View source for Talk:Collapse of the French Ancien Regime

=== Significant Events ===
* '''Proximate Cause''': The Estates General of 1789. This was a meeting of the three estates of pre-revolutionary France. The three estates being the clergy, the nobility, and the commons. The problem was that the finances of the French regime were a shambles. (cue: John Law and his scheme earlier in the century). The entire tax burden was on the commons, but the nobility and the clergy had a lot of benefits. Predictably, the commons revolted, and ended up creating the National Assembly.

French finances had been a mess for a long time. But there is an interesting connection with the American war of independence. The French had lent money to the Americans in their fight against the British (who were, as always, rivals to the French). But that made the French national debt even worse. 

The initial revolution that followed was apparently an attempt to set up a constitutional monarchy, not an attempt to abolish the monarchy itself. However, things happened as things are wont to happen. And three years later, in September 1792, the monarchy was finally abolished and France became a republic. This was the First French Republic. It was to undergo multiple swings between monarchy and republicanism. By 1870, it had the third French republic. And in 1958, the Fifth (and current) French Republic, created under Charles de Gaulle.