French Revolution Dbq Essay

The French Revolution was caused by the French government’s inability to unite their people as one nation and address the people’s demand for reformation of unjust taxation and citizen equality causing uprisings and revolts among middle and lower class people. The French government was already unstable after their assistance in the United States with their fight for independence, which put France in tremendous debt. Since the nobles and the clergymen were favored by the government, taxes were forced upon the Third Estate resulting in even more unrest. All citizens were not equal under the law, and the government was too occupied by their financial situation to focus on fixing the inequality and lack of representation among their own citizens.

Peasants have never been treated as equal, but at the time of the revolution the rich were specifically demanding and were oblivious to the damage their selfishness was causing the poor. The wealthy were keeping their money while the hard working peasants were burdened by heavy taxes that they could not fully pay. “We state that there should not be any tax men. It would be better if His Majesty laid a small tax on each young man” (Document 3). This document by the rural peasants of Menouville is directed towards the nobles so they might see what their taxation doing to their own country. France has forgotten the rationality of the Enlightenment and has taxed people who cannot provide them while certain people in France have never had to pay taxes. “He has to undergo the most oppressive proceedings, without any counsel available, and the agents instantly demand whatever sun they feel like” (Document 4). The agents, as described by the cobblers in France, are tricking people out of their money. There is so little money in France that fellow citizens must trick one another to keep up with the taxing that is plaguing the lower classes, causing more and more anger in rural areas. An

The prices of bread were steadily rising, and about 7,000 peasant women stormed Versailles and demanded that King Louis XVI give them grain. Normally women would not be the ones to stand up for their rights, however their circumstances became so severe that even the women felt that their demands should no longer be suppressed despite of their ongoing oppression from men. When Louis XVI refused to give them what they wanted, they put the royal family on house arrest and would not give up their position. Once and for all the French government was finally at its breaking point and the National Assembly made its final decree for the people of France. “Tithes of all kinds, and dues which may be in place of tithes, in the possession of secular and recognized institutions, are abolished” (Document 6). Not long after the publication of this document, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was published, “Every member of society who is entitled to protection by the state should contribute to its prosperity and share its costs in proportion to his wealth” (Document 7). These documents’ purpose was to give the French citizens what they had been fighting for, reformed taxation and equal rights for