es, 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.

In dealing with the formation of the communes from the eleventh to the
fourteenth century, the majority of the French historians, even
M. Thierry, the most original and clear-sighted of them all, often
entitle this event the communal revolution. This expression hardly gives
a cor