The conditions for revolt

Financial collapse, harvest failures, and a rigid class system that put the entire tax burden on those with the least. Your professor's notes on the Estates are a strong foundation for everything that follows.

1789 — Where your readings begin

Sieyès is writing right at the breaking point. His argument — that the Third Estate is the nation and the nobility is dead weight — arrives just before the Bastille falls. The Declaration follows two months later, turning that argument into an official document. Both are worth having open during seminar.

1791–1792 — The gap between promise and reality

The Declaration declares liberty and equality. The constitutional monarchy that follows can't deliver either. War with Austria puts the Revolution under pressure it wasn't built to handle.

1793–1794 — Where the Terror begins

This is where Robespierre takes over from your other two sources. By the time he gives this speech, the language has shifted entirely. The ideals are the same — he's still quoting the Declaration — but the logic now justifies mass execution as a means of protecting the Revolution.

Your lecture and your readings together tell a complete story: the causes explain why it started, Sieyès and the Declaration show what it wanted to be, and Robespierre shows what it became under pressure.