MWH - 17-3

•  First Estate: 

  • made up of Roman Catholic clergymen.
  •  <1% of the population but owns 10% of the land. 
  • *Privilege(s)*: 
  • No taxes 
  • Members of the Church can only be tried by the Church. 
  • able to collect rent & taxes from peasants. 
  • *Higher Clergyman*: They held most of the wealth but were the most worldly/secular. 
  • *Lower Clergyman/Parish Priests*: Did all the work (ex: held masses, taught parishioners, etc.) but had little wealth.
• Second Estate: 

  • made up of the nobles/aristocrats 
  • <2% of the population but owned 25% of the land.  
  • *Privilege(s)*: 
  • they had the right to wear a sword, 
  • they paid few taxes 
  •  received feudal dues from peasants, 
  • held high-ranking positions in the military, government, and sometimes even the Church, and primogeniture (the right of the eldest son to inherit land and titles).
• Third Estate:

  •  97% of the population but owned only 40% - 45% of the land. 
  • Made up of 3 groups:
  • bourgeoisie/middle class (who were well-educated and wealthy), 
  • the laborers & artisans (who were city-dwellers), 
  • peasants (who were 80% of the population). 
  • The peasants led miserable lives because they were uneducated, automatically had 10% of their pay given to the Church, had to pay the nobles to work on their land, and they had no say in politics.
• Population is rising and inflation is going up


  Hurts the city-dwellers
• Bourgeoisie

  • Angry that they had no political power
  • Angry that their children could not hold the same high-ranking positions as the nobles
• Nobles

  • Angry because their power was stripped away by Louis XIV
  • Insistent on not paying taxes
• People begin rioting
• Bourgeoisie don't want government interference
• French Rev. slogan comes about: "liberty, equality, and fraternity"
• How the French Revolution started

  1. Louis XIV accumulated huge debt from his 4 wars & Versailles

  2. His great-grandson, Louis XV, succeeds him at 5 years old

  3. Louis XV rules for 59 years

  4. Louis XV doesn't do anything about Louis XIV's debt

  5. Louis XV borrows MORE MONEY

  6. Leaves problem for grandson Louis XVI

  7. Louis XVI wasn't supposed to be king until the recent death of his father

  8. Louis XVI had no advisors

  9. Louis XVI was not prepared for the throne

  10. Louis XVI is 19 when he becomes king

  11. Louis XVI is spineless, indecisive, and he constantly caves in to the First and Second Estates
• Marie Antoinette

  Married Louis for an alliance between Austria and France
• Marie Antoinette's age when she married

  14
• Louis's age when he married Marie Antoinette

  15
• Her husband pays no mind to her, she only parties and shops
• The marriage isn't 'official' for 7 years because it's excruciatingly painful when Louis's excited
• Louis had the procedure done so he could produce a male heir
• Antoinette gets pregnant with a girl rather than a boy
• Antoinette becomes a target of hate, purely because the French hate Austria
• Antoinette becomes the scapegoat and the symbol for everything that is wrong with France
• The saying "Let them eat cake!" wasn't even said by her
• Louis’s [Bad] Decisions: 

  •  He helps the American Rev. → puts France in further debt / inspires the French people to rebel. 
  • When the banks refuse to give him more money 
• Jacques Necker, tells him to call in the Estates General Assembly that had not met for 175 years. (May 5 1789)
• • Bad harvest in 1788 which makes 1789 really bad. 

   Inflation got so bad that half of their salary was the cost of bread.
• • Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes says the Third Estate is everything.
  •  First and Second estates would die without the Third, but the third would thrive without the two.
• Voting

  One vote per estate
• The Third estate didn't want one vote per estate because it was always a two v. one
• Count Mirabeau


  Suggests that every individual should cast a vote
• Louis, being spineless, tells them to meet separately and to cast one vote per estate
• The Third estate refuses
• Proclaim themselves the National Assembly

  1. Invite the second and first estates

  2. June 17 (marks the beginning of the frev)
• Louis locks them out of the assembly hall


  They go to the inside tennis court
• Made tennis court oath


  June 20th 1789
• They vow to meet until a written constitution for France, but don't get rid of the monarchy
• In addition to being a terrible king, during this time his son is going to die of tuberculosis; clearly he has more on his plate than he can handle.
• • July 12 1789, Louis does something stupid again: he fires Necker.
  •  Third Estate took this as a personal attack because Necker was sympathetic towards them. 
• • Louis also secretly sends troops to Paris and the Parisians are going to lose their minds. 
  • The people stormed and captured Bastille July 14 1789 to get the weapons and release the prisoners (typically political prisoners.). 
  • They demolish Bastille stone by stone
• • Lafayette makes a new government called the National Guard and will also adopt the tricolor flag (red, white, blue). 
• • Paris in July, the peasants in the countryside hear rumors that troops are coming after them and think the nobles are going to starve them out. 
  • Time period is known as the Great Fear and the peasants are going to rise up and attack the nobles’ manors. 
  • Going to find destroy feudal records (who owes what.). 
• • Two other things that occur in August (make up the august decrees): Augst 4th 1789, ; the national assembly is going to abolish feudalism in France 
  • also going to repeal the tithe and they’re going to dismiss feudal obligations or wservices the peasants owed. 
  • Puts an end to the Old Regime. 
• • August 27th 1789; Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen inspired by the English Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, Rousseau and other philosophes. 
  • Grants all men the freedom of speech, press, and religion and proclaims men are born equal and remain equal before the law. Right to resist opression, right of men to hold public office. 
  • Rights didn’t extend to women.
  •  Olympe de Gouges writes the Declaration of Rights of Women and Citizenesses, which the national assembly rejects.