Conflict between the rising bourgeoisie and the Ancien Régime
The economic development in France came into conflict with the Ancien Régime already in the 18th century.The rising bourgeoisie was excluded from the political power which was held by the privileged classes of nobility and clergy. The ideological conflict between bourgeoisie and the Ancien Régime was growing for over half a century.
The works of Enlightenment philosophers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau and others questioned and attacked the existing institutions and advocated that the divine right should be replaced by the natural law. Part of the nobility (Lafayette, Mirabeau, Condorcet and others) absorbed the ideas of the Enlightenment, while lower clergy on the eve of the French Revolution supported the Third Estate.