Skip to main content

Primary sourceBookJanuary 1789

What Is the Third Estate?

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès · January 1789

Sieyès' January 1789 pamphlet arguing the Third Estate was the whole nation, which made him famous just before the Revolution.

The pamphlet Sieyès wrote himself, the work that made him famous and shaped the Revolution's opening debates.

Ask Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès about this sourceView the original(opens in new tab)
Title page of the 1789 pamphlet 'Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat?' in French, with an opening paragraph outlining three questions: what the Third Estate is (everything), what it has been in the political order (nothing), and what it demands (to become something). Includes the numbered outline of the pamphlet's plan.
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-État?, January 1789.

About this source

What it is

A political pamphlet written by the Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, published anonymously in January 1789. It opens with three famous questions and answers about the Third Estate's place in France.

Why it matters

Sieyès wrote it in reply to calls for ideas on reorganising the Estates-General. Hundreds of thousands of copies spread it to around a million readers, and it argued that the common people were the whole nation and had no need of the clergy and nobility. It made Sieyès one of the most influential voices as the Revolution began.

Look closer

  • Why might Sieyès have published it anonymously at first?
  • What does the three-question structure (Everything… Nothing… Something) achieve for a reader?
  • Who is left out of this vision of "the nation"?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

More Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès sources

Meet the AI Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès →
Painted allegory of the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. A title plaque reads 'Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen' above two tablets of text. A seated woman with chains and a standing winged figure with a wand flank the plaque, under a radiant eye in a triangle.Document

Primary source

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

National Constituent Assembly · 1789

Book

Primary source

Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume 1

Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

Title page scan of 'Essai sur les privilèges' in French, with the heading 'ESSAI SUR LES PRIVILÈGES', a round library stamp at left, an opening paragraph of body text, and a page number '(1788)' near the bottom. Page is grainy and partly faded.Book

Primary source

Essai sur les privilèges

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès · 1788

Painting of a crowded, dimly lit indoor hall with tiered galleries. Many men in 18th-century dress raise their arms, and a standing figure in black at the center raises one hand. In the foreground, two men in white and dark clothing embrace near a clergyman in white robes.Painting

Secondary source

Tennis Court Oath

Jacques-Louis David · 1791

Oil portrait of a seated man with curly red-brown hair wearing a dark double-breasted overcoat and white cravat, holding a round dark hat in his lap, against a plain olive-brown background. Latin inscriptions read EMM. JOS. SIEYES and ÆTATIS SUÆ. 69, with signature L. David Bruxelles 1817.Painting

Primary source

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836)

Jacques-Louis David · 1817

Ready when you are

Start chatting with Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès now.

20 messages free · No credit card · Available in 50+ languages.

Trial Humy for freeGet a quote for institutions