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Third Estate |
Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Hutchinson | 0.01 sec. |
Third EstateFrench Tiers ÉtatIn French history, one of the three orders (with the nobility and the clergy) of the Estates-General before the French Revolution. The unprivileged order, it represented the great majority of the people. Its transformation with the Tennis Court Oath into a National Assembly in 1789 marked the beginning of the Revolution. How to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, add the site to iGoogle, or visit webmaster's page for free fun content. |
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| The bourgeoisie, though always "rising," were not perceived as a social problem in themselves; instead the controversy was over "luxury," and the growing taste for it among the entire Third Estate. After stating that Henry II merely suspended payment for a quarter instead of defaulting on his loans in 1557, for instance, Baumgartner explains that the debt compiled by the middle of the sixteenth century required such exorbitant taxes that it soured the Third Estate on the monarchy, at the same time that it prevented the king and his sons from lavishing the gifts to which the nobles d'epee had become accustomed or from engaging in the foreign wars that kept them happy in the king's armies. We glimpse Marie Antoinette's unpopularity with her people, the inability of the American Congress to repay French veterans, Camille Desmoulins's rabble-rousing, Louis XVI's political and sexual impotence, Mesmer's hypnotic experiments on noble women, the assembly of the third estate, the events leading up to the Tennis Court Oath. |
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