The Stately Quadrille
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Thus far, we have been talking about the economic, political, and social frictions that were busy grinding Ancien Régime France to a halt at the end of the 18th century. But all of this was not happening in a vacuum. And throughout the course of the French Revolution, international politics […]
The Assembly of Notables
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Dating the beginning of the French Revolution has always been a bit tricky. The most common and most famous is the Storming of the Bastille in July 1789. That was when the political and economic crisis that had been mostly confined to the upper classes spilled out into a mob […]
Necker and the Necklace
Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Last week we talked about the efforts of successive Royal Ministries in the early 1770s to reform some of the more glaring problems with the Ancien Régime. And we saw how those efforts were frustrated by those who stood to lose the most from reform, whether they be aristocrats who […]