with.In Pre-revolutionary France there were three estates - the first estate (clergy), the second estate (nobles) and the third estate (bourgeoisie, peasantry and urban workers). Most of the clergy came from noble backgrounds, as it was usual for the youngest sons of wealthy families to join the church in order to share its wealth. The church’s wealth came from tithes (a proportion or the each year’s crop paid to the church by landowners) and the vast amount of land that it owned. They clergy were exempt from taxes; instead they negotiated a don gratuit with the king. The don gratuit was an annual payment to the crown and was always much less than what would have to be paid in normal taxation. The church had a great deal of power too as the state religion was Catholicism, it was their duty to spread to ideas of divine right. The second estate was by far, the wealthiest and most powerful. They were exempt from paying direct taxes (until the 1749 vingtieme when they still paid less than they would have done if they were from the third estate) and doing military service such as the corvee (forced labour on roads) and made their money through the land they owned (between 15% and 25% of all land in France). They also receives seigneural (feudal) dues which were fees that the peasants were obligated to pay in order to use the lord’s mill, oven, wine press, breeding stock, death taxes, inheritance taxes and sale-of-property taxes. The third estate was made up of three parts; the bourgeoisie, who were the wealthiest and most educated part of the estate, many of them being financiers, landowners, doctors, writers and civil servants. It was also possible for wealthy bourgeoisie to buy venal offices to become nobles (however, most ennobling offices requires at least two generations of owners before nobility could be bought. The other part of the estate was the peasantry. It was the least wealthy and most numerous (85% of the Fren...
