French Revolution Social Classes

The social state of France was the final reason for the French Revolution. The French social class was divided into three classes that included the clergy, nobles, ant the common people. The First estate was made of the higher and lower clergy. The higher clergy lived amongst luxury while the lower clergy were miserable. The Second Estate was made of the court nobles and provincial nobles, the court nobles also lived in luxury and the provincial nobles did not enjoy the same treatment. The Third estate was made of common people such as farmers, cobblers, and sweepers. In document 10 it presents a political carton that shows people of the upper-class standing on and crushing someone of lower class. This shows how the upper class were riding

The French Revolution occurred from 1789 to 1799. A major issue during this time period in France was social classes, which included the First, Second, and Third Estate. The First and Second Estate had freedom, rights, and equality while the Third Estate had almost nothing. Third Estate got no recognition for their work, while the French Church had problems with voting, and salaries. The Third Estate formed the National Assembly to write The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and The Civil Constitution of the Clergy. They wrote them to help fix the problems that caused the revolution. The causes of the French revolution are the French Church, the inequality of the Estates, and the minimal freedom and rights that the Third Estate has.

French society was ingrained with the ideology of a three class or estate society. The First Estate consisted of clergy who owned approximately ten percent of France’s land. The Second Estate contained the rich nobles who only occupied two percent of the French population, but had ownership of twenty percent of the country’s land. The Third Estate encompassed ninety-seven percent of the French population. The First and Second Estates had many privileges in French society, and they paid little to no taxes. Unfortunately, the tax burden fell upon the Third Estate, which caused them to yearn for political change. Hefty taxes fell upon business owners within the Third Estate who were unable to conduct a profitable business. On top of the tax crisis,

Multitudes of events and time periods have caused disputes in the past, and the French Revolution is no exception. These disagreements were generally held between social classes, as the people’s opinion of the Revolution was decided by its effect on their class. Because of this, people held similar ideas regarding the Revolution as those with whom they shared a social class. These reasons were somewhat varied, but they could be narrowed down to a few primary reasons. Some of the primary reasons that the French Revolution elicited disagreement were the fact that it would weaken the nobility, generate new issues, and change the traditional government.

Life changed extremely for the upper class. Before the French Revolution, the upper class owned lots of land, didn’t have to pay taxes and was very wealthy. Which meant they could buy expensive food and clothing. They lived off the sweat of peasants. They were seen as greedy who contributed nothing. The upper class only made up 2% of society. The upper class was very cohere to all their privileges. But this all changed during the Revolution, the upper class began fearing to lose their privileges and they soon tried to escape. Later on, they were imposed to come back, being humiliated by the order of a lower class. Consequently, after the Revolution, they had to face a great

“Meanwhile the growth of commerce and industry had created, step by step, a new form of wealth, mobile or commercial wealth, and a new class, called in France the Bourgeoisie,” (Lefebvre 104). Due to the increasing gap between the first two estates and the working class, a type of ‘upper lower’ class had emerged from the poverty called the Bourgeoisie. The Bourgeoisie were a group of wealthy merchants that ran the lower estate and were willing to make changes to their government. They made their money buying and selling goods, but resented the extreme amount of taxes they were subjected to. On the other hand, the first estate held certain privileges that the third estate could not receive due to their status as the church.

The French Revolution was set off by income inequality by French citizens. “Income inequality was only a by-product of a much more complex problem, a class of nobility with utter disdain for the peasants and their sufferings” (Adams). The peasants and the low class were minor to the nobility and it was held by church laws. Almost all the problems that occurred in France were blamed on the low class. After the low class got taxed a lot it led to hungry civilians who caused an uprising against

In the 1700’s, France had three major social classes: tier one consisting of the clergy, tier two made up of the aristocracy, and tier three which was the non-nobility and common folk. The third tier made up over 95% of France's population. It was this tier that would become the root of the French Revolution and lead to the Aristocrats of the top tiers versus the Democrats of the lower third tier. Throughout the past few decades, France had fought and been successful in numerous wars.This caused taxes on the lower class to be raised to an insurmountable level while the upper classes were left paying little or none.

Third Estate- The French social society was broken up into three estates the first being the clergy, the second is consisted of the nobility; and the third estate is basically everyone else from wealthy financiers to beggars and peasants. The third estate had occupations in finance, manufacturing, and commerce. This social class was an ambitious group approved of expanding the publishing industry, purchased many new homes in Paris and other cities, and subsidized the fine arts. In 1789, the third estate was allowed to have a vote in polices and with the help of the other two estates help create the National Assembly.

In France, the population was separated into three Estates. First, the Clergy, also known as the Catholic Church, “Numbered about 130,000 in a nation of 28 million…and owned about 10 percent of the nation’s land….”2 Second, the Nobles. “ The 300,000 members of the nobility… controlled about 30 percent of the land….” 3 Third, the Peasants, “the third estate included everyone else…Peasants accounted for 80 percent of the French population.” 4 The peasants suffered a lot in this era of unfairness. They worked so hard, at the same time, they didn’t have something to eat. Their daily meal was bread. King Louis XVI for years ignored peasants’ rights, even after he

However, before the change that the French revolution had caused, peasants lived a very hard life that encouraged them to rebel, in the hopes of changing their personal circumstances. To begin, France had a societal hierarchy that consisted of 130,000 Clergy members at the top, 300,000 members of the Nobility in the middle, and the Third Estate, a population of 20 million people were at the bottom of this hierarchy. “The peasants comprised the bulk of the French population. ”(1)

Bankers, merchants, manufactures, lawyers, doctors, journalists, professors, and rural peasants were only some of the people categorized into the section, but among the poorest members of the Third Estate were urban workers. Although within the Third Estate, some people were able to afford political office but the best jobs were still reserved for the Nobles. Informed by Alexis De Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution, the Third Estate was the most important because they obtained the responsibility of a working class. Those within the third estate supplied all of France with labor resources as their working wages payed for the expenses made by either the Clergy or the Nobles.

The First Estate was that of the Clergy. While increasingly more willing to listen to ideas of the new, the nation was still heavily faith based at this point and viewed them to a high regard. The Second Estate was that of the Nobility. Aristocrats, bankers, artisans and many more other members of higher society belonged in this class. Lastly the Third Estate was that of the common man. The King however belonged to no estate. While the First and Second Estates did not have to pay taxes the Third Estate did. Both the First and Second Estates did not want anything to change politically in France unless it was a chance for them to obtain more political power. This is how the Enlightenment inspired the Third Estate to start questioning the idea of “Why should the Frist and Second Estates enjoy privileges at the expense of the Third?”. Obviously not meeting their test of reason, tensions ensued between the social structures of French Society. (Cole, Western Civilizations, 2014, p. 586 and

With all taxes being weighed upon the Third Estate, the misdistribution of wealth (1% of the population owning 20% of the land)6, France's misfortunes in the United States and Canada, and the general inconsistencies with the social order, it is logical to assume that a revolution led by France's Third Estate would include social equality as a basis for government . However, this assumption would prove to be untrue, which is made apparent by the (alarmingly large) amount of discourse that denies Jews the political rights of being a French

The French Revolution was a time of great social, political and economic tumult in the closing years of the Eighteenth Century. The motivators pushing French citizenry toward revolution are varied in scope and origin. They range from immediate economic woes to an antiquarian class structure. Modern historians still debate the value of the changes that the revolution brought to modern society. The middle class made gains that would never be rescinded, but do revolutions always end in tyranny? In the years before the revolution citizens were rigidly constrained by the estates of the realm. These social strata had been in place since the medieval ages. The people were divided into three groups; clergy, nobility and everyone else. The clergy