The Third Estate
About the The Third Estate Lesson
Summary
This lesson teaches what the Third Estate was.
Objectives
• To be able to identify the some of the key social classes in Enlightenment France.
•
To be able to describe the Third Estate.
•
To be able to identify Marie Antoinette.
Suggested Grades
3rd Grade
4th Grade
5th Grade
Excerpt
The system of the Three Estates under the rule of a monarch became known as the ?Old Regime? in France. It came to be called this because this system was soon to be replaced. The unfairness of the Three Estates was obvious, and the Third Estate kept growing even more. It included a middle class of prosperous traders and merchants. These prosperous business people were grouped in the Third Estate with laborers and peasants. These prosperous business people were called the bourgeois. The bourgeois came to resent the Old Regime and demanded change.
Continued...
