Let Them Eat Cake Dbq

To verify that the First and Second estates have no purpose in the French society. The source states that the Third Estate has the largest amount of people, but the least amount of freedoms. It demands that there must be a change for the Third Estate. The source implies: “What is the Third Estate? Everything.” “What has it been until now in the political border? Nothing.” “What does it ask? To become something.” The source is strongly supportive to nationalism as it is a work of patriotism. It criticizes the monarchy for being an unequal monarchy. The source explains that the majority of people are from the Third Estate, yet it does not have the freedoms that other people do. But the Third Estate can fight

The citizens of the 3rd estate and some citizens in the 2nd estate in France during 1789, were not happy at all. They were getting heavily taxed by Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, and the Catholic Church. When they didn’t have the money to pay the taxes that was forced upon them. After all of the hard work they put in to growing crops, the crops were taken

King Louis ruling, usually seen as, “absolute. He ruled by the divine right theory which held that he had received his power to govern from God and was therefore responsible to God alone”(Document C). He broke tradition and ruled without advisors or a court. Having the king feel as if he did not need any help to rule was not good for the population. Himself, being a monarch led to neglect toward the Third Estate.Meaning he did not fix the Estate’s needs, making them feel angry. Once the Third Estate had felt as if they had enough, they wrote a list of complaints, in which they stated “That the king be forced to reform the abuses and tyranny [of his rule]”(Document F). The Third Estate felt abused by the laws and or rules set against them by the king.The majority of the population did not see the king as a king, in fact they called his actions within in his rule as acts of tyranny. If the people of the country do not like or agree with their rulers they are not going to want to have them with absolute power. This was another major cause of the French

The First and Second Estate didn’t do nearly as much work for the country as the Third Estate did. This estate consisted of 75% of the country. They were in charge of the distribution of the agricultural products that the country made. As Abbe Sieyes said, “What is the Third Estate? Everything; but an everything shackled and oppressed.” (Abbe Sieyes). The Third Estate is the same as the other Estates, but more poor than them. Abbe Sieyes believed that they deserved more recognition than they ever got. Overall, the First and Second Estate treated the Third Estate terribly, and didn’t give them recognition for their work caused the French

Likewise, in France, the citizens were also being subjugated by the French government. The French people had been through many years of a “deteriorate[ing] economy, poor harvest, and pressure from the Nobility,” and quite frankly had had enough. The French economy was in an immense debt from helping the Americans win their freedom from England, and now Louis XVI was heavily taxing the people. To make matter worse, the past year’s harvest had been a failure resulting in famine and even more aggravated citizens. The third estate—made up by the peasants—formed the National Assembly because they believed that their political ignorance was why bad things kept happening. Therefore, in 1789, the French people drafted The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen to rid their oppressors.

One major cause of the old regime were the taxes and laws between the three estates. As seen in Document 2, “the 3rd estate paid 50% of income in taxes while the 1st and 2nd paid less than 5%” (Doc 2). This clearly shows that the most populated estate, the third estate, paid half of their income as their taxes. Larger amounts of taxes the third estate paid versus the lower amount of taxes for the first and second estates. Another significant cause was the unequal three estates and the third estate was overpowered. The third estate had more power in laws and taxes and their relationship with the lower estates were not good. As demonstrated in Document 7, the cartoon of the “The political and social system in France” (Doc 7). This cartoon proves the relationship between the third estate and the two lower estates. The lower estates didn’t have anything to do with taxes and laws and the third estates were all in laws and taxes. The final

Abby Sieyes argues in his pamphlet, “What is the Third Estate?” that the third estate who are the common French people, deserve to be respected and are of more value than the two other estates. The clergy and aristocracy were excluding the common people of France and treating them unfairly. The Enlightenment philosophers proclaimed universal human happiness as the highest goal, as well as liberty, equality, and fraternity as the highest means of achieving that goal. (Batiza 681)

We are even restricted to do things such as hunt and fish on nobility estates, while living in poverty or in the middle class. We demand you the king to guarantee us liberty,equality, and many other things to ensure we get the rights we deserve. We demand you to remove the taxes bestowed on the third estate alone, as we do not understand the many wars in which france has engaged, that has no benefits. The government also has to give us the power to have land ownership, and the power to have some control in the way france is changing, without having to rely solely on the first and second estate. We used the ideas of enlightenment by John Locke and count by head, and not voting by order as it is not fair to us. The government has to guarantee our protection and of our property and rights, just as they would to the nobility or even the king. The enlightenment ideas of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, inspire us as the world becomes a knew, and we demand that you create a new society where all people are equal and granted the same liberty and rights they

