AP® European History · Unit 5 · Topic 5.4
The French Revolution: 1789
In 1789 France's rigid social and tax system collided with royal bankruptcy, and a meeting called to fix the budget spiraled into the collapse of the monarchy's old legal order within months.
France in 1789 was legally divided into three estates. The First Estate, clergy, and Second Estate, nobility, together were under 2 percent of the population but owned huge land and paid almost no tax. The Third Estate, everyone else, was over 95 percent of the country and carried the tax burden, yet each estate got one vote in the Estates-General regardless of size. When the Third Estate's representatives realized the other two would always outvote them two to one, they broke away, declared themselves the National Assembly, and swore the Tennis Court Oath on June 20 not to disband until France had a constitution.
Louis XVI responded by gathering troops near Paris, and Parisians, fearing a military crackdown, stormed the Bastille fortress on July 14 to seize its gunpowder and muskets, not to free prisoners, since it held only seven. The Bastille's fall became a symbol that royal authority could be defied and beaten. That same summer, rumors of noble-hired brigands coming to destroy crops swept village to village across the countryside, a panic called the Great Fear. Armed villagers found no bandits but turned on manor houses anyway, burning feudal records and chateaus. Spooked nobles in the Assembly responded on the night of August 4 by voluntarily renouncing feudal privileges, dismantling the legal basis of the old order in one session.
This chain, estates to oath to Bastille to Great Fear to August decrees, set up the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the constitutional struggles that follow as the revolution radicalizes.
Key terms
- Estates-General
- An assembly of France's three legal orders, clergy, nobility, and commoners, summoned by the king to address the fiscal crisis.
- Tennis Court Oath
- A June 20, 1789 pledge by Third Estate delegates not to disband until France had a written constitution.
- Great Fear
- A wave of rumor-driven panic across rural France in summer 1789 that led peasants to attack manors and burn feudal records.
- August Decrees
- Legislation passed August 4, 1789 in which nobles renounced feudal privileges and dues, ending the legal basis of the old order.
- Third Estate
- The legal order comprising over 95 percent of France's population, excluded from clergy or nobility, who bore most of the tax burden.
Watch it explained
- How it worksShow me the three estates as a population pyramid next to their voting weight and tax burden.
- How it worksWalk me through the chain from the Tennis Court Oath to the Bastille to the August decrees.
- How it worksHow did the Great Fear spread through the countryside village by village in July 1789?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't storming the Bastille best understood as freeing a prison full of prisoners?
Check yourself
End of topic.