/lit/ - Literature

>>9574929
>I'm pretty sure it was mostly the consecutive crop failures and grain shortages that led to the civil unrest during Louis XVI's reign, which despite his best intentions he lacked the leadership qualities to adequately deal with.
I agree, but I think you underestimate the impact the incessant wars had on french agriculture. Society simply couldn't sustain such war efforts, and famines like these were common in this era. There was a massive famine under Louis XIV too, but it was violently repressed because Louis XIV was a "greater" king.
>The collapse of monarchy opened up a pandora's box of (for lack of a better term) problematic concepts, nationalism being one of them.
The French revolution was a total failure, and nationalism is indeed a "problematic" idea, but my point was that the kings had it coming.
>The French "patriots" (enemies of monarchy and friends of the French state) ended up being the first to field an unprecedented total war on the rest of Europe.
Altough Napoleon was a tyrant too, the Napoleonic wars were not the first to be waged by all of europe (and more).