Sieyès and 'What Is the Third Estate?'

In January 1789 a clergyman, the Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, published one of the most influential pamphlets in history. It opened with three questions: what is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been until now in the political order? Nothing. What does it ask? To become something. Sieyès argued that the Third Estate performed all the useful work of society and therefore was the nation, while privileged orders were a burden outside it.

This was a radical claim, because it implied that the Third Estate alone could speak for France. The pamphlet sold widely and gave reformers a clear justification for acting without the other two orders. Historians note the irony that a priest wrote the Third Estate's manifesto, and that Sieyès himself would later help bring Napoleon Bonaparte to power in 1799.