In particular, a man named Emmanuel Sieyès came up with a document called the “What is the Third Estate?”. The document raised grievances that the disgruntled lower class was severely misrepresented, and had very little power, especially when the Estates General formed, and became an instant success. Sieyès wanted to emphasize the fact the nobility should not interfere with commoners and by themselves were incapable of running a successful nation. “The noble order does not enter at all in the social order; that it may indeed be a burden upon the nation, but that it cannot by itself constitute a nation” (pg. 57). Furthermore Sieyès goes on to say that “the Third Estate has ...all that is necessary for the formation of a complete nation” (pg. 57). It is clear that he wanted to announce the fact that the Third Estate aimed to be “something” after many years of simply being “nothing” in the political system (p. 56). Not only was he fighting for more power in the Estates General, but was contending to receive more rights of man. He knew that working class, which had made up most of France at the time had been severely mistreated even though they were the entire backbone of France’s industry. He earned to do so in an honest, pacifist way in order to not bring about any more

The fundamentals for the start of the French revolution were equality and liberty. Those in power didn’t stand equal in the Meeting of the Estates General. From the beginning, I always believed that everyone should have a say in government. However, not everyone believes so since the Third Estate is falling behind in power. The majority of the people in that Estate are commoners and peasants. Personally I feel bad because I want the poorer part of

Before the Revolution, France’s government, entitled the Ancien Régime, consisted of an absolute monarchy. Under this system, no person had any rights. The people of France were not citizens, but rather subjects of the King, at the mercy of his will. The King held all of the power with no legal protections in place for the French people. For example, the First Estate, consisting of the clergy, and the Second Estate, consisting of the nobility, paid no direct taxes. This provision existed because Louis XIV had implemented a tax system that exempted these two estates. Therefore, the entire tax burden of the country fell on the Third Estate, the common people. This unjust and disproportionate system existed because the King’s word was the law, with no legal means to appeal his decisions.

And he relies, everything. He argued that because the third estate carries out all the labor required to maintain France and that the third estate makes up a complete nation. He calls the first and second estates a form a cancer as they do not add anything to the civil order like the third estate does, he later states “The noble order is no less foreign amongst up by reason of its civil and public prerogatives.” He knows that the first and second estate do not pay taxes of any kind, yet they are the main beneficiaries from the king. He calls the first and second estates a cancer that must be removed from a society so that the society may remain healthy, “It is impossible to say what place the two privileged orders ought to occupy in the social order…what place one wishes to assign to a malignant tumor.” The Divine Chain of Being which gave a natural order to the world was now called into question and rejected entirely because of the French Revolution.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a revolution as ‘involving or constitution radical change’. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, certainly brought about changes from the feudalistic ancien régime (this had been France’s social structure for centuries). However, the extent to which these changes were truly radical has been debated by historians. Given the breadth of the French revolutionary period, this essay will only explore the initial events of 1789, with a particular focus on the establishment of the National Assembly, the Tennis Court Oath, and the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen’. The revolution was clearly incomplete by the end of August 1789, as it took the Assembly several years to implement their principles. This meant that there were considerable shortcomings of the revolutionary developments in these months. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the events of 1789 were a marked change and, when contrasted with the France of the ancien régime, revolutionary

Bloodshed, hunger, anger, chaos, and abuse. These were all things that characterized the French Revolution. Through the terrible depression of this time, many people were driven to rise up against the French government, resorting to violence and inciting chaos, as this seems like the only way for the voices of the French citizens to reach the ears of the nobility. The simplest thing such as the hunger of the people and the prices of bread are being ignore by the ruling class of the nation. Though the weight of these issues is quite hefty, there are better ways to go about addressing them than nonsensical violence. The French Revolution brought many issues to the country, it came to quickly causing instability from rapid change to radical new ideas based on somewhat flawed views of human nature, and as the Revolution progresses the violence will get worse, causing the government to strike back at its own people.

The Terror was a set of institutions put in place to protect the revolution while France was in a state of panic from the extreme military and domestic emergency. The belief of danger, from many deputies, that the Revolution itself was in danger of ruin by enemies real and imagined resulted in repression. This repression was justified by revolutionaries to preserve the Revolution. Certain factors led to the rise in conspiracy and paranoia among revolutionaries in the cities and those in the Convention of enemies lurking everywhere. These factors are the military failures in the French northern front due to Austrian counterattack. The counter forces of the Austrian military put foreign enemies on French soil again and resulted in panic among revolutionaries that foreign nations will succeed in ending the Revolution. The recruitment riots in the provinces, led by anti-revolutionary rural citizens, acted as proof to revolutionaries that the internal enemies conducting the civil war are causing the military failures of the French army by foreign enemies. The assassination of the Montagnard, Marat, supported the revolutionaries belief that internal enemies are out to hunt revolutionary leaders and bring an end to the revolution. These events led to measures that would commence the disintegration of the Republic and start of the Terror to protect France's revolution from enemies domestic and abroad.