Western Civilization II / Unit 4 WC2 0329 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Classifying an Order: First, Second, Third, and Where the Bourgeoisie Sits
The idea
The exam names a group and asks which estate it belonged to, or describes a privilege and asks who held it. The three orders answer three questions: who prays, who fights, who works. The trap is the Third Estate, which held everyone from the destitute to the richest banker, and the exam tests whether you know the bourgeoisie sat there.
In practice
Five cases. A bishop from a noble family holding church lands: the First Estate, the clergy, though the witness notes every French bishop under Louis XVI was a nobleman. A count exempt from most taxation, sitting in his own court, hunting where peasants may not: the Second Estate, the nobility, one and a half percent of France by the witness's count. A landless laborer whose commons were enclosed: the Third Estate. A Russian estate sold with its souls: the Third Estate's eastern floor, serfdom. A banker richer than the count, educated, reading the philosophes, barred from office by birth: the Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, the anchor's class that did not fit.
Where people slip
Wealth did not move anyone between orders; birth and office did. The exam may ask what the bourgeoisie resented, and the answer is not poverty but exclusion, the medieval structure the anchor says they chafed at.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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