READ MORE: How a Scandal Over a Diamond Necklace Cost Marie Antoinette Her HeadĪs the monarchy toppled, then fell, a small group of radical revolutionaries who had been influenced by Enlightenment-era philosophies of freedom of religion and a reason-based society saw their chance to strip the Church of much of its authority. But a growing number of French people had tired of the Church’s almost inconceivable power. The vast majority of French people were Catholic, Catholicism was the state religion, and the Church owned vast swaths of property and collected heavy tithes from most people’s incomes without paying taxes of its own. Before a furious crowd stormed the Bastille in Paris in 1789, the Church wielded extraordinary power in France.
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