Q/ How important was Louis XVI in the collapse of the Ancien Regime? King Louis xvi was an important factor in the collapse of the ancien regime in France during the year of 1789. Although the king not fully responsible he still played a small role in the ancien regime?s collapse, this is attributed to his lack of experience, his irresponsibleness and lack of intelligence. The main reason for the collapse of the ancien regime was the widening gap between the rich and the poor of France. The rich people, comprising the king and church made up the first estate; whist the nobility made up the second estate. These two estates controlled most of positions of public office and paid no taxes. Peasants of which lived terrible lives; often in poverty and starvation dominated the third estate. The French government at this time was nearly bankrupt; this was a result of excessive court spending, low revenue razing and economic mismanagement. King Louis xvi was ill suited for the leadership of France and possessed a very complex personality. Although Louis seemed quite kind and generous by nature, his manner was most usually brusque, cold and formal, marked by fits of ill humor and sharp retorts.
King Louis?s keeper of the seals had said, ? I had never known anyone whose character was more contradicted by outward appearances. He was really good and tender hearted. You could never talk to him of disasters or accidents without seeing a look of compassion come over his face, yet his replies often hard, his tone harsh, and his manner unfeeling. Hesitant, reserved and ungainly, his appearance too was unprepossessing.?1 Throughout his life he was often hesitant, undignified, clumsy, reticent and self-doubting. He appeared to people to have no will of his own and, only to act under pressure. Had the king have any choice in the matter of being king, he certainly wouldn?t have: he once remarked to one of his ministers who relinquished office, ? How lucky you are! Why can?t I resign too? ?2 Still impressionable and sensitive, his true feelings remained concealed behind a fa?ade once blunt and severe. As kind hearted as ever, the king could not bring himself to be gracious to his courtiers, to offer them sympathy in times of grief or illness, to speak to them other than off handedly or with harsh banter and tactless. The king had no interest in the state affairs of France. Laboriously painstakingly, the king occupied himself for hours with petty details, minor cash accounts and lists of game killed in forests.
The Essay on King Louis XIV: One King, One Law, One Faith
King Louis’ reign and goals can be summarized with his desire for “one king, one law, one faith.” As an absolutist leader, he centered the country around himself, and was successful in his goal. By glorifying his position as king, he achieved “one king”, by limiting the power of others, he achieved “one law” and by uniting the French religion, he achieved “one faith”. Louis XIV was successful in ...
As though to avoid the wider, complicated problems that the state was experiencing; showing a total lack of interest in most matters. When the king took some sort of interest in state affairs, he was always influence by his noblemen; and hence doing no thinking for himself nor showing his own opinions. The first estate controlled most of France, and controlled most areas of French society. During the Ancien regime the church was unrivalled in terms of social, economic and spiritual power. The first order, or estate of the realm owned nearly 10% of all land in France; estimated at an area of 20,000 square miles. The income from the land, property and tithes totalled over 150,000,000 livres a year. As the most privileged constitution in the state, it paid no direct taxes; instead negotiating a free gift to the crown once every five years. The vast majority of Frenchmen opposed the church. The church was riddled with corruption, and was least concerned about the spiritual views it was meant to be preaching. The Church clergy in France numbered no more than 100,000 people, yet it controlled all aspects of French society. The church as an institution was not only rich but powerful, the church held considerable influence over government policy.
Nearly all schools in France were in the hands of the church, which in addition also had it?s own courts of law. The church also controlled most sources of information, since it had taken upon itself the role of and responsibilities of censorship. Despite the rich rolling acres most of the clergy were poor. The parish priests of the clergy lived on low wages, and did there job because they believed in God; and because they felt they were called to serve the peasants and underprivileged. On the other hand their colleagues, the bishops and other high up church officials; did it because they were born into the job. The bishops and other high church officials were of noble birth, and in fact did it for the high wages and privileges. The bishops often had no belief in god and were agnostics, and left the job when they felt they had to, often leaving to marry or for other reasons. The second estate was very rich and possessed many privileges like members of the church did. The nobility were exempt from many taxes, this was granted on the reasons that they were members of a military caste and paid their taxes in blood. However nobility was no longer associated with the profession of arms. Some financial and judicial officers ennobled their owners, which added a nobility of the robe. The majority of peasants & bourgeoisie despised the nobles. The peasants were infuriated with the nobles more so than the bourgeoisie, because they were the most heavily taxed and worked. Having being obligated to feudal dues for the nobles and .
