French revolution

In 1789, France was close to bankruptcy. The country had helped the USA financially during 1755's American Revolutionary War, the clergy and nobility did not pay any taxes and, to top it all, the aristocracy expended extravagantly. On May 5, 1789, French King Louis XVII summoned an assembly with representatives from all three classes (clergy, nobility and middle class) to assess their needs and forestall an insurgence. This assembly was the beginning of a series of events that would come to be known as the French Revolution, on the course of which France would become a Republic, live 10 months of Terror, suffer a coup d'état, see the Fall of the Bastille and end as an empire, under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.