Abbe Sieyes What Is The Third Estate

The French Revolution is often portrayed as a valiant fight for liberty, fraternity, and equality, spearheaded by a group of famous enlightened leaders, and to an extent, this portrayal is accurate. However, this historical view of enlightened principles wielded by a select few, fails to incorporate the actions and feelings of the majority of the French population during the Revolution. While engaged and in agreement with the enlightenment movement, most Frenchmen during the revolution found themselves intimately more concerned with their own welfare, not the application of the famous concepts of liberty, fraternity, and equality to all. If via these notions their own freedom could be obtained, then so be it, however on the forefront of their agenda remained the destruction of the ruling classes, and their subsequent freedom from unfair exploitation by these classes. Abbe Sieyes What is the Third Estate, sums up these feelings perfectly, addressing enlightenment principles found in many other more famous French liberation documents, while simultaneously enveloping us in the mindset of Frances lowest and

Upon the lead up to this meeting, the issue of voting swept through France, as aristocrats and commoners alike, debated how votes should be decided at the Estates General, one per social class, or via a population. From this debate arose Abbe Sieyes’ What is the Third Estate, a fiery document aimed the both members of Frances Third Estate and its nobility alike. Focused on the Third Estates contribution to France, the documents readable nature turns it into a bold rallying cry for the Third Estate, as it demands the total abolishment of the privileged classes, going as far as to say the nation of France exists only within the population which contributes to society, that population being the Third