The revolution itself originated in a fiscal crisis. The government needed more money and thus sought new taxes. The traditional French method of raising money was to tax those who had no political power, the peasants and the merchants. Meanwhile a food crisis was developing; France could no longer feed itself. Nearly all parts of the population, including much of the nobility, were ready for change.On July 14, 1789, Parisians stormed the old Bastille fortress, a large prison. The goal was to retrieve arms and ammunition believed stored there. In the course of the action the remaining seven prisoners there were released. This dramatic event is celebrated annually as the start of the French Revolution.
At the beginning, the motto "liberty, fraternity, and equality" expressed high hopes for a new age in France. No one, however, was ready for the firestorm of change that ensued. The onset of revolution unleashed pent-up furies in the population. A new National Constituent Assembly became the government, and they drafted a new constitution known as The Declaration of the Rights of Man. The king and queen were brought to Paris from Versailles and kept essentially under house arrest. The old order and its remnants of medieval feudalism were swept away. Church property was nationalized. A widening gulf between France and the rest of Europe led to war against Austria and Prussia in 1792.
Defeats in war led to a frenzy of violence. The monarchy was abolished and a republic established. The king and queen were executed on a new device for capital punishment, the guillotine. As the revolutionary extremists gained power, they presided over the Reign of Terror, which claimed uncounted victims.
By 1795 the revolution was winding down. Political power was vested in a five-man Directory and two legislative chambers. Across Europe the revolutionary and counter-revolutionary conflicts continued. Then, within a few years, a Corsican army officer named Napoleon would proclaim himself emperor, install a dictatorship, and lead the armies of France into more than a decade of horrific European wars.
The French Revolution was one of the genuinely momentous events of modern history: it announced the end of monarchical rule and the beginning of strident nationalism, and it spawned new ideas about equality that influenced many nations and eventually gave the world socialism and Communism.