7. One of the main factors that led to the French Revolution was the unbalanced social structure of society during the Old Regime.

8. Economic Cause

9. It was the main reason of the depletion of the treasury of the king.

10. Political Cause

11. King was a person of Mediocre Intelligence.

12. Immediate Cause

13. Formation of the Estate General.

14. Intellectual Cause

16. First Estate

17. High-ranking members of the Church

18. Privileged class

19. Second Estate

20. Nobility

21. Privileged class

22. Third Estate

23. Everyone else – from peasants in the countryside to wealthy bourgeoisie merchants in the cities

26. Third Estate was dominated by the middle class

27. Blending of aristocratic and bourgeois classes by 1789

28. Middle class were Big Winners

32. Added to this was the cost of maintaining an extravagant court at the immense palace of Versailles.

33. Under Louis XVI, France helped the thirteen American colonies to gain their independence from the common enemy, Britain. The war added more than a billion livres to a debt that had already risen to more than 2 billion livres.

34. Lenders who gave the state credit, now began to charge 10 per cent interest on loans. So the French government was obliged to spend an increasing percentage of its budget on interest payments alone. To meet its regular expenses, such as the cost of maintaining an army, the court, running government offices or universities, the state was forced to increase taxes. Yet even this measure would not have sufficed.

39. In addition to merchants and manufacturers, the third estate included professions such as lawyers or administrative officials which were educated.

41. Jean Jacques Rousseau , in his ‘Two Treatises’ of Government, Locke sought to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the monarch. Rousseau carried the idea forward, proposing a form of government based on a social contract between people and their representatives.

42. Montesquieu in ‘The Spirit of the Laws’, Montesquieu proposed a division of power within the government between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. This model of government was put into force in the USA, after the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Britain. The American constitution and its guarantee of individual rights was an important example for political thinkers in France.

44. On 5 May 1789, Louis XVI called together an assembly of the Estates General to pass proposals for new taxes. A resplendent hall in Versailles was prepared to host the delegates. The first and second estates sent 300 representatives each, who were seated in rows facing each other on two sides, while the 600 members of the third estate had to stand at the back. The third estate was represented by its more prosperous and educated members. Peasants, artisans and women were denied entry to the assembly. However, their grievances and demands were listed in some 40,000 letters which the representatives had brought with them.

47. Peasant farmers of France bore the burden of taxation.

48. Poor harvests meant that peasants had trouble paying their regular taxes.

49. Certainly could not afford to have their taxes raised.

50. Bourgeoisie often managed to gather wealth.

52. Estates-General became the National Assembly in June of 1789 with the power to frame a constitution

57. Reasons for the attack on the Bastille the next morning

58. The stubbornness of the governor of the fortress

59. Celebrations on the night of July 14th

64. 2/3 of Church officials fled the country rather than swear allegiance to this.

65. All feudal dues and tithes were eradicated.

66. All special privileges of the First and Second Estates were abolished.

73. The Concept of “Total War”

74. Maximum price ceilings on certain goods

76. Stress on radical definition of equality

77. Wanted a legal maximum on personal wealth

78. Wanted a regulation of commercial profits

81. An attempt was made to re-open the Jacobin Club, which was joined by many of the enemies of the There midorians, but on 21 Brumaire, year III (11 November 1794), it was definitively closed. Its members and their sympathizers were scattered among the cafés, where a ruthless war of sticks and chairs was waged against them by the young "aristocrats" known as the jeunesse dorée. Nevertheless the Jacobins survived, in a somewhat subterranean fashion, emerging again in the club of the Panthéon, founded on 25 November 1795

83. Napoleon’s Rise to Power

84. Establishment of the Bank of France

85. Reconciliation with the Catholic Church

86. --Concordat of 1801

87. Heavy Censorship

92. Thank you Ma’am for helping us at each and every step where we were stuck in a problem.