The French Revolution

Many people in France were critical of the nobility, the king, and the clergy for many reasons.
-The nobles had almost complete authority over peasants.
- Nobles did not have to do military service
-Nobles didnt have to pay most taxes. This didnt make any sense because the nobles had enough money in order to pay taxes. But the peasants who were poor and had nothing, had to pay taxes. This was totally unfair.
-Nobles collected tolls from people using roads and markets.
-Many nobles and clergy lived in great luxury and palaces. This shows that the clergy and the nobles were being greedy.
The king had absolute rule and authority over France. the people clearly didnt like that. They were treated very unfairly just because they were poor.
A French peasant would have grumbled about alot of things in 1789.
-They were forced to do militarty service
-Peasants couldnt hunt or fish on noble grounds
-Peasants had to pay taxes to the king, their lord, and the church
-They had to use the lords mill, oven, and winepress. They had to pay. Its not even like they had a choice of whether or not they wanted to use their lords mill, oven and winepress. The peasants had to use it and they were charged for it. How sad this was.
Based on source A, I think the cartoonist is making a really good point. The picture shows a peasant carrying the noble and the lord on his back. This means that the lord and the nobles depend on the peasants in order to live.The peasants made up almost all of the French population. They taxes and everything that was being collected from the peasants went towards the king, the clergy, the nobles, and the lords. Without the peasants, they would be peasants themselves. The caption under the picture "one hopes this will end soon" is tyelling us that the peasants hope that this will soon end. It is too much for them to carry.

the author of source B, describes the lives of the french peasants by saying " the taxes and feudal dues are crushing us". The author goes on to give an example of a woman whose husband had only a morsel of land, one cow, and a poor horse. They had to pay 20kg of wheat and three chickens as feudal dues to one lord. 60kg of oats, one chicken, five pence to another, and heavy taxes were to go to the king's tax collectors. Their lives were terrible.

Sources A,B, and C explain why the peasants resented the rich. The rich treated the peasants badly and they were taking what little money the peasants had. According to source B, the peasants had to give a lot of money towards the rich. All of their money was being taken leaving the peasants poor. If i was living in France during this time, i would have resented the rich too.

The writing of Rousseau in source D, would influence the peasants the most. With the idea of no man having natural authority over others, in the heads of the peasants, this would probably cause them to strike. They would stop paying taxes and stop doing all of the unfair things that the king is making them do. They would gang up on the king, nobles, lords and clergy. Eventually removing them from their power. This is possible because of all the people living in France, 90% of them were peasants. Then they will realize that they have the power to chose and make decisions for themselves.

The pamphlet from which source D came from was banned in 1775. The king, lord, nobles, and clergy most likely banned this piece of literature. They probably did this in order to prevent the peasants from getting ideas about themselves having power. They realized that if the peasants go on strike, this could remove the king, lord, nobles, and clergy from their power. Resulting in them becoming peasants as well.