Local interests and rights, the special affairs of certain populations agglomerated in certain spots, are the only objects, the only province of the communes.  With this purely municipal and individual character they come to their birth, their confirmation, and their development from the eleventh to the fourteenth century; and at the end of two centuries they enter upon their decline, they occupy far less room and make far less noise in history.  It is exactly then that the Third Estate comes to the front, and uplifts itself as a general fact, a national element, a political power.  It is the successor, not the contemporary, of the Communes; they contributed much towards, but did not suffice for its formation; it drew upon other resources, and was developed under other influences than those which gave existence to the communes.  It has subsisted, it has gone on growing throughout the whole course of French history; and at the end of five centuries, in 1789, when the Communes had for a long while sunk into languishment and political insignificance, at the moment at which France was electing her Constituent Assembly, the Abbe Sicyes, a man of powerful rather than scrupulous mind, could say, “What is the Third Estate?  Everything.  What has it hitherto been in the body politic?  Nothing.  What does it demand?  To be something.”

These words contain three grave errors.  In the course of government anterior to 1789, so far was the third estate from being nothing, that it had been every day becoming greater and stronger.  What was demanded for it in 1789 by M. Sicyes and his friends was not that it might become something, but that it should be everything.  That was a desire beyond its right and its strength; and the very Revolution, which was its own victory, proved this.  Whatever may have been the weaknesses and faults of its foes, the third estate had a terrible struggle to conquer them; and the struggle was so violent and so obstinate that the third estate was broken up therein, and had to pay dearly for its triumph.  At first it obtained thereby despotism instead of liberty; and when liberty returned, the third estate found itself confronted by twofold hostility, that of its foes under the old regimen and that of the absolute democracy which claimed in its turn to be everything.  Outrageous claims bring about in-tractable opposition and excite unbridled ambition.  What there was in the words of the Abbe Sicyes in 1789 was not the verity of history; it was a lying programme of revolution.

We have anticipated dates in order to properly characterize and explain the facts as they present themselves, by giving a glimpse of their scope and their attainment.  Now that we have clearly marked the profound difference between the third estate and the communes, we will return to the communes alone, which had the priority in respect of time.  We will trace the origin and the composition of the third estate, when we reach the period at which it became one of the great performers in the history of France by reason of the place it assumed and the part it played in the states-general of the kingdom.