French Revolution Notes Part -2
Story like a movie
As you see the Bastille Fort was destroyed by the angry mob in Paris,because King had ordered the army to enter into the city. But why did kind do so.
In order to find out the answer of this stirring question we would have to go into flashback of 15 years ago like they do in the movies to understand the full story of the event.
15 Years ago
A new King Louis xvi had ascended the throne, while he was 20 years old. He got married with Austrian princess Marie Antoinette. The tragedy with him was that he found the treasure empty
because his father had wasted the whole money in the war against England.
He needed money to spend on school,college,army and maintainance of his grand Versailles palace.
Furthermore he sent army to America in the war against England. So he took loan to afford all that. Now the lenders were charging 10% interest rate on the loan, which he was not able to pay.
So he thought of increasing taxes on the people. Now let's talk about the people on whom the tax would be imposed.
French society in the 18th century
French society was divided into three estates.
1.First Estate: Clergy(people performing the activity of priest) was part of it.
2.Second Estate: Nobility (People having a lot of land)
Both first and second estates were exempted from paying taxes
3.Third Estates: The 3rd estate of then French society was further divided into three categories. Big businessmen, merchants, court officials, lawyers, etc. belonged to the first category of 3rd estate. Peasants and artisans belonged to the second category. And small peasants, landless labours and servants belonged to third category, and were considered as the lowest class in the society. Members of the third state had to pay all types of taxes including tithes and taille.
Tithes: A type of tax collected by churches from peasants in the form of 1/10th of the agricultural production.
Taille:
A type of tax which was paid to the government by members of third estate.
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