henever some asks me, the history major, what caused the French Revolution (I'd get asked that more often than you'd expect. History majors are good for something, right??), I'm usually at a loss. My explanation often feels incoherent and unconvincing, especially to myself. What crucial points or factors am I missing? I feel like an idiot for my utter inability to handle such an ostensibly innocent question. Then again, it seems that any book, no matter how thorough its research, would not be able to do it justice, let alone a nutshell explanation to a lay person. Its significance and the ramifications of its aftermath remain even more confounding. I'm usually at a greater loss to explain that. Simon Schama, in his almost-revisionist classic, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, opened his 1989 book with an anecdote about Zhou En-lai. When asked what he thought was the significance of the French Revolution, he replied, "It's too soon to tell."

he following essay, written for Professor Thomas Brady's History 5 modern European survey course, taught in U.C. Berkeley during the spring semester of 1992, attempted to address these perennially annoying questions through examining two conflicting points of view. It wasn't a well-written paper by any means, even by the standards for an introductory undergraduate history course. I think I got a 'B+' from my wonderful T.A. Dean Bell (the coolest history T.A. I've ever come acorss), and that was what I deserved. I also apologise for using parenthetical notation (it's so sociology department), because it's much easier to adapt to HTML. However, this flawed paper touched most of the major issues, and it provides a good refresher for me whenever someone hurls one of those questions at me again. Recovered from the dusty archives of my scholatic career, this essay, originally titled "A Nation Outgrowing Its Existing Social-Political Order: A Brief Evaluation of the Third Estate and the French Revolution," is posted here mainly for the record, for my benefit, and to mitigate any future embarrassments.

The Third Estate then contains everything that pertains to the nation while nobody outside the Third Estate can be considered part of the nation. What is the Third Estate? Everything.
--Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1788)

The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.
--Edmund Burke (1790)

t the risk of oversimplification, the French Revolution can be viewed as a series of violent and dramatic reactions to an often hopelessly outdated and incompetent government which did not reflect the nascent realities of the nation. As a member of the clergy who sympathised with the majority of Frenchmen who had been denied political power, the revolutionary leader Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès recognised that the monarchical government had not been able to adequately serve the needs of its subjects, and he therefore called for the institution of a new order which would be led by people who represented the overwhelming majority of the populace--people who were neither nobility nor clergy, i.e., the Third Estate.

On the other hand, Edmund Burke, a prominent English conservative who was a member of Parliament and who could represent the European nobility's prevailing point of view, seemed to feel that the revolution was not the best course of action for France to take, regardless of the efficacy of the present order. To Burke the revolution was not only a hasty and inappropriate termination of the existing social and political order, but it was also a violent, ominous menace to all the people of France and Europe. Although Burke's views may seem somewhat unrealistic and reactionary, both he and Sieyes Burke and Sieyes presented arguments which deserved some merit.

This essay will attempt to examine the implications of, and the logic behind the views which these quotes expressed, vis-à-vis the French Revolution. It will also try to identify the causes of the revolution.

he influential 1788 pamphlet "What Is the Third Estate?" in which the Sieyès quote was taken from could be viewed as a declaration and acknowledgement of France's coming of age as a modern nation-state of citizens (as opposed to just commoner masses under the domination of the nobility and the clergy) who have a right to a legitimate representative government which would protect their rights (particularly that of property) and interests. This document, which provided the early leaders of the revolution some goals to aspire to, explained at length that despite the fact that France was a nation overwhelmingly composed of commoners, they had been denied political power by the small minority of the nobility and clergy (also dominated by the nobility). Sieyes vehemently argued that it was about time that France institute a government which truly reflected the composition of its populace.

