In an era of bad harvests, famine, and rioting, the French government took steps to improve the worsening financial crisis. What did the government do? The government raised taxes. The government called for genuine political reform. The government forced all estates to pay the same taxes. The government reduced the Third Estate's tax burden.

The government raised taxes.

Explanation:

A note should be added, however. In order for the king, as head of the government, to raise taxes, he needed his additional tax levies to be approved by the parlement of Paris. Parlements (parliaments) in France in those days were not legislatures. They were more like judicial courts that gave their stamp of approval to actions by the nobles in their provinces or the king in Paris. Generally, the parlement in Paris had rubber-stamped requests from the king. But by 1789, the financial crisis in France was so bad and the government's reliability to repay loans so risky, that the Paris parlement would not endorse Louis XVI's request for more taxes. So he had no other choice, if he wanted to raise taxes, than to call into session a meeting of the Estates General, which was an assembly of representatives of all three Estates (social classes). When the Estates General came together in 1789, that's when the series of events that began the French Revolution got going.

The government raised taxes.