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Commoners were universally considered the lowest order. The higher estates' necessary dependency on the commoners' production, however, often further divided the otherwise equal common people into burghers (also known as bourgeoisie) of the realm's cities and towns, and the peasants and serfs of the realm's
After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars along with industrialization, the division in three estates – nobility, clergy and commoners – had become somewhat outdated. The term "common people" continued to be used, but now in a more general sense to refer to regular people as opposed to the privileged elite.
The Estates General of 1789 (French: États Généraux de 1789) was a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and the commoners (Third Estate).
This list aims to display alphabetically the 1,145 titular deputies (291 deputies of the clergy, 270 of the nobility and 584 of the Third Estate-commoners) elected to the Estates-General of 1789, which became the National Assembly on 17 June 1789 and the National Constituent Assembly on 9 July 1789; as well as the alternate delegates who sat.
The Estates-General had been called on 5 May 1789 to manage France's financial crisis, but promptly fell to squabbling over its own structure. Its members had been elected to represent the estates of the realm: the 1st Estate (the clergy), the 2nd Estate (the nobility) and the 3rd Estate (which, in theory, represented all of the commoners and, in practice, represented the bourgeoisie).
The first estate was the clergy, the second the nobility and the third the commoners, although actual membership in the third estate varied from country to country. [1] Bourgeoisie, peasants and people with no estate from birth were separated in Sweden and Finland as late as 1905.
Membership in the nobility has historically been granted by a monarch or government, and acquisition of sufficient power, wealth, ownerships, or royal favour has occasionally enabled commoners to ascend into the nobility. [1] There are often a variety of ranks within the noble class.
At the time of the revolution, the First Estate comprised 100,000 Catholic clergy and owned 5–10% of the lands in France—the highest per capita of any estate. All property of the First Estate was tax exempt. The Second Estate comprised the nobility, which consisted of 400,000 people, including women and children.