Is the incompetence of the French monarchy over emphasized?

[Rafiq]

With regards to the French revolution? I have been reading The Prince and interestingly the author notes how France had no notion of how to properly rule. How significant was this fact with regard to the revolution, and secondly, was France's political system in the late 18th century just as incompetent as it was in the 16th?

More questions: when exactly did the political forces that would serve as a prelude to the republican government develop in France? I know that popular upheaval was strengthened by France's political and economic mess but were the seeds for the bourgeois revolution already existent before then?

I guess I just don't want to believe that something as triumphant and monumental as the French revolution was just a product of an incompetent monarchy and political system, I.e. that had France adopted something more akin to Britain or some other enlightened monarchies, it would have never occured.

Then again, the restored monarchy attempted just that, and vigorously failed. What social conditions in France necessitated political revolution and a revolutionary republic that were not present in England and other enlightened monarchies?

[Sasha]

Dont know, do know that the "let them eat cake" accusation predates Marie Antoinette by decades so at least some things are later coloured in...

[Paul Pott]

IIRC, Machiavelli cites France as an example of a country where the throne is easily taken by gaining support from some faction of the nobility, but just as easily lost. He was describing France before absolutism, when it was still a country of regional fiefdoms and the king essentially ruled Paris and a few other places, and stayed in power by the good graces of the lords. Absolutism was the form of government that characterized late feudal societies in which the bourgeoisie was ascending. It created a strict, national hierarchy of power, with the monarch at the top with all the power, limiting the power of the aristocrats but also preserving their wealth and privilege against the rising middle class. The Bourbons clung to this order to the end. That's the tyranny that the French revolution overthrew.