Third stand
In a tripartite order of estates , as had been characteristic of France since the end of the Middle Ages , for example , the third estate (French Tiers-État ) gathered those social legal subjects who did not belong to the two privileged estates of the clergy (as the first estate) and the nobility (as the second Stand) belonged. So it nominally included all free peasants and citizens .
The Third Stand on the eve of the French Revolution
In the France of the Ancien Régime , all three estates were represented in the Estates General (French: États généraux ), an assembly of estates whose main task was tax approval. The Estates General were first convened by Philip the Handsome in 1302 and reached the height of their influence in the 15th century. They then lost their importance and were no longer convened during absolutism from 1614 to 1789, the year of the French Revolution , to the beginning of which the course of the first Assembly of the States General for 175 years made a decisive contribution.
The third estate ( French: tiers état ) was made up of very different social classes and included all people who did not belong to the first two estates, from the upper classes to craftsmen , farmers and day laborers to the urban lower classes. This was about 98% of the population in 1789: 25 million versus 500,000 aristocrats and clergy. These heterogeneous groups of the population were distributed differently between the rural and urban regions; the small and middle bourgeoisie developed in the cities. This bourgeoisie consisted of craftsmen and merchants. But the liberal professions such as lawyers, notaries, teachers and doctors can also be classified here. The big bourgeoisie included members such as financiers and bankers, fermiers généraux . With their capital they were superior to the nobility, although many of the big bourgeoisie bought their way into the nobility. Thus there were many social differences within the third estate, one was a class (political-legal), but not a class (socio-economic).
The urban classes of the third estate were linked by their skepticism towards the aristocracy, the ancien régime and their representatives, but they were divided into different groups.
In addition to the manufacturing workers, a numerically small group, there were also wage earners without permanent employment. They probably formed the most important group of the urban folk classes. It consisted, for example, of day laborers, errand boys, domestic staff of the aristocracy or the big bourgeoisie, as well as farm workers and farmers who were looking for work in the poor earnings times.
The living conditions of this rural population were different. A distinction was made between serfs (French servage) and free farmers (French paysan). The living conditions of the third estate deteriorated increasingly in the 18th century.
Population growth in cities led to price increases and imbalances in wages and the cost of living. In the second half of the 18th century there was a tendency towards the impoverishment of the wage earners. The economic life of France in the 18th century was dominated by agricultural production, this rural population made up about 75 percent of all inhabitants. In contrast, the peasant property was only 35 percent, but due to the large number of rural residents, the proportion of each farmer was very low or zero. The farmers owned a plot of land, but there were also many landless farmers.
The farmers cultivated land that was mostly owned by a master (French: Seigneur ). The first and second estates, clergy and nobility, but increasingly also the urban bourgeoisie appeared in the function of seigneur. The free farmers faced the seigneur as tenants or half-tenants and were asked to make regular payments in cash or in kind for the use of the land, although the extent of those feudal burdens varied from region to region.
In the second half of the 18th century there were only a few serfs left in the strict sense, so most of the farmers were free farmers. Nevertheless, there were class differences in the rural population, in addition to large tenants, tenants, half-tenants and smallholders with real estate. The mass of day laborers only had their labor.
The burdens for the farmers were often very heavy. On the one hand, the royal burdens. The peasants or the third estate actually paid the taxes alone, and these had increased over the course of the 18th century. On the other hand, the church burdens, since the tithe had to be paid to the clergy. They also had to bear the landlord's burdens.
In order to avert the threat of national bankruptcy through tax increases, which - after the rejection of the royal proposal by the Noble Assembly of Notables - could only be resolved by the three Estates General, King Louis XVI declared himself . on the advice of his finance minister Jacques Necker, agreed to the convening of the Estates General.
Although the Third Estate was granted twice the number of delegates due to its increased self-confidence and its economic importance, it was initially undecided whether the Estates General should vote by estate or by head. A vote according to estates would have meant a majority for the nobility and clergy from the outset. In a vote by head, the bourgeoisie could hope to win over parts of the nobility and especially the simple clergy.
When Louis XVI. finally did not give in to the request for a vote based on the number of heads, the members of the Third Estate declared themselves to be the National Assembly on June 17, 1789 and vowed not to split up until a constitution for France was created ( ball house oath ).
The third estate in contemporary journalism
The announcement of the Estates General had already given rise to a large number of pamphlets, the most famous and most influential of which was that of Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès . Sieyès wrote in the introduction to "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers état?":
“What is the third estate? Everything and more.
What has he been up to now in the political order? Nothing.
What does he ask? To be something and to exist as it will always be. "
In the further course, Sieyès explains that due to its importance, the Third Estate alone is entitled to represent the will of the nation and to form a national assembly.
Change of concept
In the course of the 19th century, the term third estate only refers to the bourgeoisie. The industrial proletariat joins it as the fourth estate .
literature
- Augustin Thierry : Essai sur l'histoire de la formation et des progrès du Tiers État . Paris 1853.
Web links
- Sieyès: What is the Third Estate?
Individual evidence
- ↑ Annie Antoine: The manorial rule in France at the end of the Ancien Régime: Current status and new perspectives in research. In: Reiner Prass; Jürgen Schlumbohm; Gerard Beaur: Rural Societies in Germany and France, 18.-19. Century. Publications of the Max Planck Institute for History. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-35185-2 , p. 53 f.
- ^ Jean Tulard: France in the Age of Revolutions 1789-1851. Vol. 4 From the history of France in 6 vols., ISBN 3-421-06454-7 , p. 31 ff.
- ↑ The social, political and economic situation in France in the 18th century, 2.3 The Third Estate. In: Patrick Süskind's novel Das Parfum . Project of the basic German course at the State Commercial School and Business School in Harburg. December 13, 2000, accessed July 28, 2012.