A ye olde labor chant:
Take, for example, Abbé Sieyés a member of the clergy who was nevertheless elected as a representative of the third estate in the Estates General and who became well known for the pamphlet he published in January 1789, which began with these famous words: “What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been in the political order to date? Nothing. What does it want? To become something.” After an introductory blast denouncing the wrongs of the French nobility, which he compared “to the castes of the Greater Indies and ancient Egypt” (although Sieyes does not elaborate on the comparison, he clearly did not intend it as a compliment), he set forth his principal demand:
that the three orders which King Louis XVI had just convoked to a meeting in Versailles in April 1789 be allowed to sit together, with as many votes for the third estate as for the two other orders combined ( in other words, the third estate would get 50 percent of the votes.)
From Piketty. It goes on to note that the third estate was 98% of the population.