The Three Estates: duties and privileges

What the specification asks for

“the Three Estates – their duties and privileges” — examined through continuity and difference. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The legal shape of French society

France was divided in law into three orders. The First Estate was the clergy, roughly 130,000 people. The Second was the nobility, roughly 300,000. The Third was everybody else — about twenty-seven million, from a Bordeaux shipowner to a landless labourer in the Auvergne. The first two together were about two per cent of the population and owned something in the region of a third of the land.

The word to hold on to is legal. This was not a description of wealth or of social standing but a set of enforceable rights and exemptions written into the law of the kingdom, and that is why the crisis of 1787–89 could not be resolved by a minister who merely wanted to be fair.

What each order owed and received

The clergy paid no taille and voted a periodic 'free gift' to the crown, at a level it set itself, in return for retaining that exemption. It collected the tithe on agricultural produce, ran the parish registers on which every legal identity depended, and controlled most schooling and poor relief. It was also deeply divided: a handful of aristocratic bishops held enormous revenues while parish priests often lived on very little, and in 1789 many of the lower clergy sided with the Third Estate.

The nobility was exempt from the taille and from most direct taxation, held the seigneurial dues owed by peasants on its land, monopolised the senior ranks of the army, the church and the royal administration, and enjoyed its own courts and honorific rights. It too was divided, between an ancient nobility of the sword, a nobility of the robe holding judicial office, and recently ennobled office-holders.

The Third Estate paid the taille, the gabelle on salt, the vingtième, the tithe to the church and the seigneurial dues to the local lord, and supplied the militia. It also contained the wealthiest merchants in France, the lawyers who would dominate the assemblies of 1789, and the peasants who were about eighty per cent of the population.

Why the structure survived so long, and then did not

The system was stable for centuries because it was not a single injustice but a very large number of separate arrangements, each defended by somebody with a legal title to it. A privilege was property. To abolish it was to expropriate, and the courts that would have to register the abolition — the parlements — were staffed by the very nobility of the robe whose offices were themselves privileges.

That is why Calonne's universal land tax of 1786 was a constitutional as well as a financial proposal, and why the Assembly of Notables refused it. It is also why the abolition of 4 August 1789 had to happen in a single night session under the pressure of a peasant rising: the arrangement could not be dismantled piece by piece, because each piece had a defender.

The pamphlet that put this most sharply was Sieyès's What is the Third Estate?, published in January 1789. Its argument was that the Third Estate was the nation, that it performed all the useful work, and that the privileged orders were a burden upon it. Within six months that argument had become the constitutional claim of the National Assembly.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

c1789

The First Estate numbers about 130,000, the Second about 300,000, the Third about 27 million. Why this date: The proportions are the argument: two per cent of the population held the exemptions that made the fiscal crisis insoluble.

January 1789

Sieyès publishes What is the Third Estate? Why this date: It converts a complaint about taxation into a claim that the Third Estate alone constitutes the nation, which is the argument used on 17 June.

4 August 1789

The National Assembly abolishes feudal privileges in a night session. Why this date: It shows that the structure could only be ended all at once, under pressure, because every part of it had a defender.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• About 2% — The share of the population in the first two estates.
• Around one third of the land — The share held by the clergy and nobility together. (Regional variation was enormous and no national survey existed; the figure is a modern estimate.)
• About 80% — The share of the population living by agriculture, almost all of it in the Third Estate.

The people to place

• Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès — Clergyman whose pamphlet of January 1789 argued that the Third Estate was the nation.
• Charles-Alexandre de Calonne — Controller-General whose universal land tax of 1786 attacked exemption directly.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'bourgeois revolution' reading: A rising commercial and professional class was blocked by a legal order designed for a different economy, and 1789 removed the obstruction. Contested by The reading that finds nobles investing in trade and bourgeois buying seigneuries, and argues that the two elites were converging economically while remaining separated legally — which relocates the conflict into the law rather than into class..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: The Third Estate was the poor.

This: It was everybody outside the clergy and nobility, including the richest merchants and financiers in France and almost all the lawyers who led the Revolution.

Not this: The clergy were uniformly rich and privileged.

This: Aristocratic bishops held great revenues and parish priests often did not. The division inside the First Estate is why some of its deputies joined the Third Estate in June 1789.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Privilege and wealth.

The distinction: Privilege was a legal exemption attached to an order or an office, and it did not track wealth: a poor country noble held it and a rich Bordeaux merchant did not. Getting this right is what makes the fiscal crisis intelligible.

Blurred: The taille and the tithe.

The distinction: The taille was the principal direct royal tax, from which the first two estates were largely exempt. The tithe was paid to the church on agricultural produce. Merging them loses the fact that a peasant was paying two separate institutions.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer sees that privilege was a form of property, which is why it could not be reformed away. Every exemption had a holder with a legal title, the courts that would have registered the abolition were themselves staffed by holders, and this is precisely why the change, when it came on 4 August 1789, arrived as a single night's expropriation under the threat of burning châteaux.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 1 (a) (6 marks — “What impression does the author give about …? You must use Extract A to explain your answer.”); Paper 1 (b) (8 marks — “Explain two effects of … on ….”); Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii) (16 marks — “'[A statement about the period.]' You may use the following in your answer: • [prompt] • [prompt]. You must also use information of your own. How far do you agree? Explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The two per cent figure attached to the land share and to the exemption, in one sentence. It is precise supporting knowledge and it carries the argument at the same time.

The cap that bites here: The 8-mark question caps a single effect at 4 marks. Two developed effects, each ending in an outcome.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. What impression does the author give about the privileges of the first two estates before 1789? [6 marks · Paper 1 (a)]
2. Explain two effects of noble tax exemption on the French state before 1789. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
3. Explain two effects of the divisions within the First Estate before 1789. [8 marks · Paper 1 (b)]
4. 'Privilege was the main obstacle to reform in France before 1789.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]
5. 'The structure of French society made revolution inevitable.' How far do you agree? [16 marks · Paper 1 (c)(i) or (c)(ii)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: The impact of the American War of Independence
• Next lesson: Louis XVI and the unpopularity of Marie Antoinette
• Also in this key topic: The influence of the Enlightenment · Financial problems, Necker and the harvests
• Key topic 1 · The origins of the Revolution, c1780–87 · The French Revolution, c1780–99 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of The French Revolution: Short-term causes of the Revolution: from Assembly of Notables to Estates General, 1787–89 · Developments 1789–92 · Convention and Terror, 1792–94 · Directory and First Consul – the fall of Robespierre to the rise of Napoleon, 1794–99