France was a nation ruled by an absolute monarch who had power beyond the reach of any peasant and simply beyond the reach of the aristocracy. The French King Louis XIV (1774 - 1791) was not willing to give up his monopoly which had existed for seventeen years. This was the ideal situation for his absolute government, and it might have been the case if he had been able to successfully manage France's finances. More money had been spent on road canals and wars were then raised through taxes. Furthermore, the government has lost control of the bourgeois class. The bourgeois (working-class merchants) took control using the disorganized peasant class, members of the Third Estate, who presented their grievances in notebooks to the Estates General. The dissolution of the Estates General resulted in the formation of the new National Assembly governed by the Third Estate. This assembly drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen which describes the political changes and freedoms for the Third Estate. The 1791 constitution also brought radical changes to the political structure. However, this did not bring relief to those who deserved it most, the peasants. These events constitute the prologue to the French Revolution, the most important event in French history. The French Revolution was a direct result of the excessive spending of Kings Louis XIV and Louis XVI, leaving France a financially unstable nation and ultimately resulting in a revolt of the Third Estate upset by deteriorating social and economic conditions. Drastic overspending by the government of King Louis XVI left the Treasury depleted and with little tax revenue, France was experiencing the beginnings of a revolution. With the Se...... middle of paper ......, Ontario: Penguin Group, 1988. Corzine, Phyllis. The French Revolution. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books Inc., 1995. Dowd, David L. The French Revolution. New York, New York: Harper and Row, 1965. Durant, William and Ariel. Rousseau and the Revolution. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Ferrero, Guglielmo. The two French revolutions. New York, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968. Johnson, Douglas. The French Revolution. New York, New York: Sons of GP Putnam: 1970. Lefebvre, George. The advent of the French Revolution. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1967. Palmer, R. R. The World of the French Revolution. Toronto, Ontario: Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited, 1972. Tames, Richard. The French Revolution. London: George G. Harper and Co. Ltd.,1980.