The Essay on Louis Xiv France James Parliament
... French state, which reduced the power of Louis XIII. France was subjected to various civil wars and wars of religion, and the future king, Louis ... Instead, he decided to give further support to the Anglican Church. This resulted in the Puritan migration to the American Colonies, ... need to have control of three ke elements: the military, tax collection, and the judicial system, all of which had been ...
Although Louis XVI (1754-93), king of France (1774-92), who lost his throne in the French Revolution and was later beheaded by the revolutionary regime. Louis was born at Versailles on August 23, 1754, the grandson of Louis XV. The deaths of his two elder brothers and of his father, only son of Louis XV, made the young prince the Dauphin of France in 1765. In 1770 he married Marie Antoinette, youngest daughter of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria. On Louis’s accession, France was impoverished and burdened with debts, and heavy taxation had resulted in widespread misery among the French people. Immediately after he was crowned, aided by such capable statesmen as finance minister Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, baron de l’Aulne, Interior Minister Chr?tien Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, and Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, Louis remitted some of the most oppressive taxes and instituted financial and judicial reforms. Greater reforms were prevented, however, by the opposition of the upper classes and the court. So strong was this opposition that in 1776 Turgot was forced to resign and was replaced by financier Jacques Necker. After Louis granted financial aid (1778-81) to the American colonies revolting against Great Britain in the New World, Necker proposed drastic taxes on the nobility.
The Essay on American Cultural Revolution People Government China
Persuasive Essay Can a Cultural Revolution take place in the US, one of the most powerful countries in the would? The Revolution had a great effect on China, origin of the eastern civilization. During the Cultural Revolution in China, the economy stopped growing, the development of China nearly stopped and the Chinese teenagers did not get enough education. We don't know what would happen in the ...
He was forced to resign in 1781, and statesman Charles Alexandre de Calonne, appointed finance minister in 1783, borrowed money for the court until 1786, when the borrowing limit was reached. The anger of the French people against taxes and the lavish spending of the court resulted in 1788 in the recall of Necker, who, however, could not prevent the bankruptcy of the government. In 1788 Louis was forced to call for a meeting of the representative governmental body called the Estates-General, the first gathering of that assembly in 175 years. Once in session, the Estates-General assumed the powers of government. On July 14, 1789, the Parisian populace razed the Bastille, and a short time later imprisoned the king and royal family in the palace of the Tuileries. In 1791 the royal family attempted to escape to Austria, but they were caught and brought back to Paris. Louis swore obedience to the new French constitution in 1791, but continued secretly to work against the revolution and to plot intrigues with France’s enemies. In 1792, when the National Convention, the assembly of elected French deputies, declared France a republic, the king was tried as a traitor and condemned to death.
Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, in the Place de la R?volution (now Place de la Concorde) in Paris. Historians consider Louis XVI a victim of circumstances rather than a despot similar to the former French kings Louis XIV and Louis XV. He was weak and incapable as king and not overly intelligent. He preferred to spend his time at hobbies, such as hunting and making locks, rather than at his duties of state, and he permitted his wife to influence him unduly. major transformation of the society and political system of France, lasting from 1789 to 1799. During the course of the Revolution, France was temporarily transformed from an absolute monarchy, where the king monopolized power, to a republic of theoretically free and equal citizens. The effects of the French Revolution were widespread, both inside and outside of France, and the Revolution ranks as one of the most important events in the history of Europe. During the ten years of the Revolution, France first transformed and then dismantled the Old Regime, the political and social system that existed in France before 1789, and replaced it with a series of different governments. Although none of these governments lasted more than four years, the many initiatives they enacted permanently altered France?s political system. These initiatives included the drafting of several bills of rights and constitutions, the establishment of legal equality among all citizens, experiments with representative democracy, the incorporation of the church into the state, and the reconstruction of state administration and the law code. Many of these changes were adopted elsewhere in Europe as well. Change was a matter of choice in some places, but in others it was imposed by the French army during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1797) and the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815).
