The French Monarchy in Chaos

Chapter 19:i

Louis XIV

“After us, the deluge.”

- attributed to Louis XV

France under King Louis XV led Europe in culture and manners.

French philosophers led the Enlightenment.

Europeans slavishly copied French

fashions in clothes, art,

and cooking.

The French economy was in serious trouble

• Before long the French monarchy would be destroyed.

France under the Ancien Regime (Old Regime)

• king was an absolute monarch

-power was centralized in the royal bureaucracy

• people of France were divided by law into three estates

The clergy formed the First Estate under the Ancien Regime.

The French nobility

formed the Second

Estate under the Ancien

Regime.

The French nobility, led

by the Nobles of the Robe,

tried to regain the political power they

had lost during the reign of Louis XIV.

Commoners, who formed the

Third Estate, had many grievances against the

Ancien Regime.

The Third Estate included peasants, city workers, and bourgeoisie.

Over-taxed peasants

made up the largest group

of people within the

Third Estate.

City workers such as servants, apprentices, and

day laborers suffered, when inflation caused food prices to rise faster than

wages.

The Growing Economic Crisis

• poor harvests

• antiquated regulations limited the expansion of trade

• guilds still monopolized certain trades

Louis XVI was not a very determined or able ruler. He preferred to spend his days hunting or

tinkering with puzzles, rather than

coping with the problems of France.

Facing a financial crisis, Louis XVI call

the Estates-General for first

time in 175 years

Tennis Court Oath

• Members of the Third Estate, along with sympathetic members of the other Estates refused to attend the Estates-General

• They met at a local tennis court, and agreed not to leave until they wrote a new Constitution

• They called themselves the National Assembly

Fall of the Bastille

End of the Old Order

• In August 1789 the nobility voted to end their privleges.

• This ended feudalism in France

• No more feudal dues

• No more noble exemption from taxes

• Allowed all male citizens to hold government, military, or Church office

In October 1789 King Louis XVI agrees to move to Paris under

pressure

Political Reforms

• Catholic Church put under government control

• Unicameral Legislature elected by tax paying males

• Deep divide between left wing, moderates, and the right wing

Fearing that Austria would

help Louis XVI reclaim power France

attacks Austria, throwing

France into upheaval