Was the French Revolution Just a Massive Financial Meltdown?
Professor William Doyle: a high yield interview
Professor William Doyle is a voice worth sitting still for. He knows the French Revolution the way an old river knows its bends.
This episode turns on a simple but lasting force of revolutions: money, or rather, the lack of it. We call it a political event — and it was — but the flame was first lit by coins and ledgers.
The crowns and gowns of France — once stitched by eternity — were thrown into the gutter. Behind it, a financial engine that ran dry. France’s wealth had grown with the century, but her kingdom sagged under debts from overseas wars. Without steady tax revenues, without a central bank, she borrowed at bad terms. Crisis followed crisis, survived mostly by luck. Until 1788.
It was undeclared bankruptcy. To resolve the issue, the king called the Estates General. A rare and dangerous move — the King’s way of asking his people for help. Within a few seasons, his head rolled off his shoulders.
The Revolution tore up more than royalty. It split France herself, turned her against the old church, and invented a new kind of politics — utopian and brutal in turn. Inflation, chaos, and blood muddied the hopes that first bloomed. Was it a warning to the red Bolsheviks?
Only under Napoleon did the earth settle. A civil code. A Concordat with the Pope. A central bank.
These things restored France. But it was precisely under what the revolutionaries had feared: military rule.
William Doyle’s Latest Books:
France and the Age of Revolution: Regimes Old and New from Louis XIV to Napoleon Bonaparte (2013)