The French Revolution, as its name suggests, was a revolutionary cycle that took place in France between 1789 and 1799. Known for being one of the main revolutions in the history of mankind, the French Revolution was inspired by the Enlightenment ideals and started a process of profound transformations which resulted in the fall of absolutism in France and the rest of Europe as well.
The French Revolution was part of a process of democratic revolutions that spread across the world in the late 18th century. But, even so, it is important to pay attention to the particularities of the French situation, since, from them, we can understand what motivated the beginning of the French Revolution, in 1789 | 1 |.
In the 1780s, France was an absolutist monarchy - one of the most powerful in Europe - and was ruled by Louis XVI, grandson of Louis XIV, France's greatest absolutist king. Louis XVI's power was absolute, and French society was extremely stratified into social groups, known as "states":
• First State: represented by the clergy.
• Second State: represented by the nobility.
• Third State: represented by the rest of the population, who did not fit into the groups above.
This social division in France was marked by great social inequality, since nobility and clergy enjoyed numerous privileges, which guaranteed them an extremely comfortable and luxurious life. Among the privileges, we can highlight the tax exemptions, which the two classes had, and, in the case of the nobility, they could even levy feudal taxes on their lands. Inequality was one of the reasons that motivated the French Revolution.
