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The French Revolution


His successor Louis XV (1715-74) didn't improve on the situation, as he had no wish to rule strongly, preferring to focus on the pleasurable life in Versailles, and France soon came under power of corrupt and immoral royal favourites. The economy was further drained by the Seven Years" War and, due to the disproportionate taxation system which exempted nobility and the clergy, the middle and lower classes had to be taxed increasingly heavier. This bred great discontent, and the unfairness of the situation was one of the main subjects brought up when the revolutionaries first started asking for change. .
             It was this world that brought forth the philosophes, and it was this injustice in the very basic structure of life, so obvious to us now, that for the first time in centuries struck people so much as to make them unite and concentrate their thoughts on a common subject: how to change the way things were.
             The term "philosophes" refers to the great philosophers, writers, scientists and economists of the Enlightenment, also know as the Age of Reason. It is most commonly associated with the group of people including (Francois-Marie Arouet) Voltaire, (1694-1778), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Charles-Louis Secondat Montesquieu (1689-1755) and Denis Diderot (1713-1784). Each of these men made a considerable contribution to the development of the concept of liberty and sovereignty of the individual, as well as the process of breaking the old Regime and creating a new, fairer and more reasonable order. Although the Enlightenment consisted of many other philosophers and social commentators, from countries such as England and America, these four made the biggest impact on the French people, and played the largest role in driving them to a revolution.
             Voltaire, a philosopher, social critic, and probably the most influential of the philosophes, championed reason, justice and human dignity.


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