The first, and most obvious, is liberty. The call for liberty was a call for individual human rights, no matter a person's social standing. This was a very radical idea in French society, where people's rights were determined by their social standing. The most liberal revolutionists pushed for sovereignty, where the people alone have the authority to make laws limiting an individual's freedom of action. In this system, legislators would represent the people in all of their decision making.
This type of theoretical justification of liberal self government partly evolved from ideas presented in The Social Contract. Rousseau saw the system of an absolutist monarch ruling over a wide array of people as comparable to the relationship of a master to his slave. "The moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment, the body politic has ceased to exist." The French people would be able to take these words and easily adapt them to their cause of revolting against the king in order to receive a greater say in government.
The people's next call was for equality, especially among social classes. The 3rd estate, which constituted about 97% of the French population, was made up of people of varying economic conditions who were all given the same legal status. No matter how much a middle class merchant made, he would always share the same status as a peasant. And while the 1st (clergy) and 2nd estates (nobles) enjoyed special privileges and limited taxation, the 3rd estate paid the overwhelming majority of the taxes to the state. The majority of the state's budget was spent on debt service from foreign wars, which had no way of benefitting the 3rd estate.
Rousseau relates to this concern when he writes, "It will be said that the despot assures his civil tranquility, granted. But what do they gain if the wars his ambition brings down upon them... press harder on them than their own dissension would have done?" In relation to the French Revolution, what does the 3rd estate have to gain from supporting a monarch who demands taxes for wars that only benefit the 1st and 2nd estates?
Lastly, the French Revolution placed an emphasis on brotherhood. With the estates constantly at each other's necks, they would never be able to band together against the king. To fix this problem, the Parliament of Paris declared that the Estates General must be called to approve all taxes. While this did start off much debate and did not settle all of the country's problems, it certainly was a start.
"Whenever sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the rights which are being taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate." So in other words, Rousseau is saying that as ling as the people are divided, like they are in the three estates, they will never truly have their fair share of power. But by joining together in the Estates General, the people were able to become more equal in power to the king.
Even if Rousseau was not the definitive stimulus for the French Revolution, his writing definitely played a substantial role. The only part of the revolution Rousseau wouldn't have supported was the reestablishment of the monarch. Perhaps the people were so used to having a king that they couldn't imagine a new form or government, or maybe it was because they believed the king gave them sovereignty by carrying out what they really wanted. Either way, Rousseau would not have approved. Because while the majority of philosophes supported a constitutional monarchy, he did not. Way to be different, Rousseau, too bad no one agreed with you.
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