CAUSES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION DOCUMENT SET

Document 1 - On the lives of Peasants before the French Revolution

The people groaned under the burden of taxes levied by the State, rents and contributions paid
to the lord, tithes collected by the clergy, as well as under the forced labour exacted by all three.
Entire populations were reduced to beggary and wandered on the roads to the number of five, ten
or twenty thousand men, women and children in every province; in 1777, one million one hundred
thousand persons were officially declared to be beggars. In the villages famine had become chronic
[continual]; its intervals were short [it happened often], and it decimated [destroyed] entire
provinces. Peasants were flocking in hundreds and thousands from their own neighbourhood, in
the hope, soon undeceived [proven true], of finding better conditions elsewhere. At the same time,
the number of the poor in the towns increased every year, and it was quite usual for food to run
short. As the municipalities could not replenish the markets, bread riots, always followed by
massacres, became a persistent feature in the everyday life of the kingdom. ~ Ptr Kropotkin The
Great French Revolution 17891793

Document 2 - A summary of French royal spending (1789) 1 Livre (18th century) = $10 US Dollars
(2008) Approx.

Summary of the Livre Rouge The total amount entered in the Red Book from May 19th 1774
to August 16th 1789 is 227,983,716 livres, 10 sous and one denier. This sum can be broken
down under several headings:
To the kings brothers: 28,364,211 livres
Gifts, gratuities: 6,174,793 livres
Pensions, salaries: 2,221,541 livres
Charity: 254,000 livres
Indemnities, advances, loans: 15,254,106
livres

Acquisitions, exchanges: 20,868,821 livres

Financial transactions: 5,825,000 livres
Foreign affairs, postal costs: 135,804,891
livres
Various expenses: 1,794,600 livres
Personal expenses of the king and queen:
11,423,750 livres.

Document 3 - What is the Third Estate - Abbe Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyes

What is the third estate? Everything. What has it been heretofore in the political order? Nothing. What does
it demand? To become something therein....
Who, then, would dare to say that the third estate has not within itself all that is necessary to constitute a
complete nation? It is the strong and robust man whose one arm remains enchained. If the privileged order
were abolished, the nation would not be something less but something more. Thus, what is the third estate?
Everything; but an everything shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order?
Everything; but an everything free and flourishing. Nothing can progress without it; everything would
proceed infinitely better without the others.
The third estate, then, comprises everything appertaining to the nation; and whatever is not the third estate
may not be regarded as being of the nation. What is the third estate? Everything!

Document 4 - This excerpt is adapted from Travels in France by Arthur Young, who traveled
through France from 1787 to 1789.

Document 5 - This diagram illustrates the three estates in 1789 and the land each held during
the Old Regime.

Document 6 - Lord Acton suggested another point of view on what caused the French
Revolution.