Select one of the causes you listed and explain how it contributed to the French Revolution.

Without
seeing your list, it is hard to select a particular cause of the French Revolution to explain.
However, let's briefly look at some of the major causes of this historic event.

Extreme Social Inequality

Before the
Revolution, France was divided into three Estates. The first two consisted of the clergy and the
nobility which had all the power and paid no taxes. However, the First and Second Estate
consisted of only two percent of the country's population. The vast majority, the Third Estate,
had few rights, no access to positions of political power, and were subjected to frequent abuse.
Such a system in which the majority are treated this way has proven untenable many times
throughout history. It should come as no surprise that the Third Estate unified to overthrow the
power structure that had subjugated them for so long.

Famine

A series of poor harvests
throughout the 1780s brought France to the brink of famine and mass starvation. The peasants,
who did all the farming but were still forced to feed the First and Second Estates, were hungry
and desperate. To make matters worse, the price of grain was skyrocketing due to recent changes
in the regulation of the market. Few French peasants could afford the limited supplies of food
available. In many ways, it was this desperation that drove them to revolt.

Royal Excess

Despite the extreme plight
of the peasantry, the nobility and monarchy appeared unconcerned. For generations, they built
lavish palaces across France and flaunted their wealth. Not only did this highlight the economic
chasm that existed between them and the peasantry, but it was also extremely wasteful. Fully
aware that there was enough wealth in the country to feed and care for the entire populace, the
Third Estate became fed up with the excessive and wasteful spending of the monarchy and rose in
revolt.

New Enlightened Ideas

This was also a time of revolutionary thinking. The century leading up to the French
Revolution gave birth to the ideas of Enlightenment philosophers. This intellectual movement
stressed the rights of the citizen and the consideration of the true source of political
legitimacy. Many of these thinkers, such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, questioned
whether class divisions were a natural and just way to organize and rule a society. Nations,
they argued, should be made up of free people whose government is committed to protecting their
natural rights. The United States had recently won a revolution and established itself along
these ideals. This was a huge inspiration to many of the revolutionaries of
France.