Causes of the French Revolution
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What students do
- Describe France's Old Regime and its three estates
- Explain why the tax burden fell on the Third Estate while the First and Second Estates stayed exempt
- Analyze Sieyes's 1789 pamphlet What Is the Third Estate as one side's persuasive case for equality and representation
- Explain why vote by order in the Estates-General angered the Third Estate
What it covers
- The inequality of France's Estates system, where privilege and tax exemption sat with the First and Second Estates
- Sieyes's argument that the Third Estate does nearly all the nation's work while treated as nothing
- Key vocabulary including Estates-General, Third Estate, Old Regime, privilege, and vote by order
Learning targets
- Describe the Old Regime and France's three estates (First, Second, and Third).
- Explain the inequality of the Estates system: privilege and tax exemption for the First and Second Estates versus the tax burden on the Third Estate.
- Explain why King Louis XVI called the Estates-General in 1789 and why vote by order angered the Third Estate.
- Analyze Sieyes's argument in What Is the Third Estate? as one side's persuasive case for equality and representation.
- Explain how financial crisis, inequality, and Enlightenment ideas combined to push France toward revolution.
From one teacher to another
Why did a country where the Third Estate paid nearly all the taxes still lose every vote to the other two orders? I anchor the answer in Sieyes's actual 1789 pamphlet excerpt, since that's the case one side made for equal representation, live and unfiltered, not summarized after the fact. The lesson stops the moment the Estates-General actually votes, because that's when inequality on paper turns into a political crisis.
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