French Society during the Late Eighteenth Century

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In Continuation from last post:

http://www.thoughtcrackers.blogspot.in/2015/09/the-french-revolution-and-idea-of-nation.html

In 1774, Louis XVI (Louis 16^th) (Full name: Louis Auguste de France)of the Bourbon family of kings ascended the throne of France. He was 20 years old and married to the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette. Upon his accession the new king found an empty treasury. Long years of war had drained the financial resources of France. Added to this was the cost of maintaining an extravagant court at the immense palace of Versailles. 

Under Louis 16^th, France helped the thirteen American colonies to gain their independence from the common enemy, Britain. The war added more than a billion livres (Unit of currency in France discontinued in 1794) to a debt that had already risen to more than 2 billion livres. Lenders who gave the state credit, now began to charge 10 %  interest on loans. So the French government was obliged to spend an increasing percentage of its budget on interest payments alone. 

To meet its regular expenses, such as the cost of maintaining an army, the court, running government offices or universities, the state was forced to increase taxes. Yet even this measure would not have sufficed. French society in the eighteenth century was divided into three estates, and only members of the third estate paid taxes (shown by dashed line in figure 1).

The society of estates was part of the feudal system that dated back to the middle ages. The term Old Regime is usually used to describe the society and institutions of France before 1789.

Fig. 1 shows how the system of estates in French society was organised. Peasants made up about 90 per cent of the population. However, only a small number of them owned the land they cultivated. About 60 % of the land was owned by nobles, the Church and other richer members of the third estate. The members of the first two estates, that is, the clergy (Group of persons invested with special functions in the church)and the nobility, enjoyed certain privileges by birth. The most important of these was exemption from paying taxes to the state. The nobles further enjoyed feudal privileges. These included feudal dues, which they extracted from the peasants. Peasants were obliged to render services to the lord . to work in his house and fields . to serve in the army or to participate in building roads.

Figure1: A Society of Estates. Note that within the Third Estate some were rich and others poor.

The Church too extracted its share of taxes called tithes (A tax levied by the church, comprising one-tenth of the agricultural produce)from the peasants, and finally, all members of the third estate had to pay taxes to the state. These included a direct tax, called taille (Tax to be paid directly to the state), and a number of indirect taxes which were levied on articles of everyday consumption like salt or tobacco. The burden of financing activities of the state through taxes was borne by the third estate alone.

A small minority of Protestants living in France, such as the Huguenots, wanted an anti-Catholic regime and revenge against the clergy who discriminated against them. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire helped fuel this resentment by denigrating the Catholic Church and destabilizing the French monarchy.

The Struggle to Survive:

The population of France rose from about 23 million in 1715 to 28 million in 1789. This led to a rapid increase in the demand for food grains. Production of grains could not keep pace with the demand. So the price of bread which was the staple diet of the majority rose rapidly. Most workers were employed as labourers in workshops whose owner fixed their wages. But wages did not keep pace with the rise in prices. So the gap between the poor and the rich widened. Things became worse whenever drought or hail reduced the harvest. This led to a subsistence crisis (An extreme situation where the basic means of livelihood are endangered), something that occurred frequently in France during the Old Regime.

Jacques Lagniet - The Nobleman is the Spider and the Peasant is the Fly

TAKEN FROM 
NCERT BOOK ( India and the Contemporary World -II FOR CLASS X )

Wikipedia