what percent of france population belonged to the third estate
Before the revolution, French social club was divided into three orders or Estates of the Realm – the First Estate (clergy), Second Estate (nobility) and Third Manor (commoners). With around 27 meg people, or 98 per cent of France's population, the Third Estate was by far the largest of the three. Despite this it was politically invisible, unrepresented in and wielding no influence on the authorities.
Diversity
As might be expected in such a sizeable grouping, the Third Estate boasted considerable diversity. At that place were many different classes and levels of wealth; unlike professions and ideas; rural, provincial and urban residents akin.
Members of the 3rd Estate ranged from lowly beggars and struggling peasants to urban artisans and labourers; from the shopkeepers and commercial middle classes to the nation'southward wealthiest merchants and capitalists.
Despite the Third Estate'southward enormous size and economic importance, it played nigh no role in the government or decision-making of the Ancien Regime. The frustrations, grievances and sufferings of the Tertiary Manor became pivotal causes of the French Revolution.
The peasantry
Peasants inhabited the bottom tier of the 3rd Estate'south social hierarchy. Comprising betwixt 82 and 88 per cent of the population, peasant-farmers were the nation's poorest social class.
While levels of wealth and income varied, it is reasonable to suggest that most French peasants were poor. A very pocket-size percentage of peasants endemic land in their own right and were able to live independently as yeoman farmers. The vast majority, nevertheless, were either feudal tenants, métayers (tenant sharecroppers who worked someone else'southward land) or journaliers (day labourers who sought work where they could discover it).
Whatever their personal situation, all peasants were heavily taxed by the country. If they were feudal tenants, peasants were also required to pay dues to their local seigneur or lord. If they belonged to a parish, as most did, they were expected to pay an annual tithe to the church.
These obligations were seldom relaxed, fifty-fifty during difficult periods such as poor harvests, when many peasants were pushed to the brink of starvation.
Urban commoners
Other members of the Third Estate lived and worked in France'due south towns and cities. While the 18th century was a period of industrial and urban growth in France, near cities remained comparatively pocket-size. At that place were simply nine French cities with a population exceeding 50,000 people. Paris, with around 650,000, was by far the largest.
Most commoners in the towns and cities made a living as merchants, skilled artisans or unskilled workers. Artisans worked in industries like textiles and vesture manufacture, upholstery and piece of furniture, clock making, locksmithing, leather goods, carriage making and repair, carpentry and masonry.
A few artisans operated their own business organisation but most worked for big firms or employers. Before doing business organisation or gaining employment, an artisan had to belong to the guild that managed and regulated his particular manufacture.
Unskilled labourers worked as servants, cleaners, hauliers, h2o carriers, washerwomen, hawkers – in short, anything that did not require training or membership of a guild. Many Parisians, perhaps every bit many as 80,000 people, had no job at all: they survived by begging, scavenging, trivial crime or prostitution.
The hard 1780s
The lives of urban workers became increasingly difficult in the 1780s. Parisian workers toiled for meagre wages: between 30 and 60 sous a mean solar day for skilled labourers and fifteen-xx sous a day for the unskilled. Wages rose by effectually 20 per cent in the 25 years before 1789, however prices and rents increased by 60 per cent in the aforementioned flow.
The poor harvests of 1788-89 pushed Parisian workers to the brink past driving up bread prices. In early 1789, the toll of a four-pound loaf of bread in Paris increased from nine sous to 14.v sous, most a full 24-hour interval'south pay for most unskilled labourers.
Low pay and loftier nutrient prices were compounded past the miserable living weather in Paris. Accommodation in the capital was then scarce that workers and their families crammed into shared attics and dirty tenements, well-nigh rented from unscrupulous landlords.
With rents running at several sous a day, nearly workers economised past sharing accommodation. Many rooms housed betwixt vi and ten people, though 12 to fifteen per room was not unknown. Conditions in these tenements were cramped, unhygienic and uncomfortable. There was no heating, plumbing or common ablutions. The toilet facilities were usually an outside cesspit or open sewer while water was fetched by manus from communal wells.