The convocation of the Estates-General by Louis XVI to resolve the kingdom's severe economic crises prompted the publication of Sieyès's pamphlet, which was an effective piece of propaganda used to unite the various groups and interests within the Third Estate. The Estates-General was the French parliament which had not met since 1614 (the French monarchy's highly-centralised bureaucratic government had made it almost obsolete) (Kishlansky 615), but the dissatisfaction of and the formidable opposition to the government's handling of the economic troubles by the nobility (and virtually the rest of the nation) forced the king to convene the legislative body. The Estates-General was composed of representatives from the three "Estates": the clergy, the nobility and the Third Estate of commoners. Since each of the orders were equally weighted and the ranks of the clergy were dominated by the nobility, the Third Estate would not have the efficacy to advance their interests under the current voting regulations. As a member of the clergy who had decided to represent the Third Estate in the Estates-General as an act of solidarity, Sieyès emphasised in his pamphlet that it was the Third Estate which really made up the nation of France, and yet it had virtually no political power. To him and other leaders of the Third Estate, the Estates-General would be the ultimate opportunity for the majority of France to achieve control of government which was rightly theirs. Sieyès wanted more than just representation equal to that of the other two orders in the Estates-General; he wanted the creation of a new order with legal equality for all of its citizens and a truly representative legislature, and a nation without noble privileges.

efore evaluating the Sieyès pamphlet, this essay will now provide a brief background information on the context which the pamphlet was written in. The chronic economic turmoil which led to the convocation of the Estates-General had several causes and was long in the making. The ceaseless and costly wars of European power struggles accelerated by Louis XIV's administration had driven France into debt. The situation was exacerbated during the reign of Louis XV by the disastrous Seven-Years War which France eventually lost in 1763. Not only did the outcome of the disastrous war force France to cede its vast North American territories to Britain, but it was also a severe blow to the financial state of the nation since it was paid for by high-interest loans secured against the guarantee of victory (Kishlansky 613). Notwithstanding the longstanding deficit and the lack of funds, the war also prompted the French government to strengthen its naval forces in a futile attempt to challenge the stronger British fleet (Kishlansky 613). Needless to say, these financial burdens took a heavy toll on its people, the vast majority of whom did not have any political representation. The humiliating defeat and severe economic policies did not do much to endear the monarchy in the hearts of its subjects. Many felt France could do a lot better (cf. "...a patriotic culture of citizenship was created in the decades after the Seven Years' War, and that it was thus a cause, rather than a product of the French Revolution." Schama xv).

The dire economic situation did not deter the royal government from playing the costly forever game of preserving the European balance of powers, nor presenting a public profile decidedly lacking in frugality and sensitivity. (The apocryphal "let them eat cake" attitude was an exaggeration at best, but the fiasco tellingly showed how incompetent the monarchy's handlers were and the extent of public dissatisfaction.) Even though Louis XVI was facing an enormous deficit when he came into office in 1774, the excessive spending and borrowing continued. During his reign, the crucial French military aid to the Americans revolting against the British brought France to the brink of bankruptcy. What crippled the government was essentially the high cost of armaments in midst of political resistance to new taxes, as well as a growing willingness of royal administrations to accept severe interest-bearing obligations from both domestic, and increasingly, foreign creditors (Schama 71). The financing of costly wars with high-interest loans eventually resulted in the allocation of more than half of the nation's budget towards paying off the interest during the 1780s (Kishlansky 614). Essentially the situation was analogous to today's indebted Third World countries' struggling to pay off international bank and IMF loans at the cost of everything else.

