[...] having done Revolutions, it makes me want to go back and get a master’s degree in finance with a particular interest in the history of banking. I am truly not 100 percent qualified to answer some of these questions. But what I do know is that it has far less to do with out-and-out debt or the size of the debt or what kind of deficits you are running, as it does with confidence in the regime. There’s a very famous thing where the debt load that Louis XIV left upon his death was greater than the debt load that was facing Louis XVI in 1786, when they said, “Sir, the monarchy is broke. We cannot get any more money.” And the reason they could not get any more money is because the bankers in Paris would not lend them any more money.
The regime, back in the early 1700s, was able to continue to draw loans and pay its debt and get back on its feet, in a way that Louis XV couldn’t—even though, in objective nominal terms, it was a lower debt load than Louis XIV had left. And so it comes down to both: how confident people are in the regime’s future ability to pay back these debts, and then also, is there a clique of bankers who think that they can use this to their advantage?
The French Revolution is the last gasp of the remnants of the feudal system. The change over to the capitalist mode of production and social relationship requires the complete destruction of the ancien régime. The main drivers of the French Revolution were the new class of merchants and lawyers that reached their limit of growth under the ancien régime. The next step was the privatisation of the King's means of Production and the creation of a new class out of the now landless peasants. It's the textbook example of a bourgeois revolution.