France's debt was lower than Britain's, yet its tax chaos toppled a king
The French Revolution ran from the Estates General of 1789 to Bonaparte's coup on 9 November 1799. Its trigger was less the size of the state's debt, which was modest beside Britain's, than a tangled, uneven tax system that angered everyone and that regional courts refused to reform.
Beneath the crisis lay decades of change. Between 1715 and 1789 France grew from 21 to 28 million people, a fifth of them urban, with Paris passing 600,000. The middle class tripled to nearly a tenth of the population. Prosperity rose overall, but gains went mainly to merchants and those living off rents, while wage earners and tenant farmers grew poorer. A recession from 1785 and failed harvests in 1787 and 1788 drove up unemployment and bread prices. Taxes differed from region to region, often departed from official rates and were collected haphazardly, and the regional Parlements blocked every attempt at simplification.
Ideas sharpened the anger. Educated readers debated Enlightenment critiques, the American Revolution and European revolts of the 1780s, and scandals such as the Affair of the Diamond Necklace made court, nobility and senior clergy objects of contempt. Louis XVI would entertain reform but tended to retreat whenever conservative nobles pushed back.
The deadlock forced the king to summon the Estates General in May 1789, for the first time since 1614. In June the Third Estate declared itself a National Assembly, and after the fall of the Bastille on 14 July the Assembly abolished feudalism, brought the Catholic Church under state control and proclaimed its famous declaration of the rights of man and citizen. The royal family's failed flight to Varennes in June 1791 wrecked the monarchy's credibility. War broke out in April 1792, defeats provoked the uprising of 10 August, the republic was proclaimed in September, and Louis was executed in January 1793.
After a further revolt in June 1793 the constitution was set aside and power passed to the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre's Jacobins. The Revolutionary Tribunal condemned around 16,000 people to death before the Thermidorian Reaction ended the Terror in July 1794. The Directory took over in November 1795 but never found stability, and the coup of 18 Brumaire installed Napoleon as First Consul. Many of the revolution's principles still anchor liberal democracy and French political argument.
Source: French Revolution
