This Place is dead and I blame the moderator.

[rory_20_uk]

Some have postulated that another factor was a poor harvest which causes obvious pressures, but also that this in turn forced more to eat mouldy wheat which can cause effects ranging from illness to hallucinations. Nutters appearing all over the place is hardly going to aid stability.

I've not read about the Eastern Front in a while, but that is more to time constraints than lack of interest.

[Brenus]

The French Revolution happened because the debts due to mainly the help against the English to US (and few financial scandals as Laws system –1720-) and the seperate Peace Treaty signed by the now US where the French monarchy gained next to peanuts (few islands).

Louis the XVI needed money, so he needed to change the tax system.
In order to do this he had to gather les Etats Generaux, created by the King Philip IV Le Bel (the bad king who burned the Templars).

He was obliged to do thanks to Reactionary Nobility movement that resented the Absolute Power finally imposed by Louis the XIV (but started by Louis XIII and his Prime Minister Richelieu) after the Fronde, and that wanted to recover the feudal Rights, as price to be paid.

The gathering of the Etats Generaux had to be preceded by the writing of the Cahiers de Doleances where the good people of France politely showed what was wrong in the Humble Opinion and asked his gracious Majesty to do something about it, especially in term of tax and no more feudal Rights.

So he had 2 completely different oppositions. He could have work on it.

The food situation was not good, but the detonator, the ignition was more about the speculation on the wheat than the shortage. It was a free market economy so some did what some would call an honest speculation in stockpiling the goods then releasing at high prices in small quantities…
Bread was the main aliment of the French population at these times…
The exasperation of the populace due to this disette (light famine, don’t know in English) and the political turmoil joined in one movement, and this movement helped by the total incapacity from Louis the XVI to grasp what happened. Revoking his popular Prime Minister to please the Extreme Nobility, then recalling him under the streets pressure, promising then withdrawing changes, Louis the XVI dig the gap between him and his bon Peuple de France. The good People of France started to distrust his King.
At first the French wanted a Constitutional Monarchy, as in England.
But misusing his remained powers Louis the XVI showed his intentions to take back the absolute and full power.
So he started a process where he will loose his head, and at the end, the French Monarchy, even if few attempt to restore it were made (was the help of Foreign powers) and eventually failed.

[Brandy Blue]

disette:

Perhaps the English would be food shortage? That would mean there wasn't quite enough food but the situation was not desperate. People would be hungry but not many would actually be starving.