Third Estate

In the age of the French Revolution, the term Third Estate (tiers état) indicated the generality of people which were not part of the clergy (the First Estate) nor of the nobility (the Second Estate). From these terms came the name of the medieval French national assembly: the States General, the analogue to the British Parliament but with no actual powers.

The Third Estate comprised all those who were not members of the aristocracy or the clergy, including peasants, working people and the bourgeoisie. It made up 98% of the population in France.

The first Estates-Generalwas called by Philip IV in 1302, in order to obtain national approval for his anticlerical policy. Philip organized the assembly into three divisions, and every following Estates-Generaldown to 1789 maintained the division.

The Estates-Generalof France dwindled in importance, and after 1614 it was not called again for fifty years. In May 1789, Louis XVI convened the Estates-General in order to address the financial crisis of the kingdom. By this point, however, the French aristocracy has declined in power and influence, while the bourgeois had become much more important and conscious of itself as a class. The Third Estate, containing representatives of the bourgeois, asked for and received a greater share of representation than it had possessed in earlier centuries, and then asked for all estates to meet together. When Louis XVI did not respond, the Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly (inviting representatives of the other two estates) and signed the Tennis Court Oath demanding a constitution for France. The Third Estate, along with the support of sympathetic aristocrats, managed to win support of both the popular mobs of Paris and of much of the national military, and thus found itself itself in a position to reorganize the French state as it saw fit.

Since the representatives of the Third Estate actually came from the wealthy upper bourgeoisie, sometimes the term meaning has been restricted to the middle class, as opposed to the working class (also called the Fourth Estate).

see also:

• estates of the realm
• First Estate, Second Estate, Fourth Estate
• social class, class warfare, etc.
• Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat