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The French Revolution: No bread! Freedom to the people!
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Who were required to pay higher taxes when France was short of money?
What! Almost a day's salary for some pieces of bread and two glasses of wine? Where’ve you been? America? The bad harvest means there is no flour to bake bread with!
Hm, America. There they live in Freedom. Yes, over there all people seem to be equal. I’ve heard that there, an ordinary man can own his own land, and even become president! And they probably could afford to buy bread.
We pay tax after tax, and what do we get? Nothing! Brothers, now enough is enough! Enough! Yes, the French have had enough!
The French state has a lack of money. They’ve been war for many years, and furthermore they lost. After the seven years’ war against Britain they lost all their colonies in America. In revenge, France helped the American colonies to free themselves from Britain. The colonies won, but for France it has been expensive.
France has almost no money left. People are starving. But the king, Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette continue to throw large parties at their castle in Versaille outside Paris, together with the nobility and the clergy. In order to replenish the state treasury, Louis XVI decides that taxes will be increased. But it’s not the nobility who will pay these taxes, nor the clergy.
It is the third estate: commoners and farmers, who make up almost 98 percent of the population. In order to get money from the nobility and the church, the kings sells land and fancy professional titles. When the nobility buy land, they too can collect taxes from the farmers. This makes the farmers angry. They think that the nobility and the church are helping the king to oppress them.
And it gets worse: France is experiencing the worst harvest in a hundred years. Now there’s almost nothing to eat, but the king and nobility still demand that the farmers and commoners pay tax. Unrest is brewing. People are starving, both in the cities and the countryside. But the nobility and clergy are not.
They can afford to eat. The king is mostly in his castle at Versaille, feasting and hunting. But now he begins to get worried. What if people are so angry that they try to seize power? In the previous autumn, when the third estate was raging about high taxes, he agreed that the French National Assembly would be allowed to hold a meeting, for the first time in 175 years.
But now, when it's time to hold that meeting, people are even angrier. The king thinks that if he lets the third estate get involved, and decide a bit, then everything will calm down. The meeting goes on for several days at the Versailles castle. The third estate has more members, in fact twice as many, but each estate has only one vote. If the nobles and the clergy vote the same, they always win 2-1.
This is unfair, think the third estate, which represents almost the entire population. The king reluctantly agrees that the third estate will have more representatives. But it is not enough for the third estate, and some nobles and clergy seem to agree! The third estate demands to alone become France's parliament: they declare themselves the National Assembly of France. The king refuses!
He closes up their meeting room. But they move to a large indoor tennis court. There they all swear an oath: to not give up until they have given France a new equal regime! The king is under pressure, but gives in. In the end he lets the three estates together form the National Assembly.
The people rejoice: Long live the king! But in Paris, the rumor is that the king and nobility are only pretending to give in, and that they have hired paid foreign soldiers, mercenaries, to take back the power.