What Were People Complaining About in Early 1780s France?

What were people complaining about in early 1780s France?

The French government in the 1970s practised a system called feudalism and it was ruled by absolutism. The people of France were divided up into classes based on feudalism which was a class system based on land ownership, the king owned all the land and he would give plots of his land to the nobles in exchange for their services. The nobles would then give their land to less wealthy people than them in exchange for payment or service. Feudalism created a class system which was divided in three classes in France. The first estate was the clergy, the high members of the church. The second estate were the nobles, these people were wealthy land owners. Finally the third estate was everyone else in society, peasants, shopkeepers, lawyers and merchants.

The tax system in France was one of the things people were complaining about; the system was unfair and favoured the clergy and nobles. The third estate which consisted of 25 million people (97% of the French population) had to pay all the taxes whilst the first and second estate paid no taxes, the burden of the country landed heavily on the third estate and especially the peasant farmers. The economy in France heavily relied on farming, so when there were droughts in France and poor conditions meant crops couldn’t grow there was food shortages. These shortages meant the farmers weren’t making money and they couldn’t afford to pay taxes. This was a long term cause of the French revolution as people were left starving because of the shortages and began to grow restless with the government. Another long term cause of the revolution was the economic problems in France. France was bankrupt and this was due to the wars they had been fighting such as the Seven Year’s war and the American Revolution. The extravagant spending of King Louis XVI was another reason for the debts as he spent too much money building his palace in Versailles, the government turned to the third estate to make up this debt as the first and second estate would not be taxed.

The class system in France was unfair as the three states had different privileges and exemptions. The first estate had privileges such as; censorship of the press, control of education, ownership of 20% land and also collected the tithe (church tax). They were exempt from taxes and were subject to church law rather than civil law. The only burden the first estate had was that they had a ‘moral obligation’ to assist the poor and needy.  The second estate had similar exemptions and privileges; they too collected taxes, owned 20% of land and also were exempt from paying taxes. The third estate were completely different to the first and second, despite having 96% of the population the third estate had no privileges or exemptions. The third estate were burdened with paying all taxes which led to most of them being poor, as 96% of the French population were in this class it meant that France had become economically unstable.