causes of the french revolution

The French Revolution was caused primarily by the fiscal crisis, followed by economic hardship, the influence of Enlightenment ideas, and only then the personal failings of Louis XVI. By the late 1780s, France’s tax system was deeply unequal and fragmented, leaving the state unable to raise revenue or implement meaningful reforms. This fiscal paralysis forced Louis to call the Estates-General, which created the political space for the Third Estate to assert itself and begin radicalising. Economic pressures compounded the crisis as poor harvests, soaring bread prices, and industrial decline from the Eden Treaty pushed the working population and bourgeoisie into hardship, turning material suffering into political grievance. Enlightenment ideas then provided a language for protest, particularly among the literate bourgeoisie, allowing debates in public spaces like the Palais-Royal to transform frustration into articulated demands for reform. Louis XVI’s indecision and hesitancy intensified these processes but did not cause them; his failures acted as an accelerant, allowing structural pressures to explode more quickly. Even a more decisive monarch would have struggled to manage a state that was financially bankrupt, administratively incoherent, and socially tense. This essay will argue that the Revolution was driven first by the fiscal crisis, second by economic hardship, third by the Enlightenment, and finally by Louis’ actions, which were secondary and reactive rather than decisive. The structural pressures of the ancien régime were the key cause of the revolution, rather than the actions of one man.

The failures of Louis XVI were not the key cause of the French Revolution. Louis actions were more of an accelerant – allowing the revolution to radicalise quicker and to a much greater extent. William Pelz argues that Louis XVI was “a particularly inept, if not downright stupid monarch” and “insensitive and incompetent”. This suggests that Louis XVI’s failures were the key cause of the French Revolution and implies that if there was a less “inept” monarch perhaps the revolution would not have unfolded as it did. This interpretation is supported by Mary Wollstonecraft in a political pamphlet written in response to Edmund Burke’s ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’. Burke was a supporter of aristocracy, the state church, and constitutional monarchy. Wollstonecraft, on the other hand, advocated for republicanism and attacked aristocracy. She called Louis “hapless” and lacking “any decision of character”. Wollstonecraft’s comments are highly charged, and the published pamphlet was intended to persuade, so her harsh judgement of Louis may exaggerate his failings. It is also important to consider that Wollstonecraft may be attempted to tell a more sensationalist story to sell more pamphlets. Furthermore, Wollstonecraft’s pamphlet was a defence of her pre-established beliefs in republicanism as well as her honour and reputation. Therefore, whilst Wollstonecraft does agree with Pelz, it does not automatically make Pelz’s argument more valid. Nonetheless, neither Pelz nor Wollstonecraft consider the fact that Louis was operating in an enormously complex system and faced a monumental challenge that even the most competent leaders would have struggled to face. Pelz also characterises Louis as a very weak-willed man who doesn’t care about the people. However, Turgot writes in a letter to Louis from 1774 that he “shall have to battle even against the natural goodness and generosity of Your Majesty”, demonstrating that the King was so sensitive towards his people and their needs that his spirit had to be restrained. Granted, this is a letter from a King’s minister to the King, and thus he is unlikely to be anything but complimentary towards Louis. Although, another source contemporary to Louis, Félix d’Hézecques, tells a story of Louis when he was out hunting and, on his way back showed “clémence” to a soldier who begged for it and said that “la gaieté du monarque pendant le reste de la journée montra avec quelle satisfaction son cœur avait exercé cette touchante prérogative de la royauté”. D’Hézecques was a royalist and the rest of his memoir is very sympathetic to the King. However, the anecdote does demonstrate contemporary perceptions of Louis as compassionate. The source remains useful in reinforcing the distinction between Louis’ moral virtue and his political effectiveness, in spite of its royalist bias. In addition, other historians also agree with Turgot, such as Claudine Wolikow, who writes that Louis was “du roi bienfaisant et vertueux”. Pelz also views Louis as “inept” and it is here where he is correct (even if his wording is a little strong). A major problem for Louis was his indecisiveness, to call him “inept” is perhaps to go too far, since Louis was certainly competent and did make attempts to influence the situation. Nonetheless, some of his key decisions were too late or simply the wrong choice. John Hardman also understood that for all his intelligence, Louis indecisiveness was what hindered him. His view is complemented by most other historians, such as David Andress who calls him an “amiable, intelligent, but indecisive man” and Andrew Matthews points out his “hesitancy and indecisiveness”. Even Louis XVI’s own sister noted that while he “possessed the virtues of an honest man, was far from having all those which are required