french revolution

French Revolution

I think it started due to a shortage of french poodles and pink cupcakes.

(Try Google and your public library)

Not cupcakes, cake ..."let them eat cake"

I recommend to you The Old Regime and the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville for a detailed discussion of the long-term problems with the French monarchical and aristocratic system. In the short-term, near constant warfare from 1632 to 1783 certainly did not help, and more specifically, France bankrupted itself in its war with England at the time of the American revolution. A heavy hail storm which was general in the north of France in 1788 destroyed much of the nation's grain crop, and speculators gouged people shamelessly. This pissed off the peasants. Louis XVI fired his finance minister at the height of the financial crisis of 1789, and this pissed off the middle class. Few people in France in 1789 were happy with things as they stood.

Otherwise, go to the library and do you own homework, you've been given sufficient information for web searches (you migh even find de Tocqueville's book online) and plenty for a search of card catalogues and actual, hold-in-your-hand books.

I give you an A+ Setanta, and if our friend only needs a paragraph he will get one too.

Did anyone read the Antonia Fraser's (sp?) book on Marie Antoinette? It made me feel very sympathetic towards her- maybe it's just a chick thing.

Not cake, crusts . . . Marie Antoinette (nee, Maria Antonia) is alleged to have said: "Qu'ils mangent de la croute."--"May they eat crusts." It is the English, with their snotty irreverance for France and all things French, who have created the canard about cake.

I hadn't read that, but am very interested. Her biographies of Mary Stuart, Charles II and Oliver Cromwell are quite good.

I would recommend it. The author does an excellent job of looking at Marie as both a pawn and product of her times. Marie had such a sad childhood and pathetic love life that it made me understand why she longed to be a village shepherdess instead of a queen, but a shepherdess dressed in silks and drinking her milk out of fine porcelain cups. She was like a rich yuppie saying they want "The Simple Life" and go off to buy Ralph Lauren 600 thread count sheets and a million dollar get-a-way in Colorado, all the time thinking they are making the world a better place.

Its good that witches live in the woods for all our sake.

Sometimes we pop out when you least expect us and abduct lazy students and roast them over a fire until they're nice and crispy. Get off the computer and go read a book.

Oui!

who's we? you have a mouse in your pocket!

I heard once that the remark "let them eat cake", referred to a French law which stated that if bakers had run out of bread, they were obliged to sell cake at the same price as bread. Her ignorance of the condition of the French poor was still disgracefully profound even so.

I hardly think this is the best place to discover anything very much about such a complex topic. Better try a library.

Och! Read a bio of Mazarin!! Good view of events.

Cardinal MazarinMazarin functioned essentially as the ruler of France. Although the 5-year-old Louis XIV became king in 1643 (under the regency of queen mother Anne of Austria), Mazarin acted as the ruler of France until his death, in 1661. His modest manner contrasted with the imperious Richelieu, and Anne was so fond of him and so intimate in her manner with him, that long-standing rumors were hinted that they had been secretly married and that the Dauphin was their son.

(It has gossip, sex and intrigue!!)

Mazarin's policies for France Mazarin continued Richelieu's anti-Habsburg policy and laid the foundation for Louis XIV's expansionism. The victories of Condé and Turenne brought the French party to the bargaining table at the conclusion of the Thirty Years War with the Treaties of Munster and Osnabrück (Treaty of Westphalia), in which Mazarin's policies were French rather than Catholic and brought Alsace (though not Strasbourg) to France and settled Protestant princes in secularized bishoprics and abbacies in reward for their political opposition to Austria. In 1658 he formed the League of the Rhine , which was designed to check the House of Austria in central Germany. In 1659 he made peace with Habsburg Spain in the Peace of the Pyrenees, which added to French territory in the far south Roussillon and Cerdagne and part of the Low Countries.

Towards Protestantism at home, Mazarin pursued a policy of promises and calculated delay to defuse the armed insurrection of the Ardeche (1653) for example, and keep the Huguenots disarmed: for six years they believed themselves to be on the eve of recovering the protections of the Edict of Nantes: in the end they obtained nothing.

Towards the pontificate of the successful Spanish candidate, Cardinal Pamphili, elected pope (15 September, 1644) as Innocent X, there was constant friction. Mazarin protected the Barberini cardinals, nephews of the late pope, and the Bull against them was voted by the Parliament of Paris "null and abusive"; France made a show of preparing to take Avignon by force, and Innocent backed down. Mazarin was more consistently an enemy of Jansenism, more for its political implications than out of theology, and on his deathbed warned young Louis "not to tolerate the Jansenist sect, not even their name."

Controversy over the Cardinal's policies, and the weakness of the regency, resulted in two civil wars, known as la Fronde (1648-52). Twice, in 1651 and 1652, he was driven out of the country by the Parliamentary Fronde and the Fronde of the Nobles. The countless pamphlets called Mazarinades published against him often invoked his Italian birth. In addition, the increasing authoritarian royal power of France (a process begun under Richelieu), as well as rising taxes, such as the Taille were attacked by defenders of ancient aristocratic liberties against the growing absolutism that Louis XIV was able to exploit.

(An interesting figure!!)

One might say it was us (that is the U.S.) This cost of the war (ours) was one of the straws that broke Louie's economy. And then there were those expatriate (and some patriot) rabble rousers and friends of Serate and Robespierre that just added to the democracy in the machine.

A revolution that started with shortening up some of the plutocracy, lasted almost 40 years, and built a whole new democratic plutrocracy .

But that's just my opinion--after all eveything I know about the French Revolution I learned from A Tale of Two Cities (the movie) and Fox News.

J'accuze J'accuse Jacuzzi

I'd recommend Start the Revolution Without Me as a start.

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