The Estate Society and Financial Crisis of the Old Regime

French society under the Old Regime was legally organized into three estates. The clergy, as the first estate, owned roughly ten percent of French land and enjoyed broad tax exemptions, though it was internally split between a "high clergy" of bishops and abbots of largely noble origin and a parish-level "low clergy" much closer in condition to ordinary people. The nobility, the second estate, held onto fiscal, legal, and honorific privileges, including preferential access to military and administrative posts, and was itself divided between the "nobility of the sword," descended from traditional military lineages, and the "nobility of the robe," who had obtained their status through judicial and administrative office; regional law courts known as parlements, dominated by this nobility of the robe, put up significant resistance to royal fiscal reforms.