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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Beleriphon" data-source="post: 7877952" data-attributes="member: 27847">Probably yes. The French Revolution was driven by a bunch of things one of which was an absolute monarch that absolutely wasn't a particularly good leader. If Louis had capitulated earlier to a parliamentary monarchy like the United Kingdom the revolution probably wouldn't have actually happened the way it did. Even if he'd had a competent accountant it probably wouldn't have happened.A major part of the lead up was Louis  more or less being lied to in the assessment of the financial state of France. By the time he got good number he got bad advice and ended up taxing the aristocracy and reducing their social privileges as well. So it was the aristocracy that stopped a number of Louis' reforms because it took away their some of their privileged status in France. The loss of privilege came in no small part from basically selling a title to anybody that could afford one, something that didn't sit well with the actual landed nobility. Combine that with an Estates-General bickering with each other, so the newly minted nobility was the same rank as the landed noble and had the same weight but not the same views, and you have real problems.Anyways, peasant revolts need basically two things: leaders who either aren't peasants or charismatic to make up for being peasants (or both ideally), and the peasants have to outnumber the people they're revolting against by a significant margin (not difficult really). If you think about it a full blow uprising consisting of 90% of the population in any country will over throw the government without or without firearms. Weapons make it easier, but not necessary.</blockquote>

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