Similarities Between The Third Estate And The French Revolution

It is evident the Third Estate was unsatisfied with its current state because it sought to reform the government incessantly, but made little progress due to the insurmountable resistance from the First and Second Estate. Not wanting to lose their privileges, the other two bodies of this ancient society of orders fought viciously to protect themselves; however, a chain of events ended up dislodging their grip over the French people. The creation of the National Assembly, the storming of the Bastille and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen are three essential and extremely consequential events during the ‘moderate’ phase of the French Revolution for they convey the restlessness of the French people, above all those of Third Estate, …show more content…
In January of 1789 The pamphlet, What Is The Third Estate, began to circulate and continued to stoke the dysphoria within the General Estates. This general unease, further provoked by two particularly fervent members of the Third Estate: Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, author of the pamphlet What Is The Third Estate, and Jean Sylvain Bailly, reached its peak on June 13, 1789 when the Third Estate declared the creation on the National Assembly. Exponentially detrimental to the the society of orders that existed in France at the time, the Third Estate proposed that it had “within itself all that is necessary to constitute a complete nation.” The reasoning behind this statement was that as a whole, a nation lived under a common law which alludes to the idea that those who experienced privileges lived under a separate set of laws therefore exempting themselves from that nation. This idea underlined the lunacy of the current system of voting and on June 17, the representatives of the newly created National Assembly announced only they deigned worthy of voting in new taxes because they were the only Estate who understood the strife of the French