The French Revolution

CHAPTER 3 · 1789–1792 · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

Switch to Europe: an unbroken charcoal of monarchies, and France the grandest of them — 28 million people, the continent’s language of civilization, and a state that cannot pay its bills. The arithmetic is brutally simple: the American war was funded entirely by loans, interest now eats half the budget, and the privileged orders — nobility and Church, owning perhaps 40% of the land — are largely exempt from tax. When a run of bad harvests doubles the price of bread (a laborer’s family already spends half its income on it), fiscal crisis and hunger arrive together. In desperation the king summo

The turn: The Bastille, 14 July 1789.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.