in a king. His self-distrust was extreme”. Madame Élisabeth was executed during the Reign of Terror on account of her devotion to her brother, though she did distance herself from the royal court for much of her life – viewing Versailles as morally corrupt. Nonetheless, she felt obliged to return on the express call of her brother, indicating some sense of familial bond. In addition, she believed in Louis’ right to rule as an absolute monarch and so defended him in that sense often. Therefore, her making this criticism highlights how important this self-distrust really was. By preceding it with the fact that he was “an honest man” she ensures that she cannot be viewed as simply attacking Louis’ morality or intention. The source itself is a collection of private letters and diary entries amalgamated into a biographical structure and therefore cannot be considered propaganda. Furthermore, these entries and letters were compiled and published posthumously and therefore there is no sense that the princess may have selectively chosen certain excerpts to frame her legacy in a more positive light. Louis indecision allowed for the power struggle that occurred during the meeting of the Estates-General of 1789 between the conservative nobility and clergy of the First and Second Estates and the liberal bourgeois of the Third Estate. Louis delayed any action until he called for a Séance Royale on the 23rd of June, when it was far too late to affect anything as the National Assembly had already claimed sovereignty and was receiving defectors from the First and Second Estates. The decision he did eventually make (not recognising the National Assembly) was then quickly reversed on the 27th of June, just four days later, when he ordered the First and Second Estates to join the Third in the National Assembly. His ineffective leadership allowed the National Assembly to gather steam on its own and provided them with space to consider themselves sovereign. As Tackett notes, in the First, Second, and Third estates there were blocs and factions arguing for or against voting by head or a singular sovereign assembly. The issue the Third Estate had was not with the King himself, but with the stubbornness of the conservative nobility to even try and compromise (something Louis had encountered with the Assembly of Notables in 1787). Normally moderate deputies such as Durand, Beauregard, and Maillot all concurred that “the Nobles [...] have blocked all roads to compromise” and the Nobles “increased rather than weakened the determined resolution of the Third”. The Third Estate was able to radicalise itself through the stubbornness of the nobility, and the lack of intervention on Louis’ part allowed this to happen. In doing so he allowed the Third Estate to self-legitimise ideas of sovereignty and the general will of the people, ideas which could then be sent back to Paris via the Palais-Royal and be used to fuel the general sentiment of the people at large – people who would then go on to storm the Bastille and drive the course of the revolution through their journées. By not involving himself in the situation and by not providing a firm hand or a guiding opinion to the gathering, he essentially allowed the two opposing groups to fight against each other and consigned himself to having to agree with the winner – as demonstrated when he had to reverse his decision from opposing the National Assembly to supporting it, since they had grown too influential. During those intervening four days between denying the National Assembly legitimacy and then ordering the other two estates to join it, Louis amassed around 30,000 troops around Versailles and did not recall them when he accepted the National Assembly later. This only served to heighten tensions between the National Assembly and the King, especially considering that the Assembly already mistrusted the King for having supposedly locked them out of their usual meeting-place just a few days earlier. His decision to amass these troops was not taken kindly to by outside observers either. Jeremy Bentham, on the report that “30,000 foreign troops [were] sent for to curb the capital and the States-General”, remarked that it “must be nonsense”. He is not writing to a King or to someone in power in an attempt to pander to them but instead writing to George Wilson – a fellow reformer of his who Bentham had a working relationship with. Furthermore, he is writing in a private letter which we can assume he never intended to be published considering the colloquialisms and the small jokes and insults he makes to his friends found in other letters in the same volume. Thus, his writings can be viewed as reliable and relatively unbiased. The events in which Louis demonstrated his indecisiveness clearly shows that this was a major aspect of his character. One can now conclude that Louis, whilst not an entirely incompetent leader, did fail to arbitrate effectively between the competing estates. However, his indecision was less significant than the other causes of the revolution discussed in this essay. This is because, while it allowed the Third Estate to assert itself and created short-term confusion, the root causes of radicalisation were structural: widespread economic suffering from bad harvests and the Eden Treaty, the state’s fiscal paralysis, and the politicisation of ideas in public spaces. Even a more decisive king would have struggled to manage these systemic pressures.

