The Causes of the French Revolution: Crisis of the Ancien Régime

The French Revolution of 1789 was the result of a long and complex set of political, social, economic, and intellectual developments that converged in the 1780s to produce a crisis of the Ancien Régime. This article examines the major causes of the Revolution, including the financial crisis of the French state, the social structure of pre-revolutionary France, the Enlightenment critique of the old order, and the immediate political events that triggered the Revolution.

The Financial Crisis

The most immediate cause of the French Revolution was the financial crisis of the French state. By the 1780s, the French government was effectively bankrupt, unable to meet its obligations to its creditors or to fund the basic operations of the state.

The origins of the financial crisis went back to the seventeenth century. The French state had accumulated large debts through a long series of wars, including the War of Spanish Succession, the War of Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years’ War. The cost of supporting the American Revolution further aggravated the crisis, adding approximately one billion livres to the French debt.

The structure of the French tax system made it impossible to resolve the crisis through ordinary fiscal means. The nobility and the clergy enjoyed extensive tax exemptions, and the burden of taxation fell disproportionately on the Third Estate — the commoners, who made up about 97 percent of the population but who paid most of the taxes. The result was a regressive system of taxation that was both economically inefficient and politically unsustainable.

The successive attempts to reform the tax system — by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot in the 1770s and by Charles Alexandre de Calonne and Lomenie de Brienne in the 1780s — were all blocked by the resistance of the privileged orders. The king’s call for a meeting of the Estates-General in 1789 was an admission that the financial crisis could not be resolved without the cooperation of the nation as a whole.

The Social Structure

The social structure of pre-revolutionary France was rigidly hierarchical and increasingly resented by the French public. The population was divided into three “estates” — the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate — with very different rights, privileges, and obligations.

The First Estate, the clergy, made up about 0.5 percent of the population, but it owned about 10 percent of the land and enjoyed extensive privileges, including exemption from most taxes. The church was also a major political force, controlling the educational system, the hospitals, and the charitable institutions.

The Second Estate, the nobility, made up about 1.5 percent of the population. The nobility enjoyed extensive privileges, including exemption from most taxes, the right to collect feudal dues, and the monopoly of certain military and ecclesiastical positions. The nobility was divided into the “sword nobility” (the old feudal aristocracy) and the “robe nobility” (the nobility of office), but both groups shared the same general privileges.

The Third Estate, the commoners, made up about 98 percent of the population. The Third Estate included the bourgeoisie (the merchants, professionals, and officials of the towns), the urban workers, and the peasants. The Third Estate bore the heaviest tax burden, and it was subject to a host of feudal obligations to the nobility and the clergy.

The rigid hierarchy of the three estates was a major source of resentment, especially among the bourgeoisie, who were often as wealthy and as well-educated as the nobility, but who were excluded from the privileges of the nobility. The contradiction between the social and the political status of the bourgeoisie was a major source of the revolutionary dynamic.

The Enlightenment Critique

The French Enlightenment had developed a thoroughgoing critique of the Ancien Régime by the time the political crisis of the 1780s began. The major thinkers of the French Enlightenment — Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Diderot, and the many other writers who participated in the great collaborative projects of the century — had developed a systematic critique of the political, social, and religious institutions of the Old Regime, and they had proposed a program of rational reform.

The political vocabulary of the Revolution — liberty, equality, the rights of man, the sovereignty of the people — was, in important respects, the political vocabulary of the French Enlightenment. The Revolution was, in this sense, the political translation of the philosophical and literary work of the eighteenth century.

The success of the American Revolution provided a concrete example of what a republican government could look like, and the French participants in the American Revolution — including the Marquis de Lafayette — were important carriers of the new political ideas to France.

The Harvest Crisis of 1788-1789

The immediate trigger of the French Revolution was the harvest crisis of 1788-1789. A severe winter in 1788-1789, followed by a poor harvest, drove up the price of bread — the staple food of the French poor — to unprecedented levels. The high price of bread, combined with the widespread unemployment caused by the economic dislocation, produced a wave of popular unrest that swept through France in the early months of 1789.

The harvest crisis was not, in itself, the cause of the Revolution; the causes of the Revolution were the long-term structural problems of the Ancien Régime. But the harvest crisis provided the immediate trigger that transformed the political crisis into a social revolution.

The Estates-General of 1789

The Estates-General met at Versailles on May 5, 1789. The Estates-General was the representative assembly of the three estates of the realm, and it had not met since 1614. The calling of the Estates-General was an admission that the financial crisis could not be resolved without the cooperation of the nation as a whole.

The composition of the Estates-General was a major issue. The Third Estate, which represented the great majority of the nation, demanded that it have as many deputies as the other two estates combined, and that the voting be by head rather than by order. The king and the privileged orders resisted these demands, and the result was a political crisis that would eventually lead to the Revolution.

On June 17, 1789, the Third Estate, joined by some of the clergy and a few of the nobility, declared itself the National Assembly. On June 20, the deputies of the Third Estate, finding their meeting hall closed, gathered at a nearby tennis court and pledged not to disband until they had given France a constitution. The Tennis Court Oath was the founding act of the French Revolution.

The Legacy

The causes of the French Revolution have been the subject of intense historical debate, and the relative importance of the various causes — financial, social, intellectual, political — has been disputed by historians of different perspectives. The conservative historians, following Burke, have emphasized the importance of the financial crisis and the role of abstract ideas in destabilizing the political order. The liberal historians have emphasized the importance of the Enlightenment critique and the role of the rising bourgeoisie in challenging the old order. The Marxist historians have emphasized the importance of the social structure and the role of the class struggle in producing the Revolution.

Further Reading

• Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (1982)
• Darrin McMahon, Enlightenment Contested (2006)
• Daniel Roche, The Enlightenment in the West (2010)