As the saying goes, "those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it"

Below are three little excerpts worth considering from Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama (Knopf, 1989)

1. "The best estimates of the costs of the American alliance in both its surreptitious and openly military forms--from 1776 to 1783--come to 1.3 billion livres, exclusive of interest payments on the new debts incurred by the government as a result." (p. 62)

2. "If the causes of the French Revolution are complex, the cause of the downfall of the monarchy are not. The two phenomena are not identical, since the end of absolutism in France did not of itself entail a revolution of such transformative power as actually came to pass in France. But the end of the old regime was the necessary condition of the beginning of a new, and that was brought about, in the first instance, by a cash-flow crisis. It was the politicization of the money crisis that dictated the calling of the Estates-General." (p. 62)

3. "How grave was France's financial predicament after the American war? It had, it is true, run up an imposing debt, but one that was no worse that comparable debts incurred in fighting the other wars deemed equally essential to sustain the nation's position as a great power. Those quick to condemn the ministers of Louis XVI for their hopeless prodigality might pause to reflect that no state with imperial pretensions has, in fact, ever subordinated what it takes to be irreducible military interests to the considerations of a balanced budget. And like apologists for powerful military force in twentieth-century American and the Soviet Union, advocates of similiar "indispensable" resources in eighteenth-century France pointed to the country's vast demographic and economic reserves and a flouishing economy to sustain the burden." (pp. 63-4)