The_French_Revolutiom

----------------------- Life for the third estate before the revolution was very hard work and tiring, they had hardly and money and worked all day everyday. Each family had a very small amount of land and had to grow crops for food for them and to pay the taxes. The third estate were poor and defenceless, they felt that they couldn’t do anything about the way that they were treated. The third estate were looked down on by the other estates and had to pay more taxes to the king, the lords and the church even though they were very poor. They had to pay all sorts of taxes that mostly went to the king, the king and his wife the Queen spent the money on their own luxuries and on ‘fighting costly wars’ says the King. The Estates were made up of three different ‘sections’ of people, 1st estate Clergy, 2nd estate Noble and the 3rd estate were everybody else, also known as peasants. The first and second estates thought that they were so much more powerful than the third estate, and actually they were. But it shouldn’t have meant that they had to pay taxes to them and the King too. The peasants were treated horribly by the other estates and should have had more respect than they were given. Peasants were forced to do military service and weren’t allowed to hunt or fish on the second and first estates land. They had to use the lord’s oven and winepress; they also had to pay for them. The Kind ruled absolutely, meaning that he had complete rule over France, the third estate thought that he was unfit to be a King. But nobody dared say anything, because they knew they would get in trouble. The people had finally had enough of the amount of respect that they were being given by the other estates and al decided that it wasn’t fair that they had to be so different from everybody else. They wanted to be somebody and they wanted to be treated better by the other estates they knew that they had more rights than what they were being given and wanted to step in and make things right. 90 percent of the population were the third estate so they thought if everybody protested then soon enough they would have their own way. This was one of the many causes that led to the French revolution. The storming of the Bastille was the first step towards the start of the French revolution. It all started because there were revolutionists inside the Bastille – which was a prison – the third estate knew that innocent people were in there and that they needed to get them out, so they marched over to The Bastille and ordered to be let in. The guard refused, this sent off riots all over France. So many innocent people were killed and bombs and gun fires were sent off all around the Bastille.