later in the Revolution, the sans-culottes continued to prove influential, as they were involved in the storming of Tuileries, which led to King Louis XVI's deposition, and stormed the National Convention, which gave Robespierre and the Jacobins the opportunity to take control. Although the Reign of Terror and subsequent Thermidorian Reaction suppressed sans culotte activity later in the Revolution, the decline was also due in part to diminished revolutionary spirit and apathy on the part of the government of the Directory. Nevertheless, in the crucial early and middle stages of the Revolution, the sans-culottes proved to be remarkably effective at forcing change—change that otherwise might not have occurred.
2. Although the financial crisis of the ancient regime was the immediate spark that set off the French Revolution, which broader factors within France contributed to the Revolution?
In adhering to an outdated and essentially baseless feudal system, the aristocracy and monarchy of France provided the true impetus for the French Revolution. In the years leading up to the Revolution, France was riddled with unsustainable economic and cultural disparities: it showed a decadent facade to the
world while actually facing catastrophic debt, and boasted some of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment, though its populace was overwhelmingly illiterate and poor.
At the same time, discontent grew among the lower classes as landlords in the countryside continued to bind peasants to outdated, oppressive feudal contracts that were often difficult to fulfill. Simply put, with Enlightenment ideas spreading through France in the late 1700 s , it became increasingly obvious that the French nobility wielded a disproportionate amount of power and privilege for no apparent