Tennis Court Oath

The Tennis Court Oath happened when Louis XIV called the three estates together for a meeting about taxes. The Third estate wanted more influence, so they would not be outnumbered by the clergy and nobility, but were refused more votes in the assembly. They then refused to cooperate, and eventually were locked out. Some of the clergy joined their cause, trying to give them more rights. The group then met in a n empty tennis court, where they made an oath not to leave until they had created and signed a constitution. This was a major step against the king, and sparked the revolution.

The reason the assembly had been called had been about taxes. The clergy and the nobility were paying none at all, while the third estate was paying a lot. This assembly might have changed thta, but the third estate knew they would be outvoted, and so staged their protest. Their main complaint was about lack of influence in the government, but that trickled down to many other things. For instance, their taxes. The peasants had to pay large sums of money to the government each year, making their lives, already difficult in comparison to the nobility and clergy, much harder, and creating a lot of poverty. While the estate system gave them the right to submit a single vote, they would almost definitely be overruled by the nobility and clergy, so it almost did not matter that the third state existed at all.
The financial difficulties experienced by the third estate also translated to other difficulties. One large example is food. When one has less money, that is less of an ability to feed himself and all of their dependents, and so the poor, tax stricken peasants starved. If the third estate had had more influence int he government, they would have been able to influence their lives more, and would have been able to overall have a better quality of life.