Examples Of Pre Revolutionary French Society

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Before the revolutionary period, France was a very structured country, with its population of 28 million citizens being controlled by a hereditary absolute monarchy, it had a leadership figure and was separated by the estate system. The revolution sparked because of great unhappiness and unfairness with the estate system, monarchy and much more, however before the revolution French society was structured and innovative. An example of pre-revolutionary French society under the ancien régime was the estate system, this system separated French society into three different categories excluding the king. The categories that society was divided into were: the first estate otherwise known as, the clergy which made up 1% of the population owning 10% …show more content…

The loss of these wars led to a great deficit in the royal accounts. Therefore, the monarchy had to take out loans to ensure it could keep up its lifestyle in addition to its military services. In addition to this, the lack of uniformity in the tax system made it easy for 2nd estate nobles, to escape taxes, for example, Taille (a tax on land and income) could be escaped by the 1st and 2nd estate meaning only the poorer in society had to pay it. Furthermore, the lack of a proper accounting system made the tax collections amount inaccurate, leading to corruption within the offices of the tax collectors and the Farmers-General. Furthermore, the increase of the population into cities and towns meant that there was higher demand for basic resources from the rural parts of France, however because of bad harvests there were supply shortages of basic resources so, in turn this lead to inflation, which saw basic resource prices flare, causing famine and anger amongst the 3rd

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