Abbe Sieyes: The Era Of The French Revolution

The Era of the French Revolution (1750-1815) distinctively transformed the political, economic, and social context of France, which not only yielded a sharp divide in opinion over the revolution but set a stage for fundamental political ideals. The end of the revolution produced the radical results of abolishing monarchy and nobility, confiscating the Catholic Church’s property and landholding, and introduced democracy and civil rights to the French and European societies. Issues mainly arose with the royal government’s inability to reform or address France’s everlasting problem of a dysfunctional political system, financial operations, and status hierarchy. The financial crisis in France consequently led the King Louis XIV to summon the Estates General, France’s represented body, which raised questions over the constitution of the Estates. In response, Abbe Sieyes confronted the question at hand with his widely printed and famous pamphlet, What is the Third Estate, which set revolutionary ideas and reason upon France’s common people. The Estates General, called upon by looming bankruptcy and preventive measure for financial collapse, had last convened in 1614 and constituted as a vague historical moment. Traditionally, the Estate General divided into three chambers, in sequential
order, of the clergy, nobility, and the common people. The hierarchical structure established a significant distinction between the nobility and the common majority. The order of the hierarchy produced an unjust relationship between the clergy and nobility, both wealth and landholders, against the common people since the clergy and nobility outvoted them. During a time of economic turmoil and difficult harvest that characterized the summer months of the year, French monarchs levied increased taxation and food prices on the expense of the poor to fill in the diminishing revenues. Once the government hit bankruptcy and abandoned the common people, the Estates General became the dominant intuition. Furthermore, the call of the Estates General in the spring of 1789 would not fall back and bring conservative reform, but a revolutionary reform advocated for the equal rights of the common people. The social context and rising middle class pushed for equal representation in the Estate Generals gathering in 1789. The common people began advocating for change, which consisted of doubling the Third Estate to increase the number of representatives in their estate as the First and Second, and to vote via individual representative as opposed to by estate. During the preceding and continuous time of economic and political turmoil, followed by a list of grievances, increased the dire need for reform. Clergyman, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes (1748-1836) answered the desperate call for reform with his famous pamphlet, What is the Third Estate? Sieyes widely printed pamphlet significantly influenced and changed the shift in public opinion from nobility to the common people of the Third Estate; essentially, convincing the Third Estate that they stood a better chance as their own representatives, instead of the nobles, against the King’s tyrant rule. The revolutionary ideas to reform the Estates General and restructure the societal hierarchy immensely influenced the French Revolution. In his pamphlet, Sieyes states, “What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in political order? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something” (32). Sieyes established a nation for the common people and that the First and Second Estates will remain excluded from the nation if they wish to keep a privileged identity. Thus, Sieyes defines the nation as, “A body of associates, living under common law, and represented by the same legislature” (33). Sieyes identified the body of the nation with the commoners, establishing a prominent identification for the Third Estate in 1789. Sieyes provided further political analysis by advocating equal representation of all three chambers of the estate by asserting that policy matter concerning taxes should affect all three portions of the Estates equally. He then states, “Nothing can succeed without it [the Third Estate] everything would be infinitely better without the two others […] noble order does not enter at all into social organization […] cannot of itself constitute a nation” (33). Being exempt from taxation and claiming a right to their privileges separates the clergy and the aristocrats from the common order and law, thus isolating them from the nation. Sieyes concludes his pamphlet by stating, “What is the Third Estate? It is the whole” (33). The significance of Sieyes’s pamphlet lies in the defiant radicalism that transformed his work as a manifesto for the French Revolution as he proposed the gradual replacement of the General Estate by the National Assembly.
Sieyes pamphlet provided a voice for the justification of revolutionary action as the newly formed National Assembly evoked the Tennis Court Oath. The defiant act was a call for a reformed, new constitution that excluded the nobility and clergy from participating in politics. Consequently, Sieyes revolutionary thought of reasoning influenced and lead the National Assembly to seize democratic power, essentially marking the start of the French
Revolution.