French Rev Ap Euro

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wealth and privilege. They were jealous that they were unable to share in the economic success of the other estates. As a result, the members of the third estate, most notably the bourgeois, came to yearn for the political equality and liberty so often described by the philosophes of the Enlightenment. The organization of French society into three distinct estates promoted conflict and contributed to the start of the French Revolution.

Like the Old Regime, the agrarian system encouraged class struggles and was responsible for the start of the French Revolution in 1789. Although no serfs existed in France, the feudal system was alive and well. More than eighty percent of the population was rural, which allowed the nobility to maintain a few of the feudal rights of manorial lords. In eighteenth century France, manorial nobles received hunting privileges and created monopolies over village mills, bakeshops, and wine presses through the collection of fees in the form of banalités. They were granted limited jurisdictional powers in courts and as law enforcers as well. Furthermore, the eminent property right provided manor owners, twenty percent of whom were nobles, with the ability to collect rent. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, inflation and the prospect of greater returns pushed manorial lords to obtain their dues more rigorously. Additionally, many lords revived old dues in an attempt to increase their personal gains. These burdening payments fell upon the peasantry, allowing for their resentment of the upper classes to grow. Manorial fees, eminent property rights, communal practices, and church tithes outraged them and many began to agree upon the necessity of revolution. The agrarian, or feudal, system advanced the third estate’s resentment of the upper classes and was an indirect cause of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution of 1789 was essentially a class struggle between the wealthy and educated bourgeois of the third estate and the nobility of the first and second estate. As the prosperity and political power of the bourgeois continued to increase, revolution became more popular and the belief in the justifiability of equality was affirmed.