Editing Age of Enlightenment (section)

==French Revolution==
The French Revolution came about for various reasons: the spreading of new ideas, natural disasters, the effects of the Little Ice Age that increased the price of grain. However, the lion's share of the fault lay with the generally decadent and increasingly useless aristocracy. In a financial report by Jacques Necker, minister of finance under Louis XVI, [[Bretonnia|the largest part of the state expenses went to the pensions and salaries of useless nobles, financed by taxes and the labor of peasants and serfs that lived like shit]]. France faced a large financial crisis at the time, amplified by the country's participation in numerous wars.

To deal with the issue, Louis XVI invited the [[High Lords of Terra|Estates General]], the traditional representative body of all France, to assemble. However, there was a simple problem with the Estates: [[derp|it was retarded]]. French society was divided into three estates: the nobles, the clergy, and everyone else, and each got one vote in the Estates General. The problem here was that the nobles and the clergy together represented maybe two or three percent of the entire population, but they still got equal voting rights in the Estates. So yes, 98% of the population could not overcome the rest by voting. With that being said, some of the nobles and priests were also discontent with this rigged and illogical system, so when the Estates General failed, some joined the Third Estate when it refused to disband. That and the dismissal of the lowborn Necker led to increasing anger and unrest, culminating in the storming of the Bastille, which sparked off the French Revolution.

The revolutionaries at first sought the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, and they even guaranteed the safety of the king. However, the strongly negative and outright threatening reaction to the whole thing from the neighboring monarchies, combined with the fact that Louis XVI was a fucking moron who tried to flee the country, led to complete abolition of the monarchy and Louis being placed on trial and executed, with one vote deciding everything. Numerous revolutionaries actually opposed the execution, mostly citing that this would lead to wars with neighboring countries.

However, a more serious concern was the fact that executing the king would set a VERY negative precedent in general and would mark the start of much, much, much more political executions and repressions. This fear turned out to be entirely and sadly justified, as after Louis XVI's execution, everything went downhill. Once the provisional government fell under the sway of the most radical revolutionary faction, numerous revolutionaries were sent to the guillotine on flimsy pretenses, peasants and workers lynched former nobles, militant anti-Christians desecrated churches and cathedrals and strove to remove all Christian influence, which only reinforced the hatred of the pious Christian population towards the revolution which deepened the chasm in society, and in general chaos took over the country. It became obvious that an iron-fisted ruler was needed to bring back stability and order and such a ruler appeared in the form of a certain Corsican manlet.