By the time the elections were complete, it was apparent that the majority of the French people desired and expected a greater measure of reform than their sovereign had anticipated. The reports and lists of grievances that had been drafted in every part of the country were astounding. To be sure, these documents, called cahiers, were not revolutionary in wording: with wonderful uniformity they expressed loyalty to the monarchy and fidelity to the king: in not a single one out of the thousand cahiers was there a threat of violent change. But in spirit the cahiers were eloquent. All of them reflected the idea which philosophy had made popular that reason demanded fundamental, thoroughgoing reforms in government and society. Those of the Third Estate were particularly insistent upon the social inequalities and abuses long associated with the "old régime." It was clear that if the elected representatives of the Third Estate carried out the instructions of their constituents, the voting of additional taxes to the government would be delayed until a thorough investigation had been made and many grievances had been redressed.
[Sidenote: The Third Estate]
On the whole, it was probable that the elected representatives of the Third Estate would heed the cahiers. They were educated and brainy men. Two-thirds of them were lawyers or judges; many, also, were scholars; only ten could possibly be considered as belonging to the lower classes. A goodly number admired the governmental system of Great Britain, in which the royal power had been reduced; the class interests of all of them were directly opposed to the prevailing policies of the French monarchy. The Third Estate was too intelligent to follow blindly or unhesitatingly the dictates of the court.
In the earliest history of the Estates-General, the Third Estate had been of comparatively slight importance either in society or in politics, and Philip the Fair had proclaimed that the duty of its members was "to hear, receive, approve, and perform what should be commanded of them by the king." But between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries the relative social importance of the bourgeoisie had enormously increased. The class was more numerous, wealthier, more enlightened, and more experienced in the conduct of business. It became clearer with the lapse of time that it, more than nobility or clergy, deserved the right of representing the bulk of the nation. This right Louis XVI had seemed in part to recognize by providing that the number of elected representatives of the Third Estate should equal the combined numbers of those of the First and Second Estates. The commoners naturally drew the deduction from the royal concession that they were to exercise paramount political influence in the Estates- General of 1789.
The Third Estate, as elected in the winter of 1788-1789, was fortunate in possessing two very capable leaders, Mirabeau and Sieyès, both of whom belonged by office or birth to the upper classes, but who had gladly accepted election as deputies of the unprivileged classes. With two such leaders, it was extremely doubtful whether the Third Estate would tamely submit to playing an inferior role in future.
[Sidenote: Mirabeau]
Mirabeau (1749-1791) was the son of a bluff but good-hearted old marquis who was not very successful in bringing up his family. Young Mirabeau had been so immoral and unruly that his father had repeatedly obtained lettres de cachet from the king in order that prison bars might keep him out of mischief. Released many times only to fall into new excesses, Mirabeau found at last in the French Revolution an opportunity for expressing his sincere belief in constitutional government and an outlet for his almost superhuman energy. From the convocation of the Estates-General to his death in 1791, he was one of the most prominent men in France. His gigantic physique, half-broken by disease and imprisonment, his shaggy eyebrows, his heavy head, gave him an impressive, though sinister, appearance. And for quickness in perceiving at once a problem and its solution, as well as for gifts of reverberating oratory, he was unsurpassed.
[Sidenote: Sieyès]
Of less force but greater tact was the priest, Sieyès (1748-1836), whose lack of devotion to Christianity and the clerical calling was matched by a zealous regard for the skeptical and critical philosophy of the day and for the practical arts of politics and diplomacy. It was a pamphlet of Sieyès that, on the eve of the assembling of the Estates- General, furnished the Third Estate with its platform and program. "What is the Third Estate?" asks Sieyès. "It is everything," he replies. "What has it been hitherto in the political order? Nothing! What does it desire? To be something!"
[Sidenote: Meeting of the Estates-General (May, 1789)]
[Sidenote: Constitutional Question Involved in the Organization of the
Estates-General]