Wage Gap In French Revolution

A sizeable portion of the Third Estate was exceedingly poor to the degree that they had little choice but to seek change. When such change was denied them, the peasantry revolted. Most conflict has some underlying economic cause, whether it be taking resources from another, or generating a source of income by creating such conflict. In this case, however, the lower class was allowed to starve until it was too late to reverse the vengeance towards the upper classes that had built up because of the economic hardships the former had endured. One might wonder how such a vast economic gap could form in a European society of the time. The society in France, however, had been flawed for a very long time. The country’s deficit spending had simply finally …show more content…
To outside observers, it would appear as if the First and Second Estates simply didn’t care about the well-being of the Third Estate. In fact, an English observer named Isaac Disraeli wrote such an account during the beginnings of the French Revolution: “There was certainly a great necessity for a revolution. For many years, the French Government had imagined that it might with impunity multiply the privileges of an order already by far too much privileged; and it was never suspected that the vilified victims on whom it dared to tread would on their side dare to revolt. The Third Estate [had been] contemptuously thrown into an ignominious obscurity…”(Disraeli 42) To have a society where one group experiences enormous privilege, by entropy, requires that elsewhere in the society, that exclusive privilege is countered with equal lack of privilege. Most of the royalty, nobles, and clergy were enormously better off than the middle class, meaning the lower class would have a large quantity of members who are starving. Meanwhile, they were always scared it would get even