Abstract
The first experience of revolutionary behaviour in 1789 is to be found in the formulation and content of the cahiers de doléances. To be sure, of themselves the cahiers were not revolutionary: they had also been produced as part of the process of the Estates-General of 1614, and people were responding to a request for advice on the state of the kingdom, not to a question about whether they wanted revolutionary change. Again and again, however, the cahiers of the Third Estate had made demands for a regular meeting of a representative body such as the Estates-General, equality of taxation and the end of seigneurialism. Whether or not consciously, together these demands presupposed the end of a particular social and political order.
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Notes
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© 2006 Peter McPhee
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McPhee, P. (2006). Elation and Anxiety: The Revolutionary Year. In: Living the French Revolution, 1789–99. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230228818_3
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