Since the reign of Louis XV, the nation's financial turmoil prompted the government to occasionally attempt to reform its antiquated tax structure which was not only unable to provide the state with enough revenue, but it was also outrageously regressive to many of its subjects. The tax burden, which aguably was the heaviest in Europe, fell mostly on the people who were least able to pay--the peasants of the Third Estate. Louis XV tried unsuccessfully to tax the nobility which had always been exempt from taxes. The nobility's reaction to his efforts were extremely hostile; they viewed taxation as an attack against their liberty and rights as nobles who were exempt from taxation by the virtue of their privileged status (Kishlansky 613). As a matter of fact, until the outbreak of the revolution, the monarchy generally seemed sincerely interested in reforming the tax and fianancial structures that would lead to a more stable and equitable France. Unlike the commonly held misconception of the ancien regime as being wholly reactionary and oppressive, the monarchy was in many instances rather reform-minded. Unfortunately, it was often at irreconcilable odds with nobilty. Louis XVI tried several times to reform the tax laws, but the nobility always successfully defeated his measures. They were often able to nullify the king's decrees by obstructing them in parlements. (In order for royal decrees to become law, the king had to register them at these courts where the magistrates would approve them (Kishlansky 612).) Like his predecessor, Louis XVI was also rebuffed by the nobility with charges of despotism, taxation without consent and violation against individual freedom. Some noblemen even began to call for a constitution which would protect their rights as the privileged class and define the role of the king (Kishlansky 615). These demands eventually forced the king to announce the assembling of the Estates-General in 1788.

This announcement subsequently led to a significant acceleration in the political awareness in France as representatives to the Estates-General were being elected. In addition to developing a sense of finally having an opportunity to voice their concerns and alleviate the nation's problems, the people of France from all classes were also allowed to record their grievances in cahiers which the Estates-General would later address. These events coincided with severe economic turmoil confronting the French people who had to endure high prices (especially bread), shortage of supplies, a series of bad harvests, and high taxation. The up and rising bourgeoisie also wanted representation in government which befitted their new status. As a result, there was a wide dissemination of ideas, grievances, goals and demands; people began to think about concepts like rights, equality, and representative government. It was in this heated atmosphere in which Sieyès wrote his pamphlet.

he fundamental purpose of the pamphlet was to show the people of France that virtually all the persons who make up the nation had no political power whatsoever. To Sieyès, the Third Estate was "everything" since it not only included the overwhelming majority of Frenchmen (about 98.6% of population or 22,750,000) (Brady), but also all the elements of a functioning nation. According to Sieyès, the Third Estate included farmers who work on the land and produced the food, the people who improve on the raw materials to increase their value (i.e., labour), the agents who transport and distribute the goods and materials for consumption (i.e., dealers and merchants), the artists, the scientists and the menial labourers; these were the people who kept the nation up and running. Even in the "public" (governing) sector, the members of the Third Estate constituted nineteen-twentieths of all the administrators and bureaucrats, but they did all the arduous and menial tasks which the privileged orders refused to perform. "Only the well-paid and honorific posts are filled by the members of the privileged orders" (Sieyès 155). As all the parts which constituted a functioning nation, the members of the Third Estate did not have a parliament which could protect their rights and interests. All they had was an unequal voice in an anachronistic, impotent and inherently unfair council. The Abbé went further and pointed out that the nobility was simply a useless burden on the nation which the nation could do without. He wrote:

Who is bold enough to maintain that the Third Estate does not contain within itself everything needful to constitute a complete nation? It is like a strong and robust man with one arm still in chains. If the privileged order were removed, the nation would not be something less but something more. What is the Third Estate? All; but an "all" that is fettered and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? It would be all; but free and flourishing. Nothing will go well without the Third Estate; everything would go considerably better without the two others (156).

In fact, he also explained that the nobility was not really part of the nation at all, but aliens separated from the rest of the society. Because they possessed privileges and were exempt from the common laws which governed the nation, they should be excluded from France since government and laws were supposed to be manifestations of the general will of the people who constituted the nation (Sieyès 156-157). (This argument was probably influenced by Rousseau, who had expostulated the concept of social contract.)

