The estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society, recognised in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in Christian Europe. There was no single system of dividing society into estates, and systems developed over time.The best known system is the French three-estate system that was used until the French Revolution: the clergy (first estate), the nobility (second estate), and commoners (third estate).Some countries considered burghers and rural commoners separate estates, notably Scandinavian nations and Russia.n addition, the First and Second Estates relied on the labour of the Third, which made the latter's unequal status all the more glaring. There were an estimated 27 million people in the Third Estate when the French Revolution started. Men and women shared the hard life of physical labour and food shortages.