Why did the French Revolution happen?
The French Revolution was caused by financial crisis from war debts, an unfair tax system burdening the Third Estate, Enlightenment ideas challenging monarchical authority, the example of the American Revolution, aristocratic resistance to reform, and bread shortages that pushed ordinary Parisians to revolt.
The French Revolution had deep structural causes that had been building for decades, combined with immediate triggers that transformed discontent into revolution. No single factor was sufficient — it was their convergence that made 1789 explosive.
Financial crisis was the immediate trigger. France was effectively bankrupt after decades of expensive wars, including its support for the American Revolution. The monarchy spent lavishly — Versailles consumed enormous resources — while tax revenue was inadequate because the nobility and clergy were largely exempt from taxation. When Louis XVI tried to impose new taxes, the privileged orders resisted, forcing him to convene the Estates-General for the first time since 1614.
The social structure was indefensible. France's society of three estates concentrated privilege in the hands of the clergy (First Estate) and nobility (Second Estate), who together comprised perhaps 3% of the population but owned roughly 30% of the land and paid virtually no taxes. The Third Estate — from wealthy bourgeoisie to impoverished peasants — bore the tax burden while being excluded from political power and social prestige.
Enlightenment ideas provided the intellectual ammunition. Decades of writing by Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and others had undermined the legitimacy of divine-right monarchy, aristocratic privilege, and religious authority. The American Revolution (1776) demonstrated that these ideas could actually be implemented — that a people could overthrow their ruler and create a government based on natural rights and popular sovereignty.
Aristocratic intransigence made reform impossible within the existing system. When the nobility blocked every attempt at fiscal reform to protect their tax exemptions, they inadvertently forced a political crisis that went far beyond what anyone intended. And when bread prices soared due to poor harvests in 1788–1789, the urban poor — facing literal starvation — became a revolutionary force that the bourgeoisie alone could never have been.