Thus the conditions were fertile for outright revolt, spurred on by the hard economic circumstances and misery of the peasants.
However, another theory of the causes of the French Revolution was that France essentially imploded from within its most privileged classes, namely that of the monarchy, nobility, and clergy. Although the French Catholic Church was one of the a privileged Estates, holding tax-free land that amounted to 10% of the total acreage of France, and many bishops and abbots lived in Paris or at Versailles, "members of the lower clergy were usually humble, poorly-paid and overworked village priests" (Kreis 2000). The supposedly unified First Estate was thus become stratified from within, which created weaknesses within the Estate.
Like the clergy, the nobility or Second Estate was torn between two tiers, the upper and lower nobility. The Nobility of the Sword was made up of members of ancient lineage with family history that could be traced back hundreds of years, while the Nobility of the Robe has much less power than did the Nobility of the Sword. This is why "some of the lesser nobility were partial to the philosophes of the Enlightenment and during the early days of the Revolution would be considered 'liberal nobles.' They wished to see an end to royal absolutism but not necessarily the end of the monarchy. These liberal nobles tended to look to France's traditional enemy, England, as a model for what France ought to become, a limited or constitutional monarchy" (Kreis 2000).
A third theory regarding the causes of the French Revolution suggests that the nationalism and reasoned democracy advocated by the Enlightenment caused the revolution. Steven Kreis is somewhat skeptical of this idea, noting that many of the philosophers we associate with the revolution such as Voltaire and Rousseau did not advocate violent overthrow of the existing monarchy. Voltaire actually had close relations with the monarchy during his...
The ideal society advocated by Rousseau was more of an enlightened ideal dictatorship, not a participatory system. These men were not the 'Karl Marxes' of the 18th century. However, the recent example of the American Revolution undoubtedly exerted a powerful influence upon the discontented members of French society, both the new middle class and the unhappy members of the lower tiers of the aristocracy. "The Enlightenment preached the steady and inevitable progress of man's moral and intellectual nature. The American example served as a great lesson -- tyranny could be challenged. Man did have inalienable rights. New governments could be constructed" (Kreis 2000).
However, Kreis point is well-taken in the sense that these ideas had existed for a long time in Europe, and were not seen as incompatible with a monarchy, as was evident in Great Britain. What was 'new' in France was that the expectations of the bourgeoisie had risen in recent years, while the inflexible economic, social, and political statements had not changed accordingly to meet those altered, higher expectations for what life should be. The Enlightenment and American example merely fueled bourgeoisie discontent, and even the peasants had seen reality fall short of their previous, very low expectations, as the economy had exhibited such a precipitous decline and their rate of taxation had increased. Thus, of all the theories, although all have an element of truth, the idea that the revolution was fueled by bourgeois discontent, or at very least the discontent of newly powerful social and economic classes in an intransigent system seems the most persuasive.
Works Cited
Kreis, Steven. "Lecture 11: The Origins of the French Revolution." The History Guide:
Lectures on Modern European History. 2000. October 30, 2006. http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture11a.html
