French Revolution Section: English Essays
The French Revolution was caused by a bad ruler and a bad economy. King Louis XVI and his wife Mary Antoinette taxed the poor people heavily and paid no attention to the country. During the early 1780’s a big percent of annual budget went towards King Louis XVI’s huge estate in Versailles. France also had no central bank, no paper currency, no ways of getting more money and an out dated tax system which only taxed the poor which had no money to begin with. The first signs of revolution appeared when the peasants stormed the fortress known as the Bastille looking for gun powder. The Bastille incident set off revolts all over France and Louis was deposed soon afterwards. King Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette were executed by revolutionaries on the guillotine in 1793. A democratic government was setup in place of the old monarchy. A doctrine called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen served as a basis for the revolutionary French leaders. The French set up a government in which an elected legislative group met annually. It also consisted of an elected judiciary and an executive headed by the king. The king had no real power and just served as a figure head.
Another revolution that took place more than 100 years later was the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution took place for nearly the same reasons that the French Revolution took place, a bad leader and a bad economy. These two reasons along with other factors caused these two revolutions. Although very similar these two revolutions had many differences. One difference is that Russia had an unsuccessful pre-revolution in 1905. Another is that France turned towards a democracy and the Russian government became communist. Instead of learning from the pre-revolution in 1905, Czar Nicholas II, made a very big mistake by not introducing reforms to correct the problems. The situation grew worse and in 1917 the Russians were fighting World War I. As riots and revolts started to break out in the streets the Czar called for the army to put down the revolution as they did in 1905. Instead the army joined the revolt and the Czar was kicked out soon afterwards.
Both the French and the Russian Revolutions had similar causes but ended up with different results. The Russians had Lenin as their leader and the French had The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. I would like to point out one similarity between these two revolutions and that is the fact that both Czar Nicholas II and King Louis XVI were executed soon after the revolutionaries took power. It is very strange to see that two countries with so many similar reasons for revolting would end up with such different governments.
Bibliography:
Landow.George P. "Victorian and Victorianism."
Charles Dickens: An Overview.
http://landow.stg.brown.edu/vistorian/vn/victor4.html
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