France & the Revolution
The primary issue that plagued France during the period leading up to the "Tennis Court Oath" and the "Oath Abolishing Feudalism" was the disparity between the different social classes in French society. One driving force of this disparity was the amount of monies spent by the monarchy and the first two estates of France that were funded by taxes levied, tithes demanded and rents imposed upon the Third Estate. Another was the lack of respect that the nobility showed towards the middle class of the Third Estate, the bourgeoisie. This group of about a million people consisted of doctors, lawyers, merchants, manufacturers and entrepreneurs who were the wealthiest demographic group in France; yet were still classified as members of the Third Estate and thus treated as inferior by the first two. Finally were the desperate conditions endured by the peasants; twenty-five million people held down with no hope or means of improving their lives.Louis XIV's reign truly exemplified the concept of an absolute monarch who only had God to answer to. It was only on his deathbed that he that expressed regrets about his life as advice to his heir, Louis XV. He encouraged his great-grandson to do more for the peo
Much like Louis XIV, in his excellent choice of Jean-Baptiste Colbert; Louis XVI made well-respected choices for his ministers ". Issues that were hardly subject to interpretation. On June 20, 1789, when this body was to meet for the first time, The National Assembly found itself locked out of its meeting hall. What the National Assembly needed to do was take more time and use the goals of their articles as the basis of a plan to create an economically stable society, not just eliminate the symptoms of an unstable one. The first atrocity we learn of is Young's disgust with the prison on the road to Lourdes where men were held for crimes "unknown even unto themselves"; a situation to be corrected by Articles III and IV. Their determination speaks clearly to the breadth and depth of the issues that the vast majority of the population of France, the Third Estate, had to contend with. Without coming to resolution for over six weeks, the representatives of the Third Estate, with support from some of the clergy, decided that there would be a new form of legislature, The National Assembly. Since, the Third Estate had grown to become such a vast majority of the population, Louis granted them as many representative seats as the First and Second Estates combined. They only considered a solution in terms of the state in which they found themselves, they did not consider nor address the underlying forces that lead up to their situation.
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