King Louis XIV, during his reign, had stated that the monarch should be equal to the task given to him and that any deficiencies in ability would be supplemented by the divinity of the office of King. Unfortunately, King Louis XV was unequal to his task and King Louis XVI, even more so . King Louis XVI, a man who was not quick to emotion, was skilled nonetheless, as a locksmith and loved to eat and to hunt .However, according to John Harman, Louis before 1787 was a clear‐headed, intelligent and politically savvy man. He was able to understand the difficulties and dilemmas of his day to day tenure, but could not deal with them effectively . Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI’s wife, made the journey from Vienna to Versailles at fifteen years of age, was stripped of her Austrian heritage and instead became a French princess . …show more content…
The National Guard was formed to try and repress the subsequent threat of pillage . The association of an aristocratic plot responsible for the break-down of the whole system in France, with nameless brigands, set a pattern over and over for what was to be a terrible revolution. It must also be noted that the Revolution was not an uprising of the beggars and poor, it was craftsmen and shopkeepers in the towns and peasant proprietors in the countryside . There were other factors involved too in bringing about the French Revolution which lasted almost 10 years from 1789 to the late 1790’s. The extravagant spending of King Louis XVI and his predecessor, France’s costly involvement in the American Revolution, poor cereal harvests for nearly two decades, drought, cattle disease and as already stated, sky rocketing bread prices . On July 14, 1789, rioter stormed the Bastille fortress in an attempt to obtain weaponry. The wave of revolutionary fervour and widespread hysteria quickly swept the countryside. ‘Revolting against years of exploitation, peasants looted and burned the homes of tax collectors,