The French Revolution
To avenge the British from past damages the French government gave substantial financial assistance to help the Americans win their war of independence ($250M). The French government was on the brink of bankruptcy - aid to America, past wars, a spend-happy Royal court all had its toll. Worst, those with the capacity to pay taxes failed to bear their share of the burden.

In 1787 Louis XVI summoned 140 leaders of the French aristocracy requesting that they consent to abandon some of their traditional fiscal privileges to help relieve the financial woes of the government.  Instead of cooperating with the monarchy to which they owed their special status, the French notables hid behind legalisms and claimed that they had no right to do what their king wished them to do.  The aristocrats who benefited most from the old regime were the first to undermine it - the French Revolution began as an aristocratic revolt.

Dissatisfied with government of the people, by the king, for the aristocracy, the French nobles sought government of the people, by the aristocracy, for the aristocracy. Since the aristocrats controlled the first estate (the clergy) and the second estate (the nobility) they reasoned that they could out vote the third estate which represented the commoners.  A revolutionary step then occurred. The members of the Third Estate refused to follow the old method of voting and declared themselves a national assembly (June, 1789).  The Tennis Court Oath followed: members of the newly proclaimed Assembly swore that they would not disband until France had a written constitution "established and consolidated upon firm foundations." Louis XVI ordered the members of the first and second estates to vote with the third estate which legitimized it. Voting by head in the National Constituent Assembly meant the end of the aristocratic revolution and the beginning of the antiaristocratic revolution.

The ordinary people in Paris would not tolerate an unwritten constitution. To save the national Constituent Assembly the revolutionaries stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789.  The capture of the Bastille came to symbolize French freedom, the end of monarchy and feudal system.

Reforms of the French Assembly
 1. “Decrees Abolishing the Feudal System”.  
Eliminated manorial obligations that peasants owed to their landlords and special tax privileges. Public offices open to citizens "without distinction of birth."
 2. “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen”
Basic human rights and duties -- freedom of speech, press, and assembly, freedom of religion, equality of all  people before the law (Roman jurisprudence), rights of private property, and rights to justice on the basis of due process of law.
 3. The Constitution (1791). 
Provision for a limited monarchy run by property owners.  It divided the French into active and passive citizens according to the tax burden they bore.  Active citizens could vote and hold office; passive citizens could not.  Also provision for a one-house legislature to rule the country with the king having the power to veto.
 4. Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
Reorganization of the episcopal structure and the status of clergymen as civilians. The National Assembly was responsible for the clergymen’s salaries since they had taken over church lands and issued paper money (assignats) with those lands as security. The Civil Constitution required that the clergy be elected and that they take an oath of loyalty to the nation.

The new French legislative body and government witnessed several revisions in the following years (The Convention, The Directory), but the beliefs in human dignity, equality, and fraternity became the fabric of French life. In this spirit the republicans abolished slavery in the French colonies as well as imprisonment for debt.  They proclaimed their faith in free public education.  They discouraged the use of aristocratic words like Madame (my lady) and Monsieur (my sir) and replaced them with Citoyene and Citoyen.  They changed royalist names like Louis to good republican names like Benjamin and George.  They reworked the calendar to get rid of its heritage of unreason, superstition, and tyranny. July (juillet) and August (aout), named after the despots Julius and Augustus Caesar, no longer were permitted to disgrace the French calendar.  The founding of the Republic on September 22, 1792 is known as the first day of the first month of the Year I.