Excerpt from The Book of Knowledge, Vol. 8: The Children's EncyclopaediaThen France had to find money to pay for their Share of the war which had won independence for the United States. No more could be borrowed or squeezed from the unhappy taxpayers, and at last Louis was obliged to call together the States General, as they called othe Parliament of France. As this was the first time for nearly two hundred years, six genera tions of Frenchmen had lived and died dumb concerning the government of their country. Great was the excitement during the election of the men who were to form the States - General. There were the representatives of the nobles and clergy, called the First and Second Estates, and the men who represented the great mass of the people - the men who worked either with hands or heads - who were the Third Estate. Lists of grievances were drawn up, also of needed reforms, and even the hopeless roused from their dulness of despair, for some thing was going to be done at last.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.