Revolution In France

After the French helped the Americans beat the British in the American Revolution, the Americans didn’t pay the French back. So, when the French came back to France, they were poor since the government had spent a lot of money in America. And now that the American Constitution was being translated and published into French, they started getting ideas about whether their king was good or not. The French saw themselves divided into three estates: the first, the second, and the third estate. The first estate was the pope, the bishops, and everyone special in the Catholic church. They paid no taxes, since Catholicism was the main religion of France. The second estate was the nobles, and they paid little to no taxes. The third estate was the majority of the population of France. They were the doctors, lawyers, merchants, blacksmiths, etc. Now, the third estate was starting to go hungry and poor since they had paid most of the taxes. Because of this, Louis XVI decided that the second estate should pay more taxes, since they were rich. But because they didn’t want to lose their money, they wanted a vote on whether they should pay taxes or not. They also said that to win, it was not about the numbers, it was about the estates. So whichever estate got the most estates, that estate won. When it was time to vote, Louis made many rules to the third estate to make them feel less important, like letting them use only the side doors of Versailles (the place where they were going to vote) and they had to find seats wherever they can since he reserved seats for the second and first estate. Although the second estate did all these things to win, the first and some of the second estate realized that France would be an unhealthy country if they didn’t give money to the third estate. So when the second estate realized they were going to lose, they told Louis to lock the first and third estate doors, so that they couldn’t vote. Because of this, the National Assembly (the third estate) made an oath called the Tennis Court Oath (since they met in a tennis court), which said that they would make the new rules of France. Because the third estate wasn’t getting help, the French commoners in Paris were rioting. The French in Paris wanted ammunition and guns to fight against the king of France, for they wanted everyone to be equal. Some French knew where the ammunition was- that was the Bastille, an old prison. They killed the prison keeper, released the prisoners, and took the ammunition. With Louis’ soldiers also being in the third estate, Louis was afraid they would revolt against him, causing him to use his special bodyguards, the Swiss guards, to put down the riot. However, it was not long before the French captured the king and killed his guards. Now that the king was captured, the National Assembly was deciding what to do with him. But while they were thinking what to do with him, many French secretly wanted Louis on the throne again. So, these loyalists helped him get out in the night so that he might not be seen. Although it was going well at first, someone recognized his face and realized it was the king of France. He then told the guards that the king was escaping, and captured him again. With this, the National Assembly decided to kill him and his loyalists, so that he could not take back his throne and France would no longer be a monarchy. After they killed the king and his family, the National Assembly made Robespierre a lawyer, a dictator for a while, and his mission was to get rid of all people he thought were loyal to the king. However, he abused his powers, and although he did kill loyalists, he also killed people who were with the revolution, too. He then killed anyone who was suspicious to him or who might betray him were all killed. Regretting making him a dictator, the National Assembly voted to kill Robespierre, so that no more people would die. When Robespierre heard of this, he tried putting them to the guillotine, but they would not obey his orders, and killed him instead. With the king and Robespierre gone, the French had no more leader, until Napoleon came along.