With these passages, Sieyès wanted to urge the people of France to reconsider the existing social-political structure and view the nobility as a detrimental anachronism which had kept the nation in "chains." He believed that the people of France should assert their rights and take control of the nation's government, and judging from the events that were to follow the publication of this pamphlet, the people of France agreed with what he wanted to prove.

he problem of the Third Estate's representation in the Estates-General was certainly one of the "chains" which was hindering the progress of the nation. Sieyès pointed out in his pamphlet that the Third Estate had only a "modest" goal--to have an equal influence to that of the privileged orders (160). The Third Estate basically wanted to have the opportunity to participate in free elections of deputies to the Estates-General who truly reflected the members of the general public (as opposed to the "bogus deputies," who were actually new members of the nobility or persons with temporary privileges) (Sieyès 158). He argued that at the very least, the Third Estate should possess a number of representatives equal to that of the two other orders taken together, and that the votes of the council to be counted by heads rather than by order, since the privileged orders would always vote as a bloc (Sieyès 160). (As a matter of fact, the Third Estate would obviously still be unfairly represented under this proposed arrangement.) The Abbé firmly stated that the Third Estate could not and should not ask for anything less (160).

Later on in the pamphlet, however, Sieyès advocated the abandoning of the Estates-General altogether and forming its own national legislative body since the Third Estate already make up the nation. He wrote:

Mark the enormous discrepancy between the assembly of the Third Estate and those of the other two orders. The former represents twenty-five million people [sic] and deliberates over the interests of the nation. The other two, even if they join together, derive their powers from only about two-hundred thousand individuals and consider nothing but their own privileges. It is alleged that the Third Estate cannot form the States-General by itself. So much the better! It will form a National Assembly (178).

The formation of an "Assemblée nationale" was exactly what happened later in 17 June, 1789, when the other two orders would not accept the Third Estate's demands for equal representation and voting by heads.

What Sieyès was trying to do here in this passage was to convince the members of the Third Estate to not see themselves as persons belonging to an order, but as citizens of a nation. According to his argument, they have a right to form their own national government because they are the nation. To view themselves as an order would be reactionary and to implicitly accept the status-quo of injustice oppression; they would be an accomplice to their own disenfranchisement. In fact, Sieyès later added that the Third Estate could either view itself as an order and accept the "prejudices of archaic barbarism", or view itself as a nation (179). This was a revolutionary call for equality, democracy, and national unity.

In addition to persuasively pointing out the injustices facing the Third Estate, the pamphlet was also somewhat of an acknowledgement of France's coming of age and a stirring call for the emancipation of the Third Estate. The document clearly had a progressive and forward-looking view of the world, and it blatantly rejected the old. Not only did Sieyès use modern concepts and terms like "People" and "Citizens" vis-à-vis their rightful enpowerment and national unity, but he also used terms like "barbaric" and "archaic" to denounce the existing "feudal" social-political order. He wanted the people of France to view themselves not as subjects but as citizens of a modern nation which would forge a truly representative government (i.e., what he deemed as a truly representative government; he blatantly disregarded women in the political process) which would reflect the emerging realities of France.

bbé Sieyès was obviously a person who looked towards the future. On the other hand, Edmund Burke stood opposite from him and was an eloquent advocate of the values and of the social-political order of the past. Although Burke recognised that France had moved into a new era of bourgeoisie-led capitalism, industrialisation, global trade, and banking and financing, and that the "economists and calculators" had indeed succeeded, he wrote in his famous work Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) (from which one of the introductory quote of this essay was taken) that the new order of the Revolution was not a change for the better. As a moderately conservative member of the English nobility, he viewed that social hierarchy, which was the governing philosophy which had kept the society together for centuries, was being replaced by the cult of liberty, which to him was an abstract and unpredictable concept. He felt that the leaders of the Revolution like Sieyès were thoughtlessly throwing away the old (but time-tested) pillars of society and moving France into a dangerous and uncharted brave new world of mob rule. To him this implied chaos and destruction. Lamenting the loss of old values and virtues, Burke described a world without respected hierarchy in the following pessimistic terms:

On this scheme of things, a king is but a man; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and an animal not of the highest order... On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom, as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern, which each individual may find in them, from his own speculations, or even spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows (146).

