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= = **Revolution in France** toc Chapter 1: France before the Revolution Pages 15-21 (13-19 on scanned)

This video may help you understand the reign of King Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette in a funny way. Enjoy :) media type="youtube" key="wFc4NG_SBBI?fs=1" height="385" width="480"

** I. Changes in public opinion **

 * 1) ** ﻿ ** By the 1980's most educated people agreed upon the basic ideas and values.
 * 2) Wanted a more humane, torture-free law.
 * 3) Favored toleration of non-Catholics such as Protestants and Jews
 * 4) Above all, they wanted to change how the way France was govern
 * 5) They wanted a say in the government

II. The government of France

 * 1) France was run by monarchy with King Louis the sixteenth as its ruler.
 * 2) He was an absolute monarch in which he didn't have to share his power with anyone else.
 * 3) Louis governed France in the Versailles which was 18km outside Paris.
 * 4) Thousands of nobles lived with him in the palace and they helped carry out the affairs of the nation
 * 5) Louis's wife was Marie Antoinette and they were married in 1770 when he was 15 and she was 14.
 * 6) At first, they had been popular among the French people but as time went by, they lost popularity.
 * 7) They especially didn't like Marie Antoinette

III. Marie Antoinette

 * 1) ﻿One was the fact that she was foreign
 * 2) But there were a lot more reasons to why the people hated her
 * 3) People disliked that she spent huge amounts of money on clothes, jewelry and gambling, for having favorites at court
 * 4) And because they thought she was unfaithful to Louis
 * 5) In 1774, Louis gave Marie Antoinette her own small place in the grounds of the Versailles. This place was called Petit Trianon.
 * 6) Over the next five years, she spent huge sums of money in creating beautiful gardens around the Petit Trianon.
 * 7) In part of this garden, she built a small old-looking village which was known as hamlet.
 * 8) Many people thought this was pointless and silly

The Marquis de Bombelles, //Journal//, 1780-84
 * "A lot of money has been put into making the queen's hamlet look like a poor village. Perhaps by spending a bit more, her majesty would have been able to get rid of the signs of poverty in the real villages for twenty or thirty miles around, and to improve honest people's homes... To imitate, in an amusement garden, the suffering of your subjects seems to be making a game out of their situation."**

IV. Use and abuse of power

 * 1) ﻿Many people disliked the king because they thought he had too much power
 * 2) They especially disliked the 'sealed letters' where someone's name was written on it
 * 3) The person's name written meant that he'll be executed or exiled.
 * 4) People especially hated that ministers could use these letters
 * 5) During the reign of Louis XVI, around 14,000 sealed letters were issued, mainly people who disagreed with the government.
 * 6) Others were put in Bastille (jail) in Paris
 * 7) Many people soon accused Louis of being a 'despot'.
 * 8) Despot in the eighteenth century was a way of saying that a ruler was a dictator or a tyrant.

**"I am instructed by His Majesty to send you these six letters that you can use as you see fit. You only have to write in the names of those to be arrested."** ** Letter from the Comte de Saint-Florentin, Secretary of State, to the Duc de Chaulnes, King's Commissioner in Brittany, 1752 **

V. Financial Problems

 * 1) ﻿As king of one of the world's largest countries, Louis had to deal with many serious problems. One of these was the fact that his government was in dept. This was called the **royal debt**.
 * 2) The French Government was in debt for nearly a hundred years because it spent more than it earned each year.
 * 3) Their only sollution was to increase taxes, reduce their spending, or borrow more money

**VI. An attempt at reform**
 * 1) Out of their three choices, they decided to increase taxes.
 * 2) **Calonne**, the finance minister, drew a plan to reform the taxation system.
 * 3) The biggest effect of this reform made landowners pay a land tax.
 * 4) The nobles and clergies however would do whatever they could to avoid these taxes
 * 5) To avoid a delay by the clergies who could refuse the law from being registered, Calonne held a meeting of 150 leading nobles and clergymen to Paris to discuss and approve this new tax.
 * 6) However they refused this new tax and claimed that they did not have the power to register this law, that only the Estate General could approve of it.
 * 7) Louis tried to introduce the law without their approval but the **Paris parliament** refused as well.
 * 8) He then claimed that he was the only one with enough power and exiled the Paris parliament.
 * 9) People protested to this and some of these were violent.
 * 10) In Grenoble, four people died in a 'Day of Tiles' when a mob of protestors pelted soldiers with tiles torn from the cities roof tops.
 * 11) These protests went on for about 6 months and in August 1788, Louis gave in and ordered elections for the Estate General.
 * 12) The date of the first meeting was to be May 1st 1789

Summary
This part of the //Revolution of France// described the beginning of the revolution when there were changes in public opinion. One of the many reasons that the public started revolting was because of their ruler: King Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette his Austrian wife. People claimed that the royalty had too much power over them such as the power to write a name in a 'sealed letter'. Even when they have enough money to support their poor, they continue to overly tax them to benefit themselves even when their government is in debt. This was one of their many financial problems. When they try to reform their goverment, they come across many obstacles because the nobles and the clergy didn't agree with being taxed on. At the end, after Louis had no choice but to exile the Paris parliament, people protested and forced Louis to a corner. To clear the protests, he ordered elections for the Estate General on May 1st 1789.

Question(s)
What did the royal family need so much money for? Why didn't Louis care more about his countrymen?