French Revolution Dbq

The French Revolution had a great impact on the lives of many French people, including people within different social classes. Before the start of the French Revolution, there were three different social classes- the peasants, the bourgeoisie, and the nobles. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the peasants, who made up most of the French population, with nearly twenty million people. The bourgeoisie, made up of almost three million people, were a growing middle class. Some people in this class included merchants, judges, and small factory owners. The clergy and the nobility were at the top of the hierarchy. They only had around 480,000 people, but were the wealthiest and most influential. Beginning in the late 1700s, France had begun to go …show more content…
The government was forced to take loans and raise taxes, which was never popular with the people. However, with the way France was set up, the nobility and the clergy were exempt from taxation, so the burden fell on the lower class. Angered, the people proposed a list of reforms. As more and more problems occurred between the people and the government, a revolution eventually took place. The French Revolution brought about many changes, from political equality to the abolition of feudalism. However, a very prominent change that took place was the change in nobility privileges. The French Revolution greatly changed and affected the lives of the nobility by getting rid of their feudal privileges, such as not having to pay taxes, being able to collect feudal dues, and being above the law. A major privilege taken away from the nobles was their immunity from paying taxes. Before the French Revolution, the nobles were free from having to pay any kind of tax to the government. However, the privilege was taken away by …show more content…
Peasants had suffered from paying feudal dues to the nobility for many years before and were growing impatient with the taxes that they had to pay. "The nobles still owned considerable land, probably a fifth of the territory of the kingdom, and they possessed a majority of the manors and hence the right to receive feudal dues.” The nobility owned a lot of French land, so it was believed that they had the right to collect dues from the peasants. However, even that feudal privilege was abolished with the August Decrees. "On the night of 4 August, panic-stricken nobles mounted the rostrum of the National Assembly to respond to the Great Fear by renouncing their privileges and abolishing feudal dues." This is showing how the Great Fear, a series of peasant violence and revolts, panicked the nobles into taking away their privilege of issuing feudal dues. In an attempt to calm the peasants, the nobles gave up their privileges, including being able to collect feudal dues, that they had been enjoying for many centuries before. Unlike before the French Revolution, they no longer had the ability to collect those taxes. To conclude, the noble privilege to collect feudal dues was also

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