E-Pox!

But he must have known though, do you think, do you not think that the second you call

an estate general, the moment the third estate has got any sort of a voice or power or

influence or anything that, again, he's playing with fire then? Or do you think he just thought,

no, I'm still the king, I'm still the puppet master essentially, I can still move pieces around the chessboard. And if worse comes to the worst, I'll just sweep it all aside or something. I think again, it was probably one of the worst times to hold the estates general because, you know, had he held an Estates General in the first year of his reign, there would have been a huge amount of public sympathy towards him as the great new king and, you know, having succeeded this man who was basically university considered to be, you know, if not thoroughly

divorced, then perhaps a tyrant. The issue in holding it in 1789 is the fact that it's

not just the third estate, because they're not, the functionaries and the members of the third

estate aren't actually really much affected by this, but it's the situation in Paris.

The population in France had increased significantly in the previous sort of 20 years.

By 1789, the population of France was around 30 million, which meant, if I recall, one in five Europeans was French.

So France, relative to the rest of the European population,

was far more significant in 1789,

and part of the reason actually why they were able

to assemble such large armies and the subsequent wars.

But the whole basis of French agriculture, industrialization

and not occurred. So, and also with the free trade policies, there wasn't this, you

know, great system of barriers preventing food from leaving the country. And so the price of bread was going up exponentially.

And of course, in the country, the peasants could afford some sort of surplus, but in the cities,

it meant that it was eating into such a substantial salary of the artisan classes in particular,

that it causes this feebrile situation within the capital.

So really, you can say...

So you have people starving to death and food, bread riots and things.

...