Explain how France was organized before the revolution. Include the name given to each group and their role.

French society before the Revolution was divided by custom and by law into three estates, or orders. They were as follows:

• The clergy. Known as the "first estate," the Catholic clergy were immune from taxation, and were allowed to profit from their positions. Many were in reality appointed due to their political connections rather than experience or any particular expertise. While the First Estate technically included all clergy, and the Church controlled vast tracts of land and wealth, many parish priests lived in relative poverty, and even some wealthy church officials (the abbe Sieyes, for example) sympathized with calls for reform as the Revolution approached. Overall, however, the Church was a bastion of privilege under the old order.


• The nobility. This "Second Estate" included old French nobility, descended from aristocratic families dating back hundreds of years, as well as men who had recently purchased titles, offices, and estates from the monarchy, who alone had the power to grant titles. The former were known as the noblesse d'épée ("nobles of the sword,") while the latter were called noblesse d'robe ("nobles of the robe,") a reference to the fact that many owed their titles to their administrative or judicial offices. The nobles, too, were exempt from most taxes, including the taille, a head tax. As the noblesse d'robe demonstrated, there was some mobility between the Second Estate and the Third Estate.


• Everyone else. The "Third Estate" included every other legally recognized person (i.e. not slaves or really even servants) in the kingdom. Sometimes the image of the Third Estate evokes the Paris working classes or the rural peasants, but the most politically influential members of the Third Estate were the bourgeoisie, educated urban lawyers, merchants, and businessmen who deeply resented (though many also aspired to join) the French nobility. In any case, the Third Estate bore most of the tax burden under the Bourbon monarchs, and it was a coalition of lawyers and reform-minded nobility who initiated the early reforms of the Revolution's liberal phase.