Thank you, three years of high school French. And for most French people, it sucked because the people with the money, the nobles and the clergy, never paid taxes. So by 1789, France was deeply in debt thanks to their funding the American Revolution. 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.