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Declaration Of Independence And Enlightenment

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The Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man are two documents that sate the people are ending a relationship with their monarch. One of the two documents led to a successful revolution, the other was the beginning of a reign of terror. Both of these revolutions began with a group of people talking about enlightenment ideas. Enlightenment Ideas are when people begin to start to think that they can rule themselves and not have to have a king. Some Enlightenment ideas include: freedom of religion, the ability to make and pass laws, the ability to vote on what happens in court, the idea of a jury at a trial and not just a judge. All of the ideas mentioned above are some causes of these two major revolutions. The …show more content…

King Louis XVI and Marie Antionette were two people that should not have been ruling a country. King Louis was always gone on hunting trips and Marie Antionette spent every dime of French money. Once the Monarchy ran out money, they started to tax the Third, and poorest, estate. The third estate took up 97% of the population. 97% of the population was starving and the royal family kept spending large amounts of money until the people revolted. The people of France tried to reason with King Louis, but he refused to change his ways and kept taxing the third estate. When the people revolted, they stormed the Bastille and took all of the weapons they could. The people then went to the King’s palace and demanded he fix the way he was ruling before they killed him. The King didn’t listen and was executed along with his wife. Of the three kids that Marie Antionette had, the two boys died of Tuberculosis in jail and the daughter was sent to live the remainder of her life in exile in Austria. It may seem as though the people of France had successfully overgrown their monarchy and could begin a life of freedom, however this is not the case. The French had rushed into combat too fast and did not have a plan for what to do after they had killed their rulers. The right of Terror begins where Maximilian Robespierre beheads 40,000 people in the span of ten months for speaking against the revolution. In the end, Robespierre ends up getting

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