The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a period of political and social upheaval in the political history of France and Europe as a whole, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based on Enlightenment principles of republic, citizenship, and inalienable rights. These changes were accompanied by violent turmoil, including executions and repression during the Reign of Terror, and warfare involving every other major European power. Subsequent events caused by the revolution include the Napoleonic wars, the restoration of the monarchy, and two additional revolutions as modern France took shape. Reasons for the outbreak of Revolution were many: huge war...more >> debts, burden of a grossly inequitable system of taxation, harsh taxes on crops by the Roman Catholic Church, continued conspicuous consumption of the noble class, high unemployment and high bread prices, widespread famine and malnutrition, resentment of royal absolutism, resentment of manorialism by peasants, wage-earner, resentment of clerical privilege and finally, perhaps above all, was the almost total failure of Louis XVI and his advisors to deal effectively with any of these problems.