France in 1788: Estates and the Royal Budget Crisis

Identify the Three Estates of prerevolutionary France and state which one contained roughly 98 percent of the total population.

The First Estate was the Catholic clergy, the Second Estate was the nobility, and the Third Estate consisted of commoners (peasants, laborers, and the bourgeoisie). The Third Estate accounted for roughly 98 percent of the population.

Name the major overseas war fought between 1778 and 1783 that added over one billion livres to the French crown's debt.

The American Revolutionary War.

In 1788, French royal expenditures were 633 million livres, revenues were 472 million livres, and debt servicing absorbed 318 million livres. Calculate the deficit and the percentage of expenditures spent on debt servicing.

The budget deficit was 161 million livres (633 million minus 472 million), and debt servicing consumed approximately 50.2 percent of total expenditures (318 million divided by 633 million).

List two legal or tax privileges enjoyed by the Second Estate that were denied to ordinary peasants.

Nobles were exempt from the direct land tax (the taille) and forced road labor (the corvée), held monopoly hunting rights, and could only be tried in aristocratic courts.

Read this excerpt adapted from a 1789 rural parish grievance book: 'The seigneur's rabbits and pigeons destroy our growing grain, yet we are forbidden to kill them or fence our plots.' Explain what this complaint reveals about daily life under feudal privilege.

It shows that noble hunting and property rights legally superseded the basic food security of peasants, who could not defend their own crops without facing criminal penalties.

In 1787 and 1788, noble magistrates in the parlements argued that blocking royal taxes defended French liberties against tyranny. Weigh this claim against the tax burden carried by the Third Estate.

While the parlements resisted arbitrary royal decrees, their refusal to register universal property taxes preserved their own tax exemptions, leaving the Third Estate to carry almost the entire fiscal burden of the state.