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France in Revolution c.1774-1815

The three estates: privilege and burden under the Ancien Régime

  • 3 things to know
  • AS Unit 2 and A2 Unit 4

Overview

Ancien Régime, three estates into which French society was legally divided and don gratuit.

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Key term

Name three seigneurial dues owed by peasants to their lord.

Key term

How did the harvests of 1788 make the political crisis worse?

Numbers

What was meant by the Ancien Régime?

Questions from this subtopic

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  1. 1

    What was meant by the Ancien Régime?

    Model answer

    The system of government and society in France before 1789, resting on absolute monarchy, a privileged nobility and clergy, and a Church closely bound to the state.

  2. 2

    Name the three estates into which French society was legally divided.

    Model answer

    The clergy, the nobility, and everyone else, who together made up the Third Estate.

  3. 3

    Roughly what proportion of the French population belonged to the Third Estate?

    Model answer

    Well over ninety-five per cent, since the clergy and nobility together numbered only a few hundred thousand out of some twenty-eight million people.

  4. 4

    Give three privileges enjoyed by the First Estate.

    Model answer

    Exemption from the main direct taxes, the right to collect the tithe, and its own courts and assembly.

  5. 5

    What was the don gratuit?

    Model answer

    The voluntary grant the assembly of the clergy voted to the Crown in place of taxation, fixed by the clergy themselves.

  6. 6

    Explain the difference between the higher and the lower clergy.

    Model answer

    Bishops and abbots were almost all noble, wealthy and often absent, while parish priests were commonly of humble birth and poorly paid, which is why many of them sided with the Third Estate.

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AUniversal male suffrage was kept.
BCandidates were officially sponsored.
CThe press was licensed and warned.

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Wilhelm II succeeded in 1888 and dismissed Bismarck in 1890.
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