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THE THIRD ESTATE
• Included everyone who was not clergy or nobility– Dumping ground for 9/10s of European
population– Embraced everyone from textile workers to
mountain shepherds; from prosperous merchants to beggars
– Inaccurate category in a sociological sense but accurate in a political sense• Included all people who were ruled• Had no voice or authority
PEASANTRY• Made up 80% of total population
– 100 million people
• Lived in tiny villages and hamlets
• Most immediate and important relationship was with local noble lord– Every village belonged to a
lordship• Feudal domaines where
landowner exercised considerable political and economic rights
FEUDAL TENANT AND INDEPENDENT OWNER
• Most peasants also owned their land– Normally between
3 to 10 acres
• Peasant was both feudal tenant and independent owner of the same piece of land
PARAOXICAL SITUATION• Feudalism did not disappear in Europe when
Middle Ages ended– It instead was gradually modified into
something else• Peasants had acquired rights of private
ownership– But lord still exercised extensive rights
over peasant land– Peasants could only exercise rights of
private ownership with lord’s permission– Peasants also owed lord numerous
payments and obligations in exchange for the right to own and work land
• Corvée• Banalité• Land transaction fees• Fees for use of lord’s court• Annual rent
– Cens or champart
ARISTOCRATIC REACTION
• Many peasant obligations had diminished during the 17th century
• But inflation caused nobles to resurrect them in the 18th century
• Made life of peasants in the 18th century increasingly miserable
TAXES
• Taille– Direct property tax that all
peasants had to pay– Nobles were exempt
• Gabelle– Most hated tax– Tax on salt– Only one of many sales
taxes peasants had to pay on necessities
PEASANT REBELS?• Heavy tax burden often provoked peasant tax
riots– Some were very large but they all ultimately
were mercilessly put down by the government
• Government’s attitude was that all riots were the same and that rioters were not only rebels against the king but also rebels against God
• Peasants did not want to overthrow government or to create new society– Only wanted reduction in taxes– Wanted to restore an old society where the
king had been a kind and gentle father of his people
PEASANT SOCIETY• Peasants divided by different degrees of
status• Determinant of status was how much
land he owned, how many livestock he had, and how many implements he owned
• Only 10% of peasants owned enough land to provide a secure living for themselves– Most only had a few scattered strips
and did odd jobs and worked as part-time laborers to make ends meet
– Sharecroppers had little or no land of their own and had to rent land
– At bottom were “landless men”• Wandered from farm to farm in
search of work• Frequently turned into roving
bands of beggars and vagabonds
TYPICAL VILLAGE SOCIETY I
• 1. At the top were one or two rich peasants– Owned full plow teams– Rented additional land
from noble lord and worked it with agricultural laborers
– Often acted as agents for the lord
– Voice in village affairs carried a lot of weight
TYPICAL VILLAGE SOCIETY II
• 2. Eight or ten more-or-less independent smallholders
– Did OK in normal times
• 3. Majority of villagers
– Lived right on the edge of survival
• 4. The completely destitute
– Generally made up 10% of the village population
TYPICAL VILLAGE SOCIETY III
• One bad harvest, a visitation by soldiers, or the unexpected death of a sheep or cow could trigger an irreversible tailspin of death and disaster
• Millions would become paupers– Holdings seized by creditors– They would starve to death
and become vulnerable to disease
– Normal for 10-20% of a village to die off in such situations
EASTERN EUROPE• From the 1500s, peasants in Austria, Prussia,
Poland, and Russia had declined into literal slavery– First peasant lost land through debt and the
means to pay debt off– Lord commuted debt from cash to labor service– Lord advances peasant land, tools, and food
• Putting peasant deeper in debt• Guaranteeing that peasant would work for
lord for the rest of his life– Because of runaway problem, governments
bound them to their immediate locality• Peasants forbidden from moving, marrying
or practicing a trade without consent of their lord
• Peasants could even be sold
TWO EUROPES
WESTERN EUROPE
Feudalism a lingering relic of the past
EASTERN EUROPE
Feudalism strong and most peasants sunk in horrible and primitive misery
PEASANT DEMOGRAPHY
• Mortality rates hideously high– In France, out of every 100 peasants born, 25 would
die before first birthday, 25 more would die before they reached 20, and 25 more would die before they reach 45• Only ten would reach the age of 60• A man of 80 was extraordinarily rare
• Marriage age was relatively late– Around 26 years old for men; 23 years old for
women– Illegitimate births relatively rare– 50% of peasants never lived long enough to
reproduce themselves
PEASANT WOMEN AND CHILDBIRTH
• Only way to maintain population was to keep birth rate as high as possible– Women became pregnant as
soon as they married and kept having children for as long as possible
– Did not result in large families• Women produced five
children on the average and were lucky if two or three of them survived to become adults
LIFE OF THE PEASANTS• Little room for sentiment in a
peasant’s life– Widowers remarried
quickly– Death of an infant less
traumatic than a bad harvest or death of a horse
• Only the strong and the brutal survived– Drink and violence were
common and tolerated within limits
UNUSUAL CONTADICTIONS
Unspeakably filthy
Crowded and dangerous
Terrible poverty
Places of wealthy and magnificence
Tremendous wealthy existed side-by-side with unspeakable poverty
LONDON ELITE• 3000 aristocratic families
lived most of the year in city– Along with 1000 wealthy
merchants– 10,000 “principal
tradesmen”– 30,000 well-off clergymen,
artists, and professionals• Entire group made up 50,000
people (about 1/8 of population)– Known as “men of
property”– The ruling elite
REST OF THE CITY
• 7/8 of population made up of master craftsmen, small shopkeepers, journeymen, apprentices, laborers, and the destitute – Floating class of
beggars, vagrants, indigent old people, orphans, and unemployed immigrants
– Made up 1/8 of population
URBAN SURVIVAL• Craftsmen and shopkeepers
managed a certain degree of security
• Journeymen, apprentices, and laborers waged a bitter and continual struggle for survival
• Destitute were losing this struggle– Introduction of cheap gin after
1720 sent death rate skyrocketing because it became cheaper to drink gin than to eat
– Even after Gin Act of 1751, 1000 people a year starved to death in London for the rest of the century
WORKING CONDITIONS• Manufacturing done in multitude of small
shops or at home• Work days were long• Many trades organized into guilds
– Legally incorporated bodies that had a monopoly over a specific occupation
• Workers chronically in debt to their employers for advances of food and money
• Workers were harassed at work, cheated on their hours, and shortchanged in their pay
• More vulnerable than peasants in periods of economic crisis because they had no home of their own, no savings, few possessions, no food reserve, and no animals to slaughter
URBAN VOLATILITY
• Street violence was continuous and riots a normal part of urban life
• Always caused by grievances about wages and hours, rising prices, or threat of unemployment
RIOT TO REVOLUTION
• Major cause of riots in Paris was price of bread
• In normal times, Parisian workers spent ½ their income on bread– Any upward fluctuation in this price
was bound to cause a riot
• In 1789, bread prices had climbed to a point where workers had to pay 5/6s of their income for bread– The usual riots erupted but this time
middle class revolutionaries exploited popular rage for their own political goals
– But once on the revolutionary stage, the “mob” refused to get off—forcing the French Revolution far beyond the original intentions of its initiators