Chapter 371: The French Revolution
The bourgeoisie was oppressed by Louis XVI's debts, even the Estates-General were completely outlawed, and the army loyal to the king marched into Paris, the capital of France, and imposed total martial law!
After all, Louis XVI was nothing, and he also knew how hot the anger of the people below was, and he was still ready to suppress it with the necessary army!
Isn't it the first time in the history of absolute monarchies in Europe that they have relied on the military to retain their power?
Originally, the working class and the burgher class, mainly small merchants, instigated by the bourgeois aristocracy, had been pushed to the margins, but the mass presence of Louis XVI's army succeeded in making the burghers and workers retreat, and the French Revolution was crushed at the tipping point!
As a state violence machine, the deterrent power of the army is still quite large!
It's a pity that even the house is cloudy and leaking, and even God doesn't seem to favor Louis XVI, the faint king. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. biquge。 info
A year after the end of the Americas War, France was hit by a widespread drought!
Hailstones with a circumference of up to 40 millimeters continuously hit the farmland, causing a large amount of land to be wiped out. In the winter of the same year, France was in a state of bitter cold.
The price of bread has once again risen sharply, the number of sick and dead people has risen, there has been mass famine and widespread malnutrition. The famine even spread to many parts of Europe, and the government lacked sufficient capacity to transport food to the affected areas.
The soaring price of grain has led to the products of other industries, which has triggered a general inflation in France, which has reduced the purchasing power of society and further weakened the income of the peasants due to the landlords' failure to collect and increase rents. The Roman Catholic Church, the largest landowner in the country, tithes the grain. Tithes, while ostensibly relieving the pressure of the king's taxes on the populace, were in fact a mountain for the poor who hungered every day.
Checkpoints in France have restricted economic activity in the country and become a barrier to transportation during intermittent crop failures.
The unsalable commodities and the high unemployment rate caused by the influx of peasants into the cities have all caused social unrest.
As a result of the loss of the war, the total amount of French national debt amounted to 2 billion francs. The social burden of war debts, coupled with the incompetence of the military under the monarchy, weighed down the provision of social services to retired veterans. At the same time, the lavish life of the aristocracy, especially Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who lived in Versailles, greatly increased the financial burden on the common people. The old and inefficient fiscal system cannot afford government debt, and an unreasonable tax system makes it worse.
When Zhao Dutian was busy using the dictatorial state planned economy to rectify the post-war Han Empire, reducing the burden on the country and restoring the people's livelihood by cutting troops and personnel, France, where the class contradictions were most intense, began to deteriorate rapidly!
The conflict between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy remained growing stronger.
the resentment of intellectuals and businessmen against the privileges and domination of the aristocracy; the resentment of the peasants, workers and the bourgeoisie against the privileges of the traditional aristocratic lords; resentment against the privileged clergy and desire for religious freedom, resentment against the noble bishops of the relatively poor rural clergy, and by extension, resentment against Catholicism, the influence of the Protestant-controlled Lesser Brotherhood on other religious institutions; the desire for freedom and a republican system, especially as the revolution progressed; and the king's dismissal of Ann Robert Jacques Durgo, who was regarded as the representative of the people among the financial advisers, and later Jacques Necker.
Unlike France in the history of the earth, the first place where the uprising broke out in France in this parallel world was the vast countryside where there was a famine, and those peasants who had been exploited by the church aristocracy set off a civil unrest with the main purpose of grabbing food because they had no food!
Due to the famine covering most of the French territory, the scale of the civil unrest expanded rapidly, and the local church aristocracy was no longer able to suppress it, so Louis XVI had no choice but to continuously transfer the Paris garrison out to suppress the civil unrest!
The lack of French finances, the arrogance and indulgence of Louis XVI, the treatment of the army fell again and again, coupled with the defeat of Nuoda's France by an indigenous empire in the Americas, the morale of the French army was generally low.
Louis XVI was horrified to find that the morale of the French army, which had been rampant in Europe, had fallen to freezing point, and most of the soldiers were not thinking about killing the enemy and making meritorious contributions, but how to save their lives and make money!
This phenomenon was naturally seen by the burghers and bourgeois bigwigs in Paris, but Louis XVI was not a character to sit still, the cowardice of the French army had been exposed, and he had to seek safer measures!
The mercenaries from Switzerland and Germany, who did not participate in the war, were recruited by Louis XVI with the hard-earned money of the French people, and this act undoubtedly further angered the French people!
The people of France are already starving to death every day, and this arrogant and lascivious king is even paying to hire foreign troops to suppress his own people!
When mercenaries from Germany and Switzerland entered Paris, the Parisian burgher class (including freelancers, small merchants, workers, freedmen, and all the lower classes) staged a huge demonstration!
Seeing the spontaneous march of the citizens of Paris on such a large scale, even the bourgeois bigwigs were shocked and frightened, because they did not carry out any promotion at all!
Whether it is Louis XVI or the bourgeois tycoons and aristocrats, they all found that Paris, the capital of France, is heading into the abyss of the unknown, and Louis XVI, who has a foreign mercenary in his hand, resolutely gave the order to open fire in order to keep his throne!
Those German and Swiss mercenaries did not care about the lives of the French, and did not hesitate to shoot buckshot at the demonstrators!
After seeing the blood, the citizens of Paris did not retreat cowardly, but felt that it was a great insult for a group of foreign soldiers to be able to do so in the capital of France!
The patriotic fervor in the minds of the French rose to its peak at this moment!
Armed with rudimentary weapons and hunting muskets, the Parisian burghers sang the Marseillaise, and pounced on the foreign mercenaries regardless of life or death!
Since the battle took place in a small neighborhood in Paris, France, the two sides were basically street fighting, and the foreign mercenaries could not maximize their firepower superiority, and they did not even have artillery in their hands!
In this way, the whole of Paris was boiling, the ranks of the revolution were getting bigger and bigger, and the guns in Paris continued for a week!
The alarm bells rang in Paris, and workers, craftsmen, and the urban poor poured into the streets, seized weapons, and began an armed uprising.