Social Classes
- Royalty – House of Bourbon, After the Empire was established.
- Nobility (noblesse) – Those with explicit noble title. These are traditionally divided into
- "noblesse d'épée" ("nobility of the sword")
- and "noblesse de robe" ("nobility of the gown"), the magisterial class that administered royal justice and civil government, often referring to those who bought a title of nobility (rich merchants).
- Ci-devant nobility – Literally "from before": nobility of the ancien régime (the Bourbon kingdom) after it had lost its titles and privileges.
- Bourgeoisie – Roughly, the non-noble wealthy, typically merchants, investors, and professionals such as lawyers.
- Active and passive citizens – During the period of the Legislative Assembly, approximately half of the men of France were disfranchised as "passive citizens". Only "active citizens", a category based on taxes paid, could vote; they also formed the basis of the National Guard.
- Sans-culottes – literally "those without breeches", the masses of Paris.
- Peasants, who represent 90 percent of the French nation's population.
Read more about this topic: Glossary Of The French Revolution
Famous quotes containing the words social classes, social and/or classes:
“Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“What people don’t realize is that intimacy has its conventions as well as ordinary social intercourse. There are three cardinal rules—don’t take somebody else’s boyfriend unless you’ve been specifically invited to do so, don’t take a drink without being asked, and keep a scrupulous accounting in financial matters.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen,—a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate in him;Mnature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the dame’s classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and the feldspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)