French Revolution revisited

On July 14, 1789, the Bastille, the symbol of the ancient regime in France, was knocked down by the Parisian crowd which confirmed the collapse of the royal power of the Bourbons.

Infact a power vacuum had appeared before 1789 with clear signs that the government was economically and politically bankrupt. Things had not been the same since the reign of Louis XIV, which is usually regarded as the high-water mark of the Bourbon dynasty. There were several factors involved, and of course they interacted to erode the authority of the government. Perhaps the most significant to pin down in terms of its results is the general intellectual climate of the 18th century enlightenment. The writers and philosophers of the enlightenment, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau questioned everything in the spirit of rational inquiry. Inevitably the illogical teachings of the Church were called into question. Thus the Divine Right of King theory too was stripped of its irrational mysterious shroud and the King no more remained the Holy Cow. But the French government proved strangely slow to see the danger in this new thinking.