The Essay on French Government
The modern French government is run very much like the government of the United States. France is a democratic republic that is divided into three branches, the Executive branch, the Legislative branch, and the Judicial branch. The Legislative branch is made up of the Parliament, which like the United States Congress, is divided into two houses. Those being the Senate and the National Assembly. ...
To later generations of Europeans and non-Europeans who sought to overturn their political and social systems, the French Revolution provided the most influential model of popular insurrection until the Russian Revolution of 1917. From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1970s, the French Revolution was most commonly described as the result of the growing economic and social importance of the bourgeoisie, or middle class. The bourgeoisie, it was believed, overthrew the Old Regime because that regime had given power and privilege to other classes?the nobility and the clergy?who prevented the bourgeoisie from advancing socially and politically. Recently this interpretation has been replaced by one that relies less on social and economic factors and more on political ones. Economic recession in the 1770s may have frustrated some bourgeois in their rise to power and wealth, and rising bread prices just before the Revolution certainly increased discontent among workers and peasants. Yet it is now commonly believed that the revolutionary process started with a crisis in the French state. By 1789 many French people had become critical of the monarchy, even though it had been largely successful in militarily defending France and in quelling domestic religious and political violence.
The Essay on Government by the People
The population growth has caused concern for many Americans because of the terms of numbers and poverty that comes with this growth. There is a pattern showing of wealth transferring from poorer nations to the richer nations of the globe and the information technology revolution is speeding this cycle up. With population growth reaching new heights new concerns for increasing urban growth has ...
They resented the rising and unequal taxes, the persecution of religious minorities, and government interference in their private lives. These resentments, coupled with an inefficient government and an antiquated legal system, made the government seem increasingly illegitimate to the French people. The royal court at Versailles, which had been developed to impress the French people and Europe generally, came to symbolize the waste and corruption of the entire Old Regime. A Parlements and Philosophes During the 18th century, criticism of the French monarchy also came from people who worked for the Old Regime. Some of the king?s own ministers criticized past practices and proposed reforms, but a more influential source of dissent was the parlements, 13 regional royal courts led by the Parlement of Paris. The parlements were empowered to register royal decrees, and all decrees had to be registered by the parlements before becoming law. In this capacity, the parlements frequently protested royal initiatives that they believed to threaten the traditional rights and liberties of the people. In widely distributed publications, they held up the image of a historically free France and denounced the absolute rule of the crown that in their view threatened traditional liberties by imposing religious orthodoxy and new taxes.
These protests blended with those of others, most notably an influential group of professional intellectuals called the philosophes. Like those who supported the parlements, the philosophes did not advocate violent revolution. Yet, they claimed to speak on behalf of the public, arguing that people had certain natural rights and that governments existed to guarantee these rights. In a stream of pamphlets and treatises?many of them printed and circulated illegally?they ridiculed the Old Regime?s inefficiencies and its abuses of power. During this time, the parlementaires and the philosophes together crafted a vocabulary that would be used later to define and debate political issues during the Revolution. They redefined such terms as despotism, or the oppression of a people by an arbitrary ruler; liberty and rights; and the nation. Financial reform was attempted before 1789. Upon his accession to the throne in 1774, Louis XVI appointed the reform-minded Anne Robert Jacques Turgot as chief finance minister. Between 1774 and 1776 Turgot sought to cut government expenses and to increase revenues. He removed government restrictions on the sale and distribution of grain in order to increase grain sales and, in turn, government revenue.
The Essay on A Government For The People
In 1787, the fathers of our country met at the Philadelphia Convention to ratify the document that would soon be known as The Constitution of the United States of America. This Constitution was to be the supreme law of the land. Our Constitution was set up in order to form a more perfect union, and to give the people under its provision certain unalienable rights. Among the rights granted to the ...