The affluent bourgeoisie
Not all members of the Third Estate were impoverished. At the noon of the Third Estate'southward social hierarchy was the bourgeoisie or capitalist middle classes.
The bourgeoisie were business concern owners and professionals with enough wealth to live comfortably. Every bit with the peasantry, there was also diversity inside their ranks.
The so-called petit bourgeoisie ('petty' or 'minorbourgeoisie') were pocket-sized traders, landlords, shopkeepers and managers. The haute suburbia ('loftier bourgeoisie') were wealthy merchants and traders, colonial landholders, industrialists, bankers and financiers, tax farmers and trained professionals, such as doctors and lawyers.
The suburbia flourished during the 1700s, due in part to France's economic growth, modernisation, increased production, imperial expansion and foreign merchandise. The haute bourgeoisie rose from the heart classes to get independently wealthy, well-educated and ambitious.
Political aspirations
As their wealth increased so did their desire for social status and political representation. Many suburbia craved entry into the Second Estate. They had money to learn the costumes and grand residences of the noble classes merely lacked their titles, privileges and prestige.
A organization of venality evolved that allowed the wealthiest of thesuburbia to buy their style into the nobility, though past the 1780s this was becoming more difficult and frightfully expensive.
The thwarted social and political ambitions of the bourgeoisie led to considerable frustration. The haute bourgeoisie had get the economic masters of the nation, yet government and policy remained the domain of the royalty and their noble favourites.
The revolutionary bourgeoisie
Many educated bourgeoisie found solace in Enlightenment tracts, which challenged the foundation of monarchical power and argued that government should be representative, accountable and based on popular sovereignty.
When Emmanuel Sieyes published What is the Third Manor? in Jan 1789, it struck a chord with the self-of import bourgeoisie, many of whom believed themselves entitled to a hand in government.
What is the Third Estate? was non the only expression of this idea; in that location was a overflowing of similar pamphlets and essays effectually the nation in early on 1789. When these documents spoke of the Tertiary Estate, however, they referred chiefly to the bourgeoisie – not to France's 22 million rural peasants, landless labourers or urban workers.
When the bourgeoisie dreamed of representative government, it was a authorities that represented the propertied classes only. The peasants and urban workers were politically invisible to the bourgeoisie – but as the bourgeoisie was itself politically invisible to theAncien Régime.
A historian's view:
"The social structure on the European continent still bore an aristocratic imprint, the legacy of an era when, because land was almost the sole source of wealth, those who owned it assumed all rights over those who worked information technology… Virtually the whole population was lumped into a 'third society', called in France the Tertiary Manor. Aloof prerogatives condemned this club to remain eternally in its original state of inferiority. [Merely] throughout … France, this ordering of society was challenged by a long-term change which increased the importance of mobile wealth and the bourgeoisie, and highlighted the leading role of productive labour, inventive intelligence and scientific knowledge."
Georges Lefebvre
1. The Third Estate contained around 27 million people or 98 per cent of the nation. This included every French person who did non take a noble championship or was non ordained in the church.
2. The rural peasantry made up the largest portion of the Third Estate. Most peasants worked the land as feudal tenants or sharecroppers and were required to pay a range of taxes, tithes and feudal ante.
3. A much smaller section of the Third Estate were skilled and unskilled urban workers, living in cities like Paris. They were poorly paid, lived in difficult conditions and were pressured past rising food prices.
4. At the summit of the Tertiary Estate was the bourgeoisie: successful business organization owners who ranged from the comfortable middle grade to extremely wealthy merchants and landowners.
5. Regardless of their property and wealth, members of the Third Estate were subject to inequitable taxation and were politically disregarded by the Ancien Régime. This exclusion contributed to rising revolutionary sentiment in the tardily 1780s.
Citation data
Championship: "The Third Estate"
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/third-manor/
Date published: September 23, 2020
Engagement accessed: March 21, 2022
Copyright: The content on this page may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.
Source: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/third-estate/
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