Describe the circumstances leading to the outbreak of revolutionary protest in france?
The causes of French revolution were three pronged.
1) Political cause: The rule of Louis XVI was of extravagance. When he became the king , he found an empty treasury . Long years of war had drained the financial resources of France. Added to this was the cost of maintaining an extravagant court at the immense palace of Versailles. Under Louis XVI, France sponsored the American rebellion against their common enemy, Britain. The war added more than a billion livres to a debt that had already risen to more than 2 billion livres.
2) Social cause - The french society was divided into three estates and only the third estate had to bear the burden of tax payment. Peasants made up about 90 per cent of the population. However, only a small number of them owned the land they cultivated. About 60 per cent of the land was owned by nobles, the Church and other richer members of the third estate. The members of the first two estates, that is, the clergy and the nobility, enjoyed certain privileges by birth. The most important of these was exemption from paying taxes to the state. The nobles further enjoyed feudal privileges. These included feudal dues, which they extracted from the peasants. Peasants were obliged to render services to the lord – to work in his house and fields – to serve in the army or to participate in building roads.
3) Economic cause - Production of grains could not keep pace with the demand. The price of bread which was the staple diet of the majority rose rapidly . Most workers were employed as labourers in workshops whose owner fixed their wages. But wages did not keep pace with the rise in prices. So the gap between the poor and the rich widened.Things became worse whenever drought or hail reduced the harvest.This led to a subsistence crisis, something that occurred frequently in France during the Old Regime.