III.1.4. THE CURTAIN FALLS

 MENU: 3.1.4. The curtain falls

ECONOMIC GROWTH MEANT THAT

"THE BARRIERS TO CAPITALISM 

HAD TO BE BROKEN. THEY WERE BROKEN"

-- Karl Marx on the French Revolution

The transformation was inevitable, 

the fall of the monarchy was not:

The royals themselves, for different reasons,

made adapting impossible

View of the Louvre when the king arrives in Paris on July 17, escorted by a great number of citizens armed with pikes and guns who accompanied them to City Hill by Jean-Pierre Houêl, 1789 / zoom

Parisians welcomed Louis XVI with immense enthusiasm when he came to Paris a few days after the fall of the Bastille, because they thought his visit showed that he agreed.

In brief

• The queen breaks rules that she does not understand

• A bubblehead rises to the occasion

• "Bonjour Sire!," the greeting that announces calamity

• The king's disastrous flight revisited 

• The end of the 1500-year-old monarchy

• The "Temple," a prison that could have been worse

• "I have no tears left to cry"

• Marie-Antoinette attains grandeur

• Louis XVII, a story that has no end

• The Obelisk announces a new era 

• How France became a republic   

• French Presidents, heirs of kings

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Next,

The queen breaks rules that she does not understand