While there were many causes of the French Revolution of 1789, a few are credited with having the strongest influence. Among these were the faulty financial practices, a confusing and shaky government, agrarian distress, and Enlightenment ideals. All of these factors contributed to discontent among the people. There was increased state spending and a growing burden of state debt. Some of the spending can be attributed to the wars France fought (or financially assisted) during the eighteenth century. These were funded almost entirely by borrowing, which put France deeper in debt.8
The high rate of inflation was largely due to the marked increase in metallic currency in circulation during the century as well as a greater distribution of lines of credit.9 Higher prices were the result. Albert Goodwin found that “the average general prices of consumers’ goods in France were 45 per cent higher in the period 1771-89 and 65 per cent higher between 1785 and 1789 than they had been between 1726 and 1741.”10 This increase was not matched by people’s incomes, so people found that they had fewer and fewer resources to live from.
The balance of power within the government was also flawed. While technically an absolute monarchy, the power of the monarch was greatly checked by the political power of others, and was hampered by the remaining relics of feudalism. The Church held power, mainly through the influence it had over the hearts and minds of the majority of the people. Catholicism was part of people’s everyday lives, and they trusted the teachings of the Church far more than they trusted the people who taxed them into poverty. The Church held records of births, marriages, and deaths. There were also clergymen in positions of power at all levels of the government.11
As David Bell expresses, “The rise of the concepts of nation and patrie initially took place as Europeans came to perceive a radical separation between God and the world, searched for ways to discern and maintain terrestrial order in the face of God’s absence, and struggled to relegate religion to a newly defined private sphere of human endeavor, separate from politics.”12 The turn to rationalism that was characteristic of the Enlightenment tended to separate the Church from the nation. This influence, in turn, shifted people’s devotion from the Church to the idea of the patrie, or fatherland.
Another source of influence within the government were the parlements, high courts which had the right of registering royal edicts and ordinances. […] The parlements had significant power, which enabled them to influence the laws of the state, and even go so far as to deny the passage of an edict…
Provincial estates also held significant influence within the government. They had the power to enact local initiatives, as well as fiscal privileges. These provincial estates were controlled mostly by lay or clerical aristocracy.15 In addition, the Catholic Church held about 15 percent of the land in France, collected the tithe and other taxes, and engaged in commerce. However, it was exempt from taxation by the State.16 The lay and clerical aristocracy held the majority of the wealth in the country, and that gave them power within the government. The landholding aristocracy held seigniorial rights stemming from the feudal system. These rights allowed them to charge tenants for services; including the maintenance of courts to settle local disputes, to collect various dues, to charge tolls on roads and bridges, and for the local population’s use of the seigneur’s grain mill or baking oven.17