The fiscal crisis of the years just preceding 1789 was the key cause of the French Revolution. It revealed the fundamental flaws in the running of the ancien régime state and forced the King to call the Estates-General which then allowed for class consciousness within the Third Estate and then the radicalisation of that estate. To call the way the French people were taxed in the 18th century a ‘system’ is a misrepresentation of what was a deeply fragmented and inequitable fiscal structure. The central problem was taxation was heavy and grossly unfair, yet also incapable of reform. As Robert Harris put it, “to increase taxes within the existing system would be to place an intolerable burden on the poorer classes who were already the victims of its inequities”. It is important to note that any tax increases were more likely to increase the burden on the bourgeois who actually had something to tax. 35% of peasants were landless labourers, and the others barely owned their own land and had such little of anything that the private tax collectors hired by the state saw no point in even attempting to tax them. By contrast, the First and Second Estates enjoyed extensive fiscal privilege, with the clergy exempt from most direct taxation and the nobility shielded by a complex web of exemptions. As a result, the burden of taxation fell primarily on the bourgeoisie – the very group already under economic pressure from rising food prices and industrial decline caused by the Eden Agreement. Furthermore, the entire administrative framework was fragmented beyond comprehension. Different provinces such as the Pays d’élection, pays d’état, and pays d’imposition each operated under different fiscal rules, with overlapping jurisdictions and contradictory privileges. Calonne clearly understood this, noting that “certain areas are totally freed from burdens of which others bear the full brunt”. Being written in his ‘Summary of a Plan for the Improvement of the Finances’ which was submitted to the King, Calonne’s bleak outlook and negativity are clearly genuine – nobody would want to give the King such bad news unless there really was no other option. And there was not, the French state had run out of time. Reform, even when recognised as essential by Necker, Turgot, and Calonne, was near impossible to achieve because to touch one abuse was to threaten the entire edifice of privilege upon which the ancien régime stood. Reform ran directly counter to the interests of a nobility deeply invested in preserving privilege. One only needs to look at the disastrous Assembly of the Notables to see that they clearly felt very strongly about this issue. Thus, France’s governmental complexity was self-defeating. By the late 1780s, the monarchy could no longer command, tax, or reform effectively, leaving it bankrupt both financially and politically. Of course, the fiscal crisis did not operate in isolation, but in tandem with economic hardship and weak leadership it forced unresolved tensions into the open. It was this collapse of fiscal and administrative coherence, as much as the burden of taxation itself, that rendered the existing political order unsustainable and led to the bringing about of class consciousness in the Third Estate and therefore the ability for that social group to be radicalised to the extent that they would eventually call for the execution of the King.

The economic crisis which preceded the fall of the Bastille radicalised the Third Estate as it turned material hardship (i.e. a lack of food) into political grievance, which meant that when the Estates-General was called as a consequence of the equally key fiscal crisis, the French working people had a lot of things to complain about and a great reason to demand change. William Doyle noted that “public effervescence could easily slip beyond anybody’s control” as the price of bread rose. It was indeed rising rapidly, because of a very wet spring and freak hailstones in July of 1788 as well as a severe winter of 1788-9, around 88% of a labourer’s daily wage was spent on bread. Also, across the north of France grain riots broke out as people accused landowners and nobles of hoarding grain. However, it is important to note, as revisionist historians have argued, crises such as these were not uncommon under the ancien régime and only became revolutionary when channelled through political structures such as the Estates-General. The high bread prices politicised the suffering, as hunger was increasingly viewed as the product of elite mismanagement and injustice rather than natural scarcity. When the cahiers de doléances began pouring in from January to April, the primary concern of the Third Estate was the price of bread. In agreement with the evidence and Lefebvre’s view, Arthur Young commented on the 10th of June 1789, “the want of bread is terrible: accounts arrive every moment from the provinces of riots” and on the prices of bread that “these rates are beyond their faculties, and occasion great misery”. This was written before the fall of the Bastille (14th July of the same year), when Young’s shock at the violence of the revolution was solidified and he became more critical of it and thus remains impartial. The fact that he was British may further allow him to be unbiased, but he did write for an audience, and his journals contain an element of performance within them. However, his account is that of an eyewitness, and his factual details often match that of local cahiers and public reports of riots and the grain supply, and therefore he can remain a useful source. The impacts of the bad harvest of 1788-9 were only worsened by the disastrous Eden Agreement, which provided the economy with another supply-shock when it did not need it. It was meant to benefit the cloth trade for both France and Britain. However, cheaper British manufactured goods, particularly cloth, undercut French industries. The influx of British products caused industrial decline and further poverty as merchant houses closed down and unemployment increased dramatically. The agreement was engineered, on the French side, primarily by Vergennes – and his thinking was not unreasonable. Both Britain and France were struggling with national debt as a consequence of the American War of Independence, and if trade could increase between the two countries, they might both benefit. This did not happen, as Immanuel Wallerstein writes, “its immediate impact was in fact economically disastrous and politically unnerving. The cahiers de doléance were full of complaints about the treaty”. The cahiers do view the treaty as something which negatively impacted the lives of Frenchmen (the cahiers from Normandy, which was a major textile-production area, make this case particularly strongly). This once again reinforced the perception amongst the Third Estate that economic hardship came from deliberate policy choices made by unelected officials in government, further legitimising demands for structural political change rather than the short-term relief under the same system that had failed them. The economic crisis turned hunger and hardship into political grievance. Bad harvests, soaring bread prices, and industrial collapse from the Eden Treaty devastated the Third Estate. People blamed mismanagement and elite decisions for their suffering, and this combination of desperation and anger meant that, when the Estates-General opened, the population was ready to demand radical change. However, the Estates-General would not have been called if the state was not in such dire fiscal straits and if it was not so fragmented and self-preservative, and thus the economic crisis is (if only slightly) secondary to the fiscal crisis.

