The_French_Revolution

In the 1789, there were a lot of long-term reasons that started the French Revolution. The people of the third estate were not happy with the social, economical and political state of being. They were not happy socially with how the land was distributed. They weren’t happy Economically with all the taxes and they couldn’t afford food. And they weren’t politically happy with the Estates general. Other reasons with the start of the French Revolution was that people from the third estate and some of the middle class agreed with the ideas of some of the enlightenment thinkers, such as Voltaire, John Locke, and Rousseau. The third estate was not happy socially with the distribution of the land. The first estate which was 1% of the population had 10% of the land, the second estate, 2% of the population had 35% of land, and lastly the third estate 97% most of the population had 55% of the land (doc 2). This wasn’t a fair way to distribute the land because there wasn’t very much land for the third estate. And the two smallest estates have a whole lot of space for a very small amount of people. The third estate would have been very crowded and busy. The middle class ( part of the third estate) had realized this wasn’t fair because of their knowledge of the enlightenment( Doc 4). They read about John Locke and his idea of life, liberty and the right to own property. They knew they had property but it wasn’t enough for them to survive because people were cramped together and it wasn’t good for them and they were able to spread this knowledge with the rest of the third estate. Economically the third class had to pay the most taxes in comparison to the first and second estates (doc 1). Some of the people in the third estate were just as wealthy as the first two estates, they just had to pay more taxes and they felt they should have been in the first two estates. On top of that they didn’t have enough money for food and clothes to feed themselves and their children (doc 1). Half on the Peasant income would have to go to taxes. Sometimes they would have to form mobs and ambush or bum-rush the grain and bread shops of carts just to get some food to feed their families.