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The French revolution and the Enlightenment are closely related. The French Revolution took the ideas of the Enlightenment and applied to their situations. Philosphes like Voltaire and Montesquieu were applied to the various problems France faces. Solutions about people’s rights and government was found in the Salons that hosted much of the Enlightenment. Freedom of speech that would allow people to speak how they wanted without fearing an oppressive government, a new system of government that would allow groups of people to be in power instead of one monarch, and political equality that would give the third estate power like the rest of the estates were all topics both the French Revolution and the Enlightenment faced.
Philosophes and revolutionaries alike wanted freedom of speech. After years of an oppressing government controlling people’s conversations and literature, people wanted change. Voltaire, a famous french philosophe, promoted freedom of speech. Voltaire once said “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He viewed this basic right as a necessity for all nations. Revolutionaries, as well believed in this right and put it in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The people of France realized that the “ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man.” Another way the revolutionaries showed support of freedom of speech was by forming the National Assembly. After being blocked out of the Estates General, the third estate formed their own assembly and questioned what the Estates General and Monarchy was accomplishing. By doing this the third estate declared their, and everyone else’s opinion was important. “Every citizen, may according...

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...the same level as a peasant. Louis XVI does not have more rights because he was king. In order to gain this type of political equality the revolutionaries committed acts like storming the Bastille and attacking Versailles. Those acts forced the monarchy to focus attention on these revolutionaries and give into their demands. This cycle of events slowly gave Robespierre and his followers more and more power. The shift in power gave more responsibility to more people, which John Locke believed was important for any functional government.
Overall, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution focus on the same issues. With salons in Paris giving birth to new ideas and theories a french revolution was inevitable. Freedom of speech, a representative system of government, and political equality were focuses on both the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

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