The Ancien Regime
- Created by: Molly Spicer-Jones
- Created on: 26-04-16 18:46
The Ancien Regime
This was the socio-political system in place before the revolution which existed in most of Europe during the 18th Century.
Countries were ruled on the basis of absolutism - the monarch has absolute control over the government.
There were two classes of people - privileged and unpriviledged. The unpriviledged people paid taxes and were treated badly, while the priviledged were treated well and excempt from tax.
France was split into three estates: First Estate (high ranking members of the clergy), Second Estate (nobility) and the Third Estate (everyone else - from peasants in the countryside to the wealthy bourgeoisie merchants in the cities)
The Three Estates - 1st and 2nd Estates
First Estate: Approximately 130,000 high ranking clergy
- Priviledges - collected the tithe, press censorship, education control, kept records of birth / death / marriages, owned 20% of land
- Exemptions - paid no taxes, subject to church law rather than civil law
- Burdens - moral, rather than legal obligation to assist the poor and needy, support the monarchy and the old regime
Second Estate: Approximately 110,000 nobles
- Priviledges - collected taxes in form of feudal dues, monopolized military and state appointments, owned 20% of land
- Exemptions - paid no taxes
- Burdens - support the monarchy and old regime
The Three Estates - 3rd Estate
Third Estate: approximately 25,000,000 - everyone else (including many parish priests)
- Priviledges - None
- Exemptions - None
- Burdens - paid all taxes (tithe - church tax; ocrot - tax on goods imported into the city; capitation - poll tax; vingtieme - income tax; gabelle - salt tax; taille - land tax; feudal dues for use of local manor`s winepress / ovens etc); corvee - forced road work
Economic state of France in the Old Regime
- Economy largely based on agriculture
- peasant farmers bore burden of taxation
- poor harvests meant peasants couldn`t afford to pay regular tax and couldn`t afford to have their taxes increased
- bourgeoisie often managed to gain wealth but were upset that they paid taxes while nobles did not
- the King (Louis XVI) lavished money on himself and his residence in Versailles
- Queen Marie Antoinette was seen as a wasteful spender
- government found its funds depleted due to wars - including the American Revolution
- Defecit Spending - a government spending more money than it takes in from tax revenues
- priviledged classes would not submit to being taxed
Enlightenment Thinking / The Age of Reason
Philisophe thinking during this time was referred to as the Enlightenment - scientists had discovered laws governing the natural world, while philisophes began asking whether natural laws would apply to humans:
- In particular institutions such as the government
- they were secular in thinking, using reason / knowledge, rather than faith, supersitition and religion to answer important questions
- used reason and logic to determine how governments are formed
- questioned the Divine Right of Kings
- Locke - contract between government and governed
- Rousseau - individual freedom and the corruption of modern civilisation
- Montesquieu - checks and balances
- Voltaire - freedom of thought and expression
Long Term Causes of the French Revolution
Long term - causes stemming back many years, also known as underlying causes
- Absolutism
- Unjust socio-political system (Old Regime)
- Poor harvests leaving peasant farmers with little money for taxes
- Influence of Enlightenment philisophes
- System of merchantilism which restricted trade
- Influence of other successful revolutions (England`s Glorious Revolution 1688-1689, American Revolution 1775-1783
Short Term Causes of the French Revolution
Short term causes occur the close to the moment the change or action occurs - also known as immediate causes.
Bankruptcy - caused by defecit spending, financial ministers (Calonne, Turgot and Necker) proposed changes but were rejected, assembly of Notables voted down nobility taxation in 1787
Great Fear - worst famine in memory, hungry/impoverished peasants feared nobles at the estates general were seeking greater priviledge, attacks on nobles occurred throughout the country in 1789
Estates-General - Louis XVI had no choice but to call for a meeting of the Estates General to find bankruptcy solution, the threee estates had not met since 1614 - resulted in a chain of events leading to the downfall of the monarchy and the implementation of a whole new system
Voting in the Estates General 5th May 1789
- voting was conducted by order (each estate got one vote) and this meant that the first and second estate could operate as a bloc to prevent the third estate from getting its way
- Representatives from the third estate wanted voting by head (everyone had a vote), which would give them a great advantage.
- Deadlock resulted
Tennis Court Oath
- The Third Estate declared itself the National Assembly
- Louis XVI responds by locking them out of the building
- The Thid Estate relocated to a nearby tennis court where its members vowed to stay together and create a written constitution for France
- June 23, 1789 Louis XVI relented. He ordered the three estates to meet together as the National Assembly and vote, by head, on a new constitution for France
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