Most of the burden, in form of heavy taxes, had to be shouldered by the common people while Aristocrats and Church Leaders (Clergy) had easy lives.
The King Louis XVI called upon a meeting on 5th May 1789 inviting aristocrats, clergy & common people to discuss financial stress & solutions.
The three parties had one vote each but common people represented over 98% of the population in France.
So they were unhappy with just one vote as they were likely to be overruled by clergy & aristocracy 2:1.
Instead of discussing the financial reforms, the commoners began discussing unfair distribution of votes and decided they should meet separately to decide how the country should be run.
A few days later National Constituent Assembly (NCA) was formed and they pledged to keep meeting until the king agreed to meet their demands of equality.
Many of these commoners were highly educated lawyers; a few members from clergy and aristocracy also joined as they also had been commoners a few years ago.
While so far the struggle had been for equality, some members of NCA began demanding the total removal of king as head-of-the-state.
The king sensed trouble, called army to take position around Paris causing fear among commoners, who then decided to arm themselves with weapons for a rebellion.
NCA created a military of common people; they found guns at a military hospital but couldn’t find gunpowder, which was stored at prison Bastille in Paris.
They raided Bastille, which led to a bloody fight and chopping off of the head of the in-charge; the crowd then paraded with the chopped off head in the streets.
NCA got together when they got to know of this violence and voted if they wanted a peaceful struggle or a violent revolution; violent revolution won.
From here began the bloody legacy of the French Revolution and this is where NCA became an effective government of France and in-charge of French National Guard (military & police force).
In Part 2, we cover stripping of king’s powers and France becoming a republic.
In Part 3, we cover the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.