Jacques Necker, director of government finance between 1777 and 1781, reformed the treasury system and published an analysis of the state of government finance in 1781 as a means to restore confidence in its soundness. But most of these reforms were soon undone as the result of pressure from a variety of financial groups, and the government continued to borrow at high rates of interest through the 1780s. Charles Alexandre de Calonne was appointed minister of finance in 1783, and three years later he proposed a new general plan resembling Turgot?s. He wanted to float new loans to cover immediate expenses, revoke some tax exemptions, replace older taxes with a new universal land tax and a stamp tax, convene regional assemblies to oversee the new taxes, and remove more restrictions from the grain trade. D Assembly of Notables and Estates-General To pressure the parlements into accepting the plan, Calonne decided to gain prior approval of it from an Assembly of Notables?a group of hand-picked dignitaries he thought would sympathize with his views. But Calonne had badly miscalculated. Meeting in January 1787, the assembly refused to believe that a financial crisis really existed. They had been influenced by Necker?s argument that state finances were sound and suspected that the monarchy was only trying to squeeze more money from the people.
They insisted on examining state accounts. Despite a public appeal for support, Calonne was fired and replaced by Lom?nie de Brienne in April 1787. Brienne was also unable to win the support of the assembly, and in May 1787 it was dismissed. Over the summer and early fall, Brienne repeatedly tried to strike a compromise with the Parlement of Paris. But the compromise fell through when the king prevented the Parlement from voting on proposed loans, an act that was seen as yet more evidence of despotism. In May 1788 the government abolished all the parlements in a general restructuring of the judiciary. Public response to the actions of the king was strong and even violent. People began to ignore royal edicts and assault royal officials, and pamphlets denouncing despotism inundated the country. At the same time, people began to call for an immediate meeting of the Estates-General to deal with the crisis. The Estates-General was a consultative assembly composed of representatives from the three French estates, or legally defined social classes: clergy, nobility, and commoners. It had last been convened in 1614. Under increasing political pressure and faced with the total collapse of its finances in August 1788, the Old Regime began to unravel.
Brienne was dismissed, Necker reinstated, and the Estates-General was called to meet on May 1, 1789. Estates-General, national representative body in France before 1789. Its basic function was to give consent to royal taxation. Its members were divided into three classes, or estates: the clergy, the nobility (both small minorities), and the third estate, which represented the great majority of the people. The Estates-General, first convened by King Philip IV in 1302, was most powerful in the 14th and early 15th centuries. Under Charles VII the monarchy began to develop independent sources of revenue and relied less on the Estates-General. After 1614 the body did not meet until 1789, when Louis XVI summoned it to deal with the financial crisis that gripped France on the eve of the French Revolution. In June 1789 the third estate, joined by some of the clergy and nobility, began the Revolution by defying the king and declaring itself a National Assembly. Louis XV (1710-74), king of France (1715-74), whose failure to provide strong leadership and badly needed reforms contributed to the crisis that brought on the French Revolution. Louis was born at Versailles on February 15, 1710, the great-grandson of Louis XIV, whom he succeeded at the age of five.
Philippe II, duc d’Orl?ans, governed as regent until Louis reached his legal majority in 1723. In 1725 the king married Maria Leszczy?ska, daughter of Stanis?aw I of Poland. The following year he appointed his former tutor, Andr? Hercule de Fleury, as prime minister. Fleury gave France a stable administration until his death 17 years later. Thereafter Louis himself was in nominal control, but he took only a sporadic interest in government and never followed any consistent policy at home or abroad. He was frequently influenced by his mistresses, the most powerful of whom was the marquise de Pompadour. France was involved in three wars during Louis’s reign. As a result of the first, the War of the Polish Succession (1733-35), France gained the province of Lorraine. The second, the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48), which marked the beginning of a colonial struggle with Britain, was indecisive. In the last, the Seven Years’ War (1756-63), France, crippled by
