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The 18th century ended with a bang for the United States it was

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the cool kid on the block the hottie with the shades and the black leather [Man wearing black shades and leather jacket]

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jacket who had successfully stuck it to the man revolutionary wannabes around

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the world looked at America and thought I want to be that guy including France..

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Poor France, poor, poor France here was the country that had invented cool and [A french man walking]

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produced many of the ideas that inspired the U.S to burn its bridges with big

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brother Britain and yet living in France well it kind of sucked sure the food was [French food on a table]

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great or at least we assume it was we've seen ratatouille but the government was

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rotten see the French had spent decades competing with England and other

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European powers for overseas territory and while France ended up with the

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sizeable Empire it also ended up with sizable debt clearly no one ever sat

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down with French for that difficult but necessary discussion about financial [French man approaches bank machine]

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responsibility where's good parenting when you need it of course the French

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government turned to its citizens to pay for its colonizing ways or we mean some

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of its citizens like the really poor ones See the aristocracy and the clergy didn't [French king demanding money from poor citizens]

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have to render anything unto King Louie the sixteenth their titles and status

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exempted them from taxation Frances domestic situation worsened when it was

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gobsmacked by crop failures right around the same time the government was trying [Man digging up crops]

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to figure out how to make all that debt disappear and we find that whiteout

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works wonders but those poor folks paying taxes yeah they were mostly

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farmers so not only were they required to pay taxes they didn't have anything [Farmer working on a field]

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to pay taxes with and they were hungry and there was no cooking rat in sight

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attempts at tax reform were tried but the clergy failed in its Christian duty [A vault with gold bars inside]

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and opted not to part with all its gold so King Louis the sixteenth who would be

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headless in the very near future called the meeting of the estate general..

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that product of feudalism that separated society from the clergy, nobility and

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the third estate better known as the plebs.. but the year was 1789 and the estate

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general were really not that relevant anymore after all a significant portion [Men in a meeting at the estate general]

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of the Third Estate wasn't poor at all the Bourgeoisie as this collection of

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rich business men was called had way more cash to hand

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over than most members of the aristocracy but what the Bougeoisie [Bougeoisie hands over cash]

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didn't have was power these upstarts from the Third Estate wanted the estate

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general to embrace democratic reform they wanted a single legislative body [Men stood outside a government building]

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unmarked by class divisions they wanted every person's vote whether that person

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was a bishop or a bartender to have equal value and they wanted free parking [A bishop at a bar]

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on Sundays..ha dream on. This desire for reform went over about as well as you

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might expect which is to say well it didn't go over well at all everything [Steam comes out of the Kings head]

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went straight to the hot place after that the Third Estate ditched the

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estate general, formed its very own super awesome National Assembly and

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demanded a new constitution King Louie the 16 said no to that and sent in the [King Louie shakes his head]

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troops and well actually he probably said no all right well the infamous state

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prison known as the Bastille was stormed by the revolutionaries. The Declaration [Revolutionaries storm the Bastille]

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of the Rights of Man was declared it talked about liberty and equality but

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did nothing for women slaves or people who didn't own property because well you

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know only rich white guys matter obviously the revolution was on and as

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you'll see in the next lesson, it didn't go well for a whole lot of people [People preparing for the guilotine]

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France may have started out longing for the shades and the leather jacket of

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democracy but it ended up with the black robe and the scythe of the reign of terror [Death holding a scythe at a bar]

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