This Course Video Transcript. From the lesson Week 2 - The Revolution of This week we look at the Revolution of and its causes. Taught By. Try the Course for Free. Explore our Catalog Join for free and get personalized recommendations, updates and offers. Get Started. Learn Anywhere. All rights reserved. The nobles and the clergy were largely excluded from taxation with the exception of a modest quit-rent, an ad valorem tax on land while the commoners paid disproportionately high direct taxes.
In practice, this meant mostly the peasants because many bourgeois obtained exemptions. The system was outrageously unjust in throwing a heavy tax burden on the poor and powerless.
The desire for more efficient tax collection was one of the major causes for French administrative and royal centralization.
The taille, a direct land tax on the peasantry and non-nobles, became a major source of royal income. Peasants and nobles alike were required to pay one-tenth of their income or produce to the church the tithe.
All paid a tax on the number of people in the family capitation , depending on the status of the taxpayer from poor to prince. Further royal and seigneurial obligations might be paid in several ways: in labor, in kind, or rarely, in coin.
The tax system in pre-revolutionary France largely exempted the nobles and the clergy from taxes. The tax burden therefore devolved to the peasants, wage-earners, and the professional and business classes, also known as the Third Estate. Further, people from less-privileged walks of life were blocked from acquiring even petty positions of power in the regime, which caused further resentment.
The greatest challenge to systemic change was an old bargain between the French crown and the nobility: the king could rule without much opposition from the nobility if only he refrained from taxing them. Consequently, attempts to impose taxes on the privileged — both the nobility and the clergy — were a great source of tension between the monarchy and the First and the Second Estates. Already in , when Louis XIV was still a minor and his mother Queen Anne acted as a regent and Cardinal Mazarin as her chief minister, the two attempted to tax members of the Parlement de Paris.
Louis was willing to tax the nobles but unwilling to fall under their control, and only under extreme stress of war was he able, for the first time in French history, to impose direct taxes on the aristocracy. This was a step toward equality before the law and sound public finance, but so many concessions and exemptions were won by nobles and bourgeois that the reform lost much of its value.
Great for home study or to use within the classroom environment. Download The Third Estate Worksheets. Download free samples. Resource Examples. Click any of the example images below to view a larger version. Fact File. Student Activities. Table of Contents. Add a header to begin generating the table of contents. Members of the Third Estate Perceptions and depictions of the Bourgeoisie Struggles encountered by the common people.
Key Facts And Information. The largest of these estates was the Third Estate, containing around 27 million people or 98 percent of the population. Every commoner was part of the Third Estate. Commoners were people not ordained by the Church and those who lacked titles. The inclusion of commoners ensured that the Third Estate was diverse. There were many different classes and levels of wealth, different professions and ideas, and also rural, provincial, and urban residents.
The Third Estate was comprised of lowly beggars and struggling peasants who worked as urban artisans and labourers, shopkeepers, commercial middle classes and some of the wealthiest merchants. Despite representing the great majority of the people and having economic importance, it played no role in the French government or decision-making in the Old Regime.
Political frustrations, grievances, and the sufferings of the Third Estate ultimately contributed to the French Revolution. Despite the 18th century being a period of industrial and urban growth in France, many French cities remained relatively small.
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