Page:Van Loon--The Story of Mankind.djvu/404

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THE STORY OF MANKIND

under the leadership of professional agitators, gradually began to discover their strength, and commenced to play the rôle which was to be theirs all through the years of the great unrest, when they acted as the brute force which was used by the actual leaders of the Revolution to secure those things which could not be obtained in a legitimate fashion.

THE BASTILLE

As a sop to the peasants and the middle class, Necker decided that they should be allowed a double representation in the Estates General. Upon this subject, the Abbé Siéyès then wrote a famous pamphlet, "To what does the Third Estate Amount?" in which he came to the conclusion that the Third Estate (a name given to the middle class) ought to amount to everything, that it had not amounted to anything in the past, and that it now desired to amount to something. He expressed