Abbe Sieyes What Is The Third Estate

The French Revolution is often portrayed as a valiant fight for liberty, fraternity, and equality, spearheaded by a group of famous enlightened leaders, and to an extent, this portrayal is accurate. However, this historical view of enlightened principles wielded by a select few, fails to incorporate the actions and feelings of the majority of the French population during the Revolution. While engaged and in agreement with the enlightenment movement, most Frenchmen during the revolution found themselves intimately more concerned with their own welfare, not the application of the famous concepts of liberty, fraternity, and equality to all. If via these notions their own freedom could be obtained, then so be it, however on the forefront of their agenda remained the destruction of the ruling classes, and their subsequent freedom from unfair exploitation by these classes. Abbe Sieyes What is the Third Estate, sums up these feelings perfectly, addressing enlightenment principles found in many other more famous French liberation documents, while simultaneously enveloping us in the mindset of Frances lowest and

most populous class, the Third Estate.
In 1789, with turmoil brewing in the French homeland, King Louis XVI made a desperate decision, declaring an edict calling for meeting of Frances Estates General.

Upon the lead up to this meeting, the issue of voting swept through France, as aristocrats and commoners alike, debated how votes should be decided at the Estates General, one per social class, or via a population. From this debate arose Abbe Sieyes’ What is the Third Estate, a fiery document aimed the both members of Frances Third Estate and its nobility alike. Focused on the Third Estates contribution to France, the documents readable nature turns it into a bold rallying cry for the Third Estate, as it demands the total abolishment of the privileged classes, going as far as to say the nation of France exists only within the population which contributes to society, that population being the Third

Estate.
Throughout Sieyes work the idea of the Third Estate being the entirety of France is reiterated many times, often via the exploration of the Third Estates role within society. Through this exploration we see the document stray from its various more famous enlightened counterpart documents, as it takes on the very heart and soul of the revolution itself. While documents such as the Declarations of Rights of Man and Olympus De Gouges Declaration of the Rights of Women, embody the novelistic revolutionary ideas of the enlightenment, Abbes work finds a way to indirectly weave these concepts into a Third Estate perspective. Instead of focusing on noble grandiose ideas and concepts, Sieyes is able to apply simplified versions of these notions to the forefront issues facing Frances populous underprivileged Third Estate.
Notions such as “in a society without separation of powers defined, no constitution exists at all,” seemed novelistic and inapplicable to the majority of Frenchmen during the revolution. In a time when living was made near impossible or at the very least miserable by the ruling classes, the applications of such enlightenment principles to individuals seemed a stretch at the least. Instead the majority of the revolutionary French found themselves more concerned with the own individual release from the oppressive and taxing demands of the powers above. This feeling, however often goes unwritten in the history books of today, as we reflect upon the revolution as whirlwind of blood and violence, surrounded by a beautiful explosion of enlightenment ideals. Straying from this commonality, Abbes Sieyes work, What is the Third Estate, helps us recapture the true nature of the French Revolution, as it flawlessly embodies the feelings of Frances most populous class, and the ensuing accurate nature of the bloody but enlightened French Revolution.