Why did France go into revolution in 1789?

France went into revolution in 1789 because three pressures hit at once: a government that could not pay its debts, a tax system the wealthy could dodge, and a bread price that jumped 88 percent in a single year. None of them alone was a revolution. Together they left a king with no other way out than calling the Estates General, a national assembly that had last met in 1614.

The money problem came first. The Crown's debt grew from decisions like joining the American War of Independence and fighting the Seven Years' War, on top of an inadequate tax system. Tax immunities and feudal privileges let many wealthy people avoid many taxes, and few direct taxes were levied at all. Seeing the Crown's obvious money troubles, lenders demanded higher interest rates: France paid twice as much as Britain.

Who carried the burden? French society was split into three estates. The clergy and the nobility together made up 2 percent of the population; commoners were the other 98. An old maxim summed it up: the nobles fight, the clergy pray, and the people pay.

Then came hunger. Harvests were poor in 1788 and 1789, perhaps triggered by the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland. In 1789 alone, real wages fell 25 percent while the price of bread rose 88 percent. Fear of starvation already had a history: in the 1770s the minister Turgot had scrapped the rules on the grain trade, famine and riots followed, and rumours that the monarchy meant to starve the poor were widely believed.

Historians still argue about which pressure counted most. They usually accept that several factors were linked, but weigh each one differently.