Thank you, France, we will get you back in World Wars I and II. And King Louis XVI was spending half of his national budget to service the federal debt. Louis tried to reform this system under various finance ministers, he even called for democracy on a local level, but all attempts to fix it failed and soon France basically declared bankruptcy. This actually coincided with hailstorms that ruined a year's harvest, thereby raising food prices and causing widespread hunger, which really made the people of France angry because they loved to eat. Meanwhile, the king certainly did not look broke, as evidenced by his well-fed physique and fancy footwear. He and his wife Marie Antoinette also got to live in the very nice palace at Versailles thanks to God's mandate, but Enlightenment thinkers like Kant were challenging the whole idea of religion, writing things like, The main point of Enlightenment is of man's release from his self-caused immaturity, primarily in matters of religion. So basically, the peasants were hungry, the intellectuals were beginning to wonder whether God could or should save the king, and the nobility were dithering about eating foie gras and songbirds, failing to make meaningful financial reform.