French Revolution Dbq

The French Revolution was a pivotal time in history in which people stood up for equality and justice in their society. The rebellion was largely influenced by many events such as the Enlightenment because better reasoning and judgement increased in France and the American Revolution because the idea of independence spread. Moreover, the source of the revolution was mostly because of how France’s society was split into three uneven estates: the first estate, the second estate, and finally the third estate. There were many problems with this split government because of the imbalance between all three classes. The main cause of the French Revolution was inequality within the estates social order because of the unfairness in the government, prejudiced

In 1789, when the revolt began, statistics about the three classes in France were taken (Document 2). The data showed that the third estate had the highest percentage of total population, total land owned, and income paid in taxes. The third estate consisted of 97% of France, yet they were not given any voice in the government. In Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Comte D’Antraigues stated that the people are the foundation of the state and power should lie in it’s citizens (Document 6). Therefore, this signified that since the last social group made up almost all of the country, they should be given more control and input in how the government should be run. Enlightenment thinkers such as Comte D’Antraigues helped the people realize that equality should be distributed between all social classes. Thus, when the third estate felt that they were not give enough power in the Estates General, they formed the Tennis Court Oath in which they pledged to make a constitution that would make every man as equal as his

In Travels in France, Arthur Young stated that the nobles were taxed very little while the poor were taxed heavily (Document 1). This signified that these fees hurt the third estate the most because they were forced to pay the most amount of money, yet they made the least amount. The peasants had it worse than anybody else because they still owed debts dating back to feudal times. In addition, cartoons during the French Revolution satirically showed the public how the 1st and 2nd estate were not deeply impacted by the political system while the 3rd estate was crushed by the taxes they had to pay (Document 7). The third estate earned terrible wages and faced starvation everyday and on top of that, they suffered the most because they had the highest taxes. These tithes caused people to become enraged and vengeful because the social order was making their lives even worse than it already was. Taxes in France were spread out unevenly because of how society was poorly