Enlightenment was a time in the world when all countries were realizing that there was a better life awaiting them, outside of the long reigned monarch. Enlightenment took the world by storm and had great effects on past rules and regulations. Its ideas, if summed up would include freedom, liberty, equality, and separation of powers. Enlightenment was the scientific and philosophical way of thinking. Scientist brought about new ideas and questions about Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Astronomy. Philosophes also came along with their ideas on how to improve the government. Some of the very big philosophes include Hobbes, Voltaire, Locke, Montesque, and Rousseau. All that occurred between 1750-1815 was caused by the Enlightenment ideas. .
Certainly, Philosophes had come up with ideas to improve living conditions under the monarch government. Voltaire wrote about philosophical and moral ideas. He was against religious prejudice and would always be interested in cases of injustice. The idea of Freedom of Religion came from Voltaire, or was sparked up again by him. In 1750 most countries were forced to be of the same religion as the King, or would be thrown out if they were not. In fact, the King being able to control all of a country came from the ideas of Absolutism and Mercantilism. Mercantilism meant that a country had to be totally self- sufficient. Of course, this was hard for some countries, but if a country could accomplish this, than that country would be considered the most powerful in all of Europe.
The French revolution was also a cause of the Enlightenment ideas. It took place in 1790, when France was the role model to everyone else, but the inside of France was just waiting to blow. The French had extremely high taxes, feudalism, and differences in status, and a Roman Catholic Church. The revolution came along because the King wanted to tax the rich nobles instead of the lower classed poor people.
