#also that a good deal of the instigation for the french rev were the angry bourgeoisie

[ravenkings]

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The Third Estate: The Bourgeois & Working Classes

Far from the neatly packaged term of "those who work" that described the third feudal order, the Third Estate of Bourbon France was a messy collection of everyone from the wealthiest non-nobles in the kingdom to the most impoverished beggars. It represented over 90% of the population, but the experiences of those in the upper tiers of the estate were vastly different from those in the bottom tiers. The first subgroup comprised the upper and middle classes known as the bourgeoisie, while the second refers to the working class and the unemployed. During the Revolution, this latter group became known as the sans-culottes (literally "without culottes"), a name denoting their poverty, since only the nobility and wealthy bourgeois wore culottes, fashionable silk knee-breeches.

The bourgeoisie was a steadily growing class. By 1789, about 2 million people could fall into this category, more than double the amount that there had been half a century prior. They controlled a massive share of national wealth; most industrial and commercial capital, almost one-fifth of all French private wealth, was bourgeois-owned, as was a quarter of land and a significant portion of government stock. The wealthiest bourgeois lived lives of luxury, not too dissimilar to the lifestyles of nobles. It was in vogue for a bourgeois family hoping to climb the social ladder to dress in silks, drink coffee imported from the West Indies, and decorate their homes with prints and wallpaper. According to scholar William Doyle, it was primarily bourgeois capital that built theatres in Paris and Bordeaux, just as it was the bourgeois who funded newspapers, colleges, and public libraries.

Doyle credits the rise of the bourgeois in the 18th century to the sudden "extraordinary commercial and industrial expansion” of that period (Doyle, 23). The fortunes of bourgeois families mostly originated from business and were secured through safe investments such as land. Besides Protestants and Jews, to whom social mobility was limited, bourgeois families rarely stayed in the business that enriched them for more than one generation, and money not invested in land would go toward superior education for their children. With this education, "the way was open to the professions, where mercantile origins could be forgotten" (Doyle, 24).

Reaching this status was seen as the goal for many bourgeois families, who would often stagnate on this comfortable, middle-class social rung. Yet not all bourgeois families were satisfied stopping at a middle-class status and, for those who had the money, higher ambitions were indeed attainable. As the financial crisis was becoming increasingly dire during the reign of Louis XVI, the government sold about 70,000 public offices, representing a combined worth of 900 million livres. Some of these venal offices were ennobling, others were hereditary once purchased, but all of them dramatically increased one's social standing. By the means of purchasing ennobling offices, over 10,000 bourgeois bought their way into the nobility during the 18th century.

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