime France being, in theory, an absolute monarchy, it became clear that the royal government could not successfully effect the changes it craved w ithout the consent of the nobility. The financial crisis had become a political crisis as well. shortageThese problems were all compounded by a great scarcity of solid food in the 1780s. Different crop failures in the 1780s caused these shortages, which of course led to lofty prices for bread. Perhaps no cause more motivated the Paris heap that was the engine of the revolution more than the shortage of bread. The poor conditions in the countryside had constrained rural residents to move into Paris, and the city was overcrowded and filled with the hungry and disaffected. The peasants suffered doubly from the sparing and agricultural problems.