What Are The Long Term Causes Of The French Revolution

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One of the most remarkable events of Modern History that has impacted the way we still live today in the twenty-first century is, without a doubt, the French Revolution. The causes that led to its explosion in 1789 are divided into two main categories: long-term causes and short-term causes. The long-term causes were the language and the new way of thinking that the Enlightenment generated throughout the eighteenth century. The French phrase liberté, égalité et fraternité, which remains the official motto of France to this day, stressed the concepts of liberty, equality before the law and fraternity which changed the way people looked at the world and cast the monarchy in a bad light in the citizenry's perspective.
On the other hand, the short-term causes of the French Revolution were the financial crisis that hit France in the 1780s and the rise in population that made the already scarce resources insufficient to satisfy the basic needs of every individual. Because of the crisis, the economic conditions became particularly difficult and the prices increased significantly. On top of that, a series of bad harvests contributed as a burden to the lives of the lower classes, which eventually started resisting to taxation and protesting against the exceedingly high price of bread. The French government was …show more content…

This event, which happened on July 14, 1789, was symbolic for the reason that, in the past, the monarchs would send multitudes of innocent people to prisons without a fair trial, or even a trial at all. Still, today, the assault on the prison is the most recognizable event of the French Revolution and is remembered currently as the French national day: Bastille

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