Burke implied that rulership by monarchy and nobility had a sense of natural paternalism based on foundations which included duty, loyalty and chivalry. According to his arguments, not only would the stability and cohesion provided by the old order end as the Revolution progressed, but death would reign as "leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity" (Burke 147). Represented by Burke, the nobility of Europe viewed the Revolution as a serious threat to order in general and an advent of mob hysteria. So serious was the threat that the rest of Europe, led by its nobility, subsequently waged war against France en masse. (Revolutionary leaders also wanted to eliminate perceived foreign threats to the emerging new Nation, and they did not hesitate to seize the opportunity to export war and revolution to its neighbours.)

What Burke did not realise was that France was becoming a more complex society where capital, production and trade were integral parts of an engine which sustained society. The control of this engine rested firmly in hands of the bourgeoisie, which until the revolution did not have substantial voice in government, which obviously was having trouble coping with the new realities and competently guiding the nation. According to logic, government would have to accommodate the vanguard and engine of society in order to survive, but Burke overlooked this reality. Deciding what course the nation would take was no longer a choice for the nobility to make; the prerogative laid in the hands of the bourgeoisie.

Although Burke may be unrealistic when he refused to accept the inevitable march of progress and aspiring political consciousness among the masses, he was certainly right on the mark when he predicted the outcome of unpredictability, genocide and chaos. The subsequent rise of the Jacobins and the Terror would hurl France into a cataclysm it had never before experienced, and Burke deserved some credit for his foresight.

he French Revolution was basically caused by the grievances expostulated by the Sieyès pamphlet in the midst of fiscal mismanagement and debilatating debts on the part of the reform-minded but incompetent royal government, whose presiding over the existing social order was deemed archaic by reformers as well as by revolutionaries. When the monarchy and the reform leaders eventually failed to establish a workable representative legislative institution through which the government could execute its economic and social reforms, the monarchy met its ultimate demise. This inability to cooperate and create a viable, working Assemblée nationale among reformers and among all parties involed would subsequently lead to catastrophic consequences. In the end, the Revolution degenerated into chaos and bloodshed as various radical leaders firmly rejected the notion of a parliamentary, constitutional monarchy (e.g., the British system), and they clashed with other reformers in addition to anyone they viewed as a fifth column bent on subverting the emerging new order (Schama 857). Ultimatey, tax and economic relief did not come, nor did a workable national legislature presiding over a democracy; violence and war would continue until the end of the Napoleonic era in 1815.

The concepts presented in the Sieyès pamphlet guided the earlier half of the Revolution by successfully convincing the people of France that: 1) they had been wrongly disenfranchised by the privileged orders; 2) the Third Estate is the nation (and that the nobility should not be part of it); and 3) the Third Estate had a right, a necessity, to create a new legitimate national government (and not view itself as a mere order but citizens of a nation). These beliefs naturally laid the foundations that would allow the Estates-General to evolve through a succession of elected legislatures into the Assemblée nationale and the Convention and as well as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

Obviously not everyone favoured the revolution, and conservative stalwarts like Burke lamented the loss of the old order and its values. However, he correctly recognised that France would never be the same, and that forging a new order with its own new set of values would not be easy.

NOTES

Brady, Thomas A. Lecture (for History 5 course). 
   College of Letters and Science.
   University of California at Berkeley. 3 March, 1992.

Burke, Edmund. [Excerpt from] Reflections on 
   the Revolution in France.
   Aspects of Western Civilization, vol. 2. 
   Ed. Perry M. Rogers.
   Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992.

Kishlansky, Mark, Patrick Geary, and Patricia O'Brien.
   Civilization in the West, vol. B.
   New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Schama, Simon. Citizens: A Chronicle of the 
   French Revolution.
   New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.

Sieyes, Emmanuel-Joseph. "What Is the Third Estate?"
   Readings in Western Civilization, vol. 7. 
   Ed. Keith Baker.
   Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

23 April 1992