by Carol H. Morgan

Created on: August 23, 2009   Last Updated: August 30, 2009

Louis XVI was probably a bit conflicted about the prospect of helping a country overthrow their sovereign Lord. He didn't really want his own people to get those kinds of ideas, though in the end he couldn't prevent it. And that was partially because wars, including the aid they contributed to the American Revolution, ended up ravaging France's treasury and making him look like a foolish puppet for scheming advisers that led him into losing ventures that weakened France economically and as a world power.

MOTIVATIONS FOR FRANCE TO BECOME INVOLVED IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1. Assert themselves militarily

The main motivation for France's getting involved in a potentially dangerous and losing war venture was ironically that they had just come from several and wanted to reassert their strength, both in Europe and in the New World. They had just had disastrous results in several painful drawn-out wars, the French-Indian War, for one, to compete with Britain and their future allies, the colonists, for land in North America.

They lost this war, of course, which is evident today merely by the fact that basically North America Speaks English and South America Spanish. France ended up rather elbowed out of the perceived booty in the colonial game.

On a slightly larger scale, so much so that it was often referred to as a 'World War,' involving itself in another try to curb Britain's success at colonizing North America (that few in Europe were very thrilled about), they entered The Seven Years' war which seemed like it would be a cinch because Britain had few and rather uninvolved allies. But they were sent home with their tail between their legs yet again.

So by this point France's foreign and military policy was looking rather weak. They had had rivalry with Britain dating back to the thirteenth century, it is true, (though it is debatable that they would have entered the war just to have a chance to fight them, they had that chance constantly and mostly declined). They wanted one last chance to prove that they were not militarily laughable and protect what holdings they did have in North America so they wouldn't have to keep selling them off at cents on the dollar just to finance their treadmill's progress militarily.

2. Search for new friends and allies

At this point the colonists were looking like better and better allies than any they had garnered in Europe with their continual against-the-odds military victories. Most of the rest of Europe had few stakes in the actual

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