The political and financial situation in France had grown rather bleak, forcing Louis XVI to summon the Estates General. This assembly was composed of three estates – the clergy, nobility and commoners – who had the power to decide on the levying of new taxes and to undertake reforms in the country.

liberty, equality, fraternity

The French Revolution was a period of major social upheaval that began in 1787 and ended in 1799. It sought to completely change the relationship between the rulers and those they governed and to redefine the nature of political power.

The Third Estate

The members of the Third estate were unhappy with the prevailing conditions because they paid all the taxes to the government. Further, they were also not entitled to any privileges enjoyed by the clergy and nobles. Taxes were imposed on every essential item.১৭ আগস্ট, ২০১৮

Voting in the Estates General was unfair because each Estate only had 1 vote… The 1st and 2nd Estate always voted together and prevented the 3rd Estate from any reform. Think about how many people made up the 3rd Estate.

The king said that each estate would vote as a body (each estate would get 1 vote). The members of the Third Estate did not like this. It meant that they could always be outvoted by the much smaller First and Second Estates. They wanted the vote to be based on the number of members.

The members of the Third Estate demanded that voting be conducted by the assembly as a whole, where each member would have one vote. When Louis XVI rejected their proposal, members of the third estate walked out from he meeting of Estate General.১১ জুলাই, ২০১৮

Why did members of the Third Estate feel they were treated unfairly by the First and Second Estates? The First and Second Estates had a small tax burden, powerful positions, and privilege. The Third Estate had a large tax burden, few rights, and little privilege.

The basic principle of the Declaration was that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights” (Article 1), which were specified as the rights of liberty, private property, the inviolability of the person, and resistance to oppression (Article 2).

commoners

Sieyès argued that Third Estate representation must be equal to or larger than the First and Second Estates combined. He called for voting at the Estates-General to be conducted by head (that is, by a tally of individual deputies) rather than by order (the Estates voting in blocs).১৯ জুলাই, ২০১৮

France under the Ancien Régime (before the French Revolution) divided society into three estates: the First Estate (clergy); the Second Estate (nobility); and the Third Estate (commoners). The king was not considered part of any estate.

Sieyes said that the Third Estate was ‘nothing’ due to them paying high taxes and dealing with unjust restrictions, but did not have any representation in government. It allowed for famine of the Third-Estate, food prices went up.

The Third Estate would become a very important early part of the French Revolution. But the dramatic inequality in voting—the Third Estate represented more people, but only had the same voting power as the clergy or the nobility—led to the Third Estate demanding more voting power, and as things developed, more rights.

Throughout the pamphlet, Sieyès argues that the first and second estates are simply unnecessary, and that the Third Estate is in truth France’s only legitimate estate, representing as it does the entire population. Thus, he asserts, it should replace the other two estates entirely.

The Third Estate was made up of everyone else, from peasant farmers to the bourgeoisie – the wealthy business class. While the Second Estate was only 1% of the total population of France, the Third Estate was 96%, and had none of the rights and priviliges of the other two estates.

Third Estate, French Tiers État, in French history, with the nobility and the clergy, one of the three orders into which members were divided in the pre-Revolutionary Estates-General. …

The Third Estate was comprised of lowly beggars and struggling peasants who worked as urban artisans and labourers, shopkeepers, commercial middle classes and some of the wealthiest merchants.

A general in the French army and leader of the 1799 coup that overthrew the Directory. Napoleon’s accession marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of Napoleonic France and Europe.

Maximilien Robespierre