The Summoning of the Estates General
France witnessed many changes during the eighteenth century and suffered many grievances. As kings inherited and passed along the French throne, the everlasting battle between the nobility and peasantry continued, all the while plaguing the country’s prosperity and wellbeing. New, foreign ideas strengthened the contempt of the lower classes towards their landlords. France also suffered from financial issues, and, as its spending surpassed its income, the government had to find a way to reorganize the country’s economy to accommodate its debts. Each king inherited the debts and unsolved problems of the previous. Louis XVI held the throne of a heavily-in-debt country consisting of countrymen that hated one another. By 1789, he felt that the only way to avoid France’s collapse was by summoning the Estates General, as there were severe social, economical and political issues to be dealt with as soon as possible.
French society was on the verge of caving in due to tensions caused by new philosophical ideas that were reinforced by the American Revolution and by the people’s dislike for the old social system. Ideas of “liberty and equality” were first “made familiar by the Enlightment,” (Kreis), and were repeated in the “English Bill of Rights of 1688” and the “Virginia Bill of Rights (drafted 1776),” which included that all men were “born with natural rights:” liberty and property (Hooker “First”). All these as well as the American Revolution made the French people more aware of the fact that they were allowed to judge the efficiency of their government and king, and, if ever they were unsatisfied, they were morally obliged to make changes. The peasants finally had their proof that they were not inferior to the nobles and deserved equal rights and opportunities for success. These new thoughts strengthened the people’s already-existing contempt and distrust towards the current “French society” because it was “stratified by birth” and held “privileges” enjoyed by the upper class that were “passed on primarily through inheritance,” limiting “social mobility” (“Social”). After the summoning of the Estates General, members of the Third Estate combined the Cahiers des Doleances in which they wrote all the peasantry and bourgeoisie’s complaints, among which were demands that there be no difference between French countrymen and that all “distinctions in penalties” for crimes be “abolished” (“Cahier”). The people required of the new government that it treat all men equally and insisted that, when the law was concerned, no special treatment be given to anyone, no matter their background or family.
