'The French Revolution, c1780-99' is one of the eight Paper 1 depth studies. You study two of them, so only work through these lessons if the French Revolution is one of your chosen options.
In 1780 France was one of the richest and most powerful countries in Europe. It had around 27 to 28 million people, far more than Britain. Yet within ten years the whole way the country was run had been torn down. To understand why, you need to know how French society was organised.
Almost everyone in France had a set place in society, and for most people it was decided by birth. There were three groups, called Estates. Your Estate decided which laws you lived under, which taxes you paid and which jobs you could do. People were not equal before the law.
Key terms:
An old saying summed up the system: the clergy pray, the nobles fight and everyone else works. By 1780 this picture was out of date, but the privileges that went with it were still in place.
Who: about 130,000 churchmen and nuns of the Catholic Church, from rich bishops to poor parish priests.
Duties: to lead worship and care for people's souls. The Church also ran most schools and hospitals, helped the poor and kept the records of births, marriages and deaths.
Privileges: the Church owned about a tenth of the land in France and collected the tithe. It paid no ordinary taxes. Instead it gave the king a 'free gift' of money and decided the amount itself.
Who: the noble families of France, fewer than 2 in every 100 people.
Duties: in the past, to fight for the king. By 1780 nobles served as army officers, judges and royal ministers.
Privileges: nobles did not pay the taille, the main direct tax. They did not have to do forced labour on the roads. Most of the best jobs in the army, the Church and the government went to nobles. As landlords, they collected feudal dues from their peasants.
Who: more than 95 in every 100 people. It included the bourgeoisie, town workers and the peasants, who were about four out of every five French people.
Duties: to work and to pay. The Third Estate grew the food, made the goods and paid most of the taxes.
Privileges: almost none. However rich or clever you were, it was very hard to reach the top jobs unless you were noble.
The Estates were not united groups. A bishop usually came from a noble family and lived in a palace, while a parish priest could be as poor as the villagers he served. A wealthy merchant and a landless farm worker were both in the Third Estate, but their lives were very different.
The system pressed hardest on the peasants, because they paid three different masters.
To the king: taxes such as the taille and the gabelle, a hated tax on salt. They could also be made to work unpaid on the royal roads. This forced labour was called the corvée.
To the Church: the tithe. The word means 'a tenth', though the exact share varied from place to place.
To the lord: feudal dues, such as a yearly payment in money or a share of the harvest.
Many lords had a monopoly: peasants had to use the lord's mill, bread oven and wine press, and pay a fee each time.
Only the lord could hunt. Peasants were often forbidden to kill the lord's game, even when it ate their crops.
The lord could also run his own local court, which judged quarrels between him and his own peasants.
After all of this, many peasant families had little left to live on. One poor harvest could mean hunger.
A long-term cause is something that builds up pressure over many years. It does not start a revolution by itself, but it makes one possible. The Three Estates system did this in three ways.
By the 1780s many people in the Third Estate were asking a dangerous question: why should a tiny minority enjoy rights that everyone else was denied?
Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history book)
By 1780 the French peasant was crushed beneath a mountain of payments. He handed taxes to the king, tithes to the Church and dues to his lord, and was even forced to grind his corn at the lord's own mill. Meanwhile the nobles, who escaped the heaviest tax, hunted across his fields and trampled his crops for sport. The privileged few grew fat on the labour of the many. It was a system that could not last.
What impression does the author give about the Three Estates system in France? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]
The author gives the impression that the Three Estates system was cruel and deeply unfair to the peasants. This is shown by the emotive language. The peasant is 'crushed beneath a mountain of payments', which suggests a burden too heavy to bear, while 'the privileged few grew fat', which makes the clergy and nobles sound greedy and lazy. The phrase 'for sport' suggests the nobles did not care about the harm they caused. The author has also chosen to stress only what peasants paid and what nobles enjoyed. Nothing is said about the duties of the clergy and nobility, such as running schools or serving as army officers. The final sentence, 'a system that could not last', adds to the impression that the system was so unjust it was bound to collapse.
What lifts it to the top level: it does not just repeat the extract. It names one clear impression, then explains how the author's choice of words and the points selected or left out create it.
Start with 'The author gives the impression that...' and then hunt for loaded words like 'crushed' and 'grew fat'. Quote them in a few words each and say what each one suggests. Finish by saying what the author chose to leave out.
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