The Enlightenment was not a strong cause of the revolution, but it did act as a catalyst and provided the bourgeoise with a language through which they could articulate their desire for social change. These bourgeoise tended to respond more positively to the Enlightenment ideas such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau because their social position granted them greater access to education and printed material. Literacy rates and engagement with pamphlets and newspapers expanded across France, from 29% in 1710 to around 37% in 1790. This increase was seen most significantly among the urban and commercial parts of the Third Estate (the bourgeoise) during the late eighteenth century. The Enlightenment ideas did appeal to some liberal nobles but on the whole nobles were very anti-reform. This was because they threatened noble privilege and the entrenched social system of ancien régime France. The bourgeoise were also better equipped than the poorer peasants who, due to their illiteracy, were not quite as able to grasp the complex ideas being formulated by the ‘Republic of Letters’. That is not to say they were ignorant, distilled concepts were able to penetrate down but compared to the understanding of the bourgeois they knew rather little. Consequently, when economic hardship and fiscal injustice intensified in the late 1780s, it was this group that proved most capable of transforming material suffering into articulated political grievance. Thus, Enlightenment ideas were not an express cause of the revolution, but they ensured that the protest took an explicitly political and reformist form rather than remaining confined to sporadic subsistence unrest. Importantly, this transformation took place in specific urban public spaces where ideas and hardship physically converged, and the prime example of this is the Palais-Royal in Paris. Permitted for public use by the Duc d’Orléans, it became a focal point of agitation precisely because it brought together a socially mixed crowd of bourgeois displaced by the Eden Treaty and unfair taxation alongside unemployed artisans and labourers suffering from bread shortages who actively engaged in Enlightenment ideas through the giving of speeches and the publication of pamphlets, such as that of Desmoulins on 12 July 1789 – a speech which played a part in galvanising the people of Paris to storm the Bastille just two days later, and which was immortalised in an ewhich painted Desmoulins as rising above the crowd surrounding him, demonstrating the very positive view taken towards the journalists, philisophes, and writers of the Enlightenment and the revolution. In its cafés and gardens, discussion of Enlightenment concepts such as liberty and representation were had in tandem with conversations about hunger and unemployment, turning the price of bread into a political issue. Enlightenment ideas therefore did not cause the Revolution, but when filtered through public spaces like the Palais-Royal, they provided the language and framework through which economic distress was politicised. This fusion of intellectual capacity and material suffering ensured that protest in 1789 took an explicitly political and reformist form rather than remaining confined to sporadic subsistence unrest – although this suffering and unrest was still a consequence of the fiscal and economic crises, rather than from the ideas of the Enlightenment in isolation.

In conclusion, the fiscal crisis was the key cause of the Revolution, as the deeply unequal and fragmented tax system left the state unable to raise revenue or respond effectively to unrest. Economic hardship worsened the situation, with poor harvests in 1788–89 and the impact of the Eden Treaty driving the Third Estate into hunger, poverty, and unemployment. These pressures were increasingly politicised, as grievances about bread, wages, and industrial decline became linked to the actions of the state and the privileges of the First and Second Estates. Enlightenment ideas provided the language and framework for expressing these grievances publicly, particularly in urban spaces such as the Palais-Royal, allowing protest to take an organised and reformist form. Louis XVI’s indecision and delayed interventions allowed tensions between the estates to escalate and the Third Estate to assert itself more strongly, but his actions were secondary to the structural pressures of fiscal collapse, economic distress, and the spread of reformist ideas, which together accelerated the revolution.