France In The 1700s

586 Words3 Pages
In the 1700s, France was considered the most advanced country in Europe. It had a large population and a prosperous foreign trade. It was the center of the Enlightenment, and France’s culture was widely praised and imitated by the rest of the world. However, the appearance of success was deceiving. There was a great unrest in France, caused by the harvests, high prices, high taxes, and disturbing questions raised by the Enlightenment Ideas. Peasants formed the largest within the Third Estate, more than 80% of France’s 26 million people. Peasants paid about half their income to the nobles, the Church, and taxes to the king’s agents. They even paid taxes on such basic living supplies as salt. The heavily taxed and discontented Third Estate…show more content…
Many of the items in the palace would cost the country thousands of dollars. Many outrageous clothes would be put up in the castle to show beauty even though it would put the nation into a deeper debt. All of these costly materials would help fuel the lower class people to revolt and change the French forever. The guillotine was also known as the “National Blade” because of how many lives it would take in such a short time period. Almost every crime would be punishable by death of the blade. In one month over 700 people would fall to the razor. The guillotine was very frequently used to kill people because the people who designed it hoped that the punishment would be, 1) quick and painless 2) humiliating 3) it was easy to clean up the blood and dead bodies. Marie Antoinette was a very pretty, lighthearted, charming woman. Born in Austria, she arranged a marriage with Louis XVI before her birth in hoping to become allies with the French. However, she was very unpopular with the French people because of her spending and her involvement in controversial court affairs. Marie was also a gambler who would lose great amounts of money on playing cards. One year she lost 1.5 million dollars alone playing cards
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