[Music] hey there students this is the second part of my lecture on the French Revolution if you haven't seen part one I suggest you go back and look at it that's going to go into the old regime and the causes of the French Revolution now we're going to talk about the meeting of the Estates General in 1789 which gets the whole process of the French Revolution started 1789 is a very important year that's something that you want to make sure that you have memorized that is the year that the Estates General meets the year that the bastila storm the year that the French still observe as the beginning of the French Revolution so 1789 make sure you know that so in 1789 the Estates General convenes which was an advisory body for the king they weren't a binding parliamentary body but anytime you get a whole bunch of people together powerful people even in an absolute monarchy it's going to cause some problems whether they have formal Authority or not so we're going to go into this disaster that is the meeting of the Estates General in 1789 now the first problem with the Estates General is that it was outdated it hadn't met in 175 years keep in mind that if our Congress were going to be elected today in terms of what it would have looked like 175 years ago we would have been talking about only a group of old white guys and a lot of them owning slaves and that sort of thing A lot changes in 175 years it would not be acceptable in the United States today to hold elections for congress in the same way it had been done 175 years ago so just like we've changed 175 years France had changed a great deal okay now here is the way that the Estates General had met in the past where you have three Estates first the clergy second the nobility and third everyone else the other 97% and each estate would cast one vote and these votes were equal so keep in mind that although the clergy and the nobility made up a very small of the population they could get together and if their votes were identical then that cancels out the votes of everybody else and you've got to take into account the rise of the Bourgeois in France now keep in mind the French word it's kind of hard to say my history teacher he said that when he first saw this word he saw borosi which that's kind of what it looks like but Bourgeois is going to be the French way to say it don't go around say saying borios cuz people are going to look at you funny now who are these borosi these bouris well the Bourgeois were the French professional class these were the merchants the lawyers the manufacturers uh the people who had money and contributed to Commerce but did not have titles of nobility and did not have the protections uh and exemptions given to the Nobles and the church so these are people who are doing the heavy lifting in the economy but not getting any special privileges out of it and these are the people that are bearing most of the tax burden since the clergy and the nobility are exempt so although the Bourgeois are the economic producers you see that an agreement between the clergy in the nobility equals Victory the way that the Estates General is constituted the same way that it had been since the Middle Ages and had not been updated and so 3% equals a majority that's uh not very good math is it so obes who is a member of the clergy and you can see by AB which is a word for Abbott someone who ran a monastery he wrote a pamphlet called what is the Third Estate and this is great to remember for an essay or something like that uh an frq if you're an AP Euro um he asked at the beginning what is the Third Estate everything what has it been until now in the political order nothing what does it seek to become something so essentially what opacs is saying that look the Third Estate is the lifeblood of this country um that these are The Producers these are the farmers the manufacturers um the lawyers the merchants they drive the economy the church and the nobility just kind of sit there and do their thing keep in mind that the Bourgeois also made up a lot of the Civil Service a lot of the government workers so what is the Third Estate in terms of the economy and production and contributing to the well-being of the country everything but the problem is that until now it has been nothing in the political order that the Third Estate does not have the Privileges that the first and second estate have so what do we want to become something now this is perfectly reasonable we're not asking really to become everything in France we acknowledge that the clergy and the nobility have historical privileges but just give us something and we'll be okay so keep in mind that the demands of the Third Estate right here at first in what is a more liberal or moderate phase of the Revolution are not radical these people are not calling for heads to be cut off or anything like that they just want some changes in the political order um creating kind of like a constitutional monarchy like Britain had at the time and so they propos a couple of reforms the First Reform they propose is doubling the Third that the Third Estate can have twice as many delegates as the other estate now keep in mind the Third Estate makes up about 97% of the population they're not asking for 97% of the delegates they're just asking for half you know we make up 97% of the country but all we want is to become something now the second reform goes hand inand with this the second proposed reform is to vote by head and what this means instead of each state tallying its votes and casting a vote as a group we want all of the delegates to vote individually now the goal here is that if you can vote by head that some of the more Progressive Nobles and some of the parish priests among the clergy keep in mind that a lot of the delegates from the clergy were from the Third Estate originally before they became uh members of the clergy it's the Bishops mainly who had been Nobles before that so they believe that if you can vote by head that some of the Nobles and some of the clergy would vote with the Third Estate which could achieve a majority on some of the reforms that they wanted keep in mind in order for this to work both of these have to happen you can't just have the Third Estate with twice as many delegates um with the same sort of vote that they' had previously that destroys the point Louie is indecisive Louis the 16th keep in mind is not Louis the 14th he is not the decisive individual that his predecessor was so Louie decides you know what I'll double the third I'll let him have twice as many deligance but we're going to vote the old way they're not going to have any more say than they would have so what is really saying is I'm consenting to having twice as many ticked off people showing up to the Estates General so the Estates General convenes in May of 1789 and immediately things get a bit awkward the Hat Fiasco all right so what happens is everybody comes in the room France at the time had Sanctuary laws these are laws that governed what people of different social classes could and couldn't do couldn't couldn't wear couldn't couldn't eat there were even laws about how many courses of food could be served at somebody's table uh based on their social rank so what happens here is that Louie sits down and he takes his hat off well the clergy take their hats off because they're a privileged class then the nobility take their hats off off then the Third Estate which has no privileges but sees that the King's Taken his hat off clergy's taken their hat off the nobl have taken their hat off the Third Estate decides after an uncomfortable pause some of them start taking their hats off and before you know it everybody has their hat off now after another uncomfortable pause Lou's like oh I know you didn't and and he puts his hat back on okay so rather than see these commoners these bis Z these non Noble non-clergy types um declaring themselves equal and not wearing hats Louie decides he's gonna put his hat back on I'll show them and so everybody's GNA keep their hat on so once again Louie has uh been the king of awkward uh so to speak uh so this cat Fiasco has the thing starting off on a bad note on the first day oh I know you didn't and so what ends up happening is the Estates General pretty much collapses and the Third Estate is so ticked off they decide you know we're not even going to be a part of this mess anymore and they go off and form what they declare themselves to be the National Assembly now keep in mind this is without the king's permission oh I know you didn't they just say we're the National Assembly we represent the nation of France and so we're no longer the Third Estate we don't have a label we don't have a number and you know what clergy and nobility we would like for you to join us