French Revolution

The French Revolution was a social and political conflict, with varying periods of violence that convulsed France and, by extension, its implications, other European nations facing supporters and opponents of the system known as the Old Regime. It began with the self-proclamation of the Third Estate as the National Assembly in 1789 and ended with the coup of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799.

While the political organization of France ranged republic, constitutional monarchy and empire for 71 years after the First Republic fell after the coup of Napoleon Bonaparte, the truth is that the revolution marked the definitive end of absolutism and gave birth a new regime where the bourgeoisie, and sometimes the masses, became the dominant political force in the country.

 The revolution undermined the foundations of the monarchical system as such, beyond its death, to the extent that ousted him with a discourse that re illegitimate.
Causes: Overall there were several factors that influenced the Revolution: a monarchy that would succumb to its own rigidity in the context of a changing world, the emergence of a bourgeois class that was born centuries ago and had achieved great power in the field economic and now beginning to advocate political, the discontent of the masses, the spread of new ideas of the Enlightenment, the economic crisis that prevailed in France after the agricultural crop and the serious problems caused by hacendísticos military support to the War Independence of the United States. 

This military intervention would become double-edged sword, because, despite winning the war against France, Britain and recover well from the previous defeat in the Seven Years War, the estate was bankrupt and with a large foreign debt. The fiscal problems of the monarchy, by the example of democracy in the new state emancipated precipitated events.

From the political point of view, were fundamental ideas such as those reported by Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu (for example, the concepts of political liberty, fraternity and equality, or rejection of a divided society and new political theories on the separation of state powers). This was breaking the prestige of the institutions of the ancien regime, helping its collapse.From the economic standpoint, the unmanageable government debt was exacerbated by a system of extreme social inequality and high taxes that the privileged classes, nobility and clergy were not required to pay, but who oppressed the rest of society. 

There was an increase in state spending to a simultaneous decline in agricultural production and rural landowners, resulting in severe food shortages in the months preceding the Revolution. Tensions, both social and political, long contained, broke into a major economic crisis as a result of two specific events identified: partnership interest of France to the cause of American independence (which caused a huge fiscal deficit) and increase in agricultural prices.

The whole population showed a widespread resentment directed towards the privileges of the nobles and higher clergy, who maintained their hold on public life preventing it agreed to a thriving professional and merchant class. The example of the American revolutionary process opened the horizons of political change among other.

          

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