HIST1083 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Estates Of The Realm, Social Contract, House Of Habsburg
The French Revolution, Part 1: The Road from Reform to Revolution
• How did reform turn to Revolution?
o Enlightenment thinkers were not Revolutionaries
o Liberal, Enlightenment Ideals transformed into Revolutionary, Radicalism
▪ Utopia→perfect human society—conservative, liberal (can happen in the
future), radical (achieved in distant past)
▪ Tabula Raza→erase past and build new future
▪ Geeral Will ad “pirit of the Reolutio
o Three Estates
▪ 1st Estate: Clergy—2nd Estate: Nobility—3rd Estate: Commoners
▪ Not a lass ased syste—many poor nobles in the 2nd Estate and many rich
bourgeois in the 3rd estate
• Not based on economic well-being
▪ Economic growth of the new Middle Class (3rd Estate) did not match their weak
political position
o Trans-Estate Alliance
▪ Lower clergy and nobles joined with the 3rd Estate (not peasants but Lawyers
and Merchants) to form a formidable political force
• What France Was
o The Old Regime
▪ One king, one God, one state
▪ Absolute monarch
o Parleets
▪ Judiciary courts that would hear appeals and advise king (usually in tax code)
▪ Oly poit of etry to the kig’s ear
o Rococo
▪ Frilly, fun
▪ No message of severity, very superficial→represents ruling class, ruling class
is’t oered ith serious issues in the country
• What France Would Beoe…for a tie
o Constitutional Monarchy
o National Assembly
o Neo-Classicism
• Not all that glitters is gold…
o The long reigns of absolutist kings contrasted the rising tide of Enlightenment though.
o These monarchs left unbalanced budgets from wars and vast building projects.
o Louis XIV (1643-1715)
▪ Numerous wars and the Palace of Versailles
o Louis XV (1710-1774)
▪ “ee Years’ War ad loss of iteratioal oloies
o 3rd estate bears brunt of this financial burden
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