by Sandy Winn

Created on: June 21, 2008   Last Updated: July 01, 2008

Many factors contributed the upheaval of French citizens that led to the storming of the Bastille Prison, on July 14, 1789, that essentially marked the beginning of the French Revolution. By the time Louis XVI became the King of France with his wife Marie Antoinette by his side as queen in 1774, decades of tensions within the French government itself and French citizens outraged at their government officials were ongoing and growing by the day. To make matters worse, throughout the 1780s there was severe hunger due to crop failures and not to mention that taxes on the people were outrageous to say the least.

An earlier predecessor of Louis XVI, Louis XIV, created a huge fiasco within government that caused major hostility within France's political system. He wanted absolute power so he established a system in which he appointed non-nobles to noble status and gave them control over regions normally held by true nobles (those with social status who were actually born and raised in a specific region and given positions in government). This created a system of civil bureaucracy and a centralized government. Regional aristocrats and regional parliament were outraged as it stripped much of their power and gave it to king assigned nobles who would vote in favor of the throne versus their designated region. Bitterness arose and apprehensions ensued, as a result of the established system, among the true nobles and those appointed by the king and worsened over time.

Contributing also to rising tensions within the government was another political system known as the Estates General. The Estates General was composed of three estates: the church (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and those who were not nobility or of the church (Third Estate). Most of the power was held by the first two Estates whereas only a miniscule amount of power was given to the Third Estate. Members of the Third Estate, made up of regular citizens, were allowed to vote but there was a bit of a catch in the system that basically made their votes fruitless. Even though the Third Estate held the majority of people, votes were counted by Estate majority and not individual votes.

Members of the the Third Estate were paying a grotesque amount of taxes, even peasants had to pay taxes on everything from roads, to room and board, and salt of all things. Naturally, the Third Estate was inclined to vote for measures that would reduce taxes and against tax hikes. Reducing taxes meant that members of

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