Question: What was it

Answer: The Second Estate contained France’s nobility: the men and women who possessed aristocratic titles like Duc (‘Duke’), Comte (‘Count’), Vicomte (‘Viscount’), Baron or Chevalier

A noble title was not just an honorific: it also endowed its owner with certain rights and privileges, most notably an exemption from personal taxes.

Not all noble titles were of equal status. The nobility, like the clergy, had its own natural hierarchy.

-Court nobles (those closest to the monarch) were the most prestigious.

-The noblesse d’epee (‘nobles of the sword’) earned their titles through military service, so considered themselves of greater importance.

-The noblesse de robe (‘nobles of the robe’) were granted their noble titles for non-military service, for their work as financiers, administrators, magistrates or court officials. —Hundreds of men also acquired titles venally, by purchasing them from the crown rather than having them bestowed for service. Venality allowed wealthier members of the Third Estate to join the ranks of the Second Estate

In total, the Second Estate made up about one percent of the population..

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Question: Similiarity to the Bourgeoise

Answer: The nobility in pre-revolutionary France is often depicted as an extravagantly wealthy and lazy group, disconnected from the realities of French society

Like aristocrats everywhere, the majority of French nobles were interested in accumulating wealth and expanding their power and influence.

-Before the 1700s it was considered demeaning for noblemen to engage in any form of trade or commerce. It was even possible to be stripped of one’s noble titles for working (dérogeance).

-By the time of the revolution, however, those attitudes had fallen away. Many noblemen had become energetic businessmen, capitalist and progressive in their thinking.

-They sought to expand and diversity their business interests by investing in trade, commerce and new ventures.

-In this respect they were little different from the businessmen of the bourgeoisie.

For more conservative nobles, their main source of income was land. Wealthier nobles owned large estates and ran them as businesses.

-The main sources of income for these landed nobles were rents, feudal dues and the profits of agricultural production.

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Question: Inequality

Answer: Not all members of the Second Estate were wealthy, successful or prestigious.

Provincial nobles with lesser titles and smaller land holdings were called hobereaux (‘old birds’)

While these hobereaux had lost most of their land and wealth, they retained their political privileges and exemption from personal taxation. For the most part the hobereaux were a frustrated class: they had all the arrogance and snobbery that comes with privilege but lacked the wealth to live as they wished.

Many of them resented the rising bourgeoisie, who had outstripped them in land, wealth and status. Some blamed the monarchy for their plight, for failing to protect the nobility and their property. Some members of the Second Estate were completely landless

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Question: Buying into Nobility

Answer: it was possible to buy your way into the nobility, a practice called venality. French kings had often sold venal offices to wealthy commoners, as a device for generating revenue for the state. After a period of time the holders of these venal offices were granted a noble title. A venal title would exempt you and your descendants from all personal taxation

The sale of venal offices increased markedly during the 1700s. These venal offices did not come cheap. A minor office could cost 20,000 livres, while higher offices with immediate noble status were in excess of 50,000 livres

Historian Sylvia Neely estimates that around 6,500 commoner families acquired noble titles during the 18th century. Most were merchants who acquired wealth from France’s booming imperial trade.

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Question: JH Shennan quote

Answer: “Despite enormous differences in status and wealth, membership of the noble order bestowed the same fundamental privileges on all. Some were honorific, like the right to wear a sword in public, to display a coat of arms… some again were judicial: the right to have their cases heard in a high court of law, to be exempt from corporal punishment, to be beheaded rather than hanged if found guilty of a capital offence. Others were financial: freedom from the taille and from the salt-tax… The most treasured possession of the Second Estate, however, was its belief in the moral superiority of the nobility: the virtues of generosity, honour and courage were seen as the distinguishing characteristics of the true nobleman.”

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Question: Liberal Nobles in the Revolution

Answer: Several factors led to the growth of a small but vocal group of liberal nobles: economic modernisation, the entry of former bourgeoisie into the Second Estate, the growth of the Enlightenment, access to liberal political texts by Rousseau and other philosophes, and the circulation of British and American political ideas

Noblemen like Marquis de Lafayette, the Duke of Noailles and Honore Mirabeau received a liberal education and read the work of Enlightenment authors like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot.

In the case of Lafayette, he experienced the successes of the American Revolution first hand, serving as an adjutant to George Washington.

These liberal nobles would shortly become prominent leaders of the French Revolution.

Liberal ideas could also be found in many of the cahiers de doléances (‘books of grievance’) that were drafted by the Second Estate and submitted to the Estates General in 1789. Many of these grievance ledgers called for a constitution; a few even petitioned to end noble exemptions from taxation.

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