As part of the feudal system of France, the Third Estate, which contained no members of the aristocracy, did not own land. While many in this political/social division were affluent, they were merchants or lawyers, the majority of whom were Jewish. And, by law, Jews were forbidden to own land; however, because they were wealthy, they wished to own property. Also, along with the others of wealth in the bourgeois wished to exercise social and political influence, but they were prohibited from doing so because they were not in the first two Estates.
Added to the grave economic disparities between the Third Estate and the other two, the peasants were starving in 1789 because of their poverty and because of the poor wheat crop, and were forced to eat moldy bread to combat starvation.
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