Divisions of the Third Estate before the Estates-General May 1789 Flashcards
What were the three areas that divided the third estate?
- Economic
- Social (education and status)
- Regionally (urban vs. rural)
How were the 3rd estate financially united?
- Had not privileges so united in unfair economic treatment
- Direct taxes: taille, vigntieme, capitation. tithe
- Indirect: gabelle, aides, tabac
- Required to do unpaid labour corvée royale
However, how did the jobs of 3rd E vary?
- Rich merchants, industrialists and farmers owning large amounts of land
- Unskilled workers and poverty-stricken peasants
How can the unskilled poor be seen as vulnerable to fluctuations in bread prices?
- Downturn in 1770s (trade slump, rising bread prices)
- By 1777, cost of living for workmen was double that of 50 years ago yet wages were the same
- By spring of 1789, Parisian workers spending up to 88% of their wages on bread to keep alive
What were the wealthier group of the 3rd estate called?
Bourgeoisie
How did the bourgeoisie’s economic position manifest in a different lifestyle?
- Owned land
- Merchants, doctors, lawyers, non-noble office holders, financiers and teachers to artists, smaller-scale traders and master craftsmen
- Wealthiest of its members had a lifestyle similar to some of 2nd E
- Wealthy enough could buy their way out of corvée royale
How were the 3rd E socially united?
In status
How can the 3rd E seen to be united in status in the eyes of the law?
- If a 3rd E member committed a capital offence, would be hanged not beheaded
- Every male was liable for military service and families might have troops billeted
- Universally excluded from high office in Church, State and army
- United in their lack of political influence
How was the 3rd E divided regrading education?
- Bourgeoisie were well-educated, affected by enlightenment ideas (encouraging them to seek reform and political participation) and shared outlook of more enlightened nobility
- Ideas of philosophes spread through coffee houses, ‘academies’, ‘salons’ and other social gathering places in Paris and major provincial towns
- Salons: Gathering of educated and interesting people at home of a host in order to increase and refine knowledge of those participating; Facilitated dissemination of enlightenment ideas; Bourgeoisie and nobles could exchange views
- Lower members of the 3rd E were illiterate
How was the 3rd E divided regrading status?
- Peasants merely wanted freedom from their seigneurs
- Bourgeoisie wanted access to positions closed to them because of their non-noble status; B vs. Peasants
How did the bourgeoisie seek to improve their social status? How did they compare to the nobility?
- By buying office
- Noblesse de Robe acquired noble status, usually because of the venal jobs they did
- By 1789, there were more than 70,000
- Prosperous merchant may earn more than an impoverished nobleman and any surplus wealth that bourgeoisie made was usually invested in land = higher ranks of 3rd E associated more w those above than those beneath them
What is a division of status at the bottom of the 3rd E beneath a feudal peasant?
- Journaliers/day labourers could never be sure where work would come from
- Lower: prostitutes, vagabonds, tramps and beggars lived on the borders of society and were feared as ‘outsiders’
How was the 3rd E geographically divided?
Rural versus urban
How was the 3rd E geographically united?
- Depended on secular work (by hand or brain) for income and, although exceptions among bourgeoisie, ambitions limited and opportunities for advancement restricted
What are some difference about rural/feudal peasants compared to urban workers?
- More religious
- Worked the land under feudal arrangements
- Substinencre farmers, legally bound to seiggneure who provided small plots within estate
- Subject to seigneurial dies including the champart (paid in grain or produces) and cens
