Estates-General of 1789

For other uses of "Estates-General", see States-General.

Engraving by Isidore-Stanislaus Helman (1743-1806) following a sketch by Charles Monnet (1732-1808). The title is L'Ouverture des États Généraux à Versailles le 5 Mai 1789, "Opening of the Estates-General in Versailles 5 May 1789." It was one of a series by Helman: Principales Journées de la Révolution.

Painting by Auguste Couder showing the opening of the Estates-General

The Estates-General (or States-General) of 1789 (French: Les États-Généraux de 1789) was the first meeting since 1614 of the French Estates-General, a general assembly representing the French estates of the realm: the clergy (First Estate), the nobles (Second Estate), and the common people (Third Estate). Summoned by King Louis XVI to propose solutions to his government's financial problems, the Estates-General sat for several weeks in May and June 1789 but came to an impasse over the first item on the agenda: whether they should vote by estate, giving the first two estates an advantage, which was the king's choice, or vote all together, giving the Third Estate the advantage. It was brought to an end when the Third Estate formed itself into a National Assembly and invited the other two Estates to join, against the wishes of the king, signaling the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The decision to summon the Estates

First Assembly of Notables and peasants

The suggestion to summon the Estates General came from the Assembly of Notables installed by the king on 22 February 1787. France was at that time an absolute monarchy, and French kings could pass laws and raise taxes through the use of edicts. However, the support of the nobility and the civil service was required to give these edicts any practical force. The Parlement of Paris, a body with primarily judicial powers, had the function of registering the king's edicts as law, and while the Parlement had no formal veto power, it could give voice to elite opposition to the king's measures by refusing to register them. By 1787 the Parlement was refusing to cooperate with Charles Alexandre de Calonne's program of badly needed financial reform, due to the special interests of its noble members. Calonne was the Controller-General of Finances, appointed by the king to address the state deficit. As a last resort, Calonne hoped to bypass the Parlement by summoning the Notables as an alternative, if archaic, source of advice.

The initial roster of Notables included 137 nobles, among them many future revolutionaries, such as Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, and Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution. Lafayette had served in George Washington's army. Much of the debt had been incurred on behalf of the Americans. The final defeat of Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown was due in large part to the participation of the French army and navy. If Calonne thought he would find more cooperation by changing the assembly, he was mistaken. He proposed a "land tax," Subvention Territoriale, to be imposed on all land-holders, rich or poor. A storm of protest arose. Charges of mismanagement were made. Calonne was dismissed on 8 April 1787, and then was exiled. He commented on the French political scene from London.

Calonne's replacement was Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, President of the Assembly of Notables. He was offered the post of Prime Minister, which was to include being Controller. The Notables nevertheless remained recalcitrant. They made a number of proposals but they would not grant the king money. Lafayette suggested that the problem required a national assembly. Brienne asked him if he meant the Estates General. On receiving an affirmative answer, Brienne recorded it as a proposal. Frustrated by his inability to obtain money, the king staged a day-long harangue, and then on 25 May dissolved the Notables. Their proposals reverted to the Parlement.

Rebellion of the Parlement

Turning again to the Parlement, the king found that they were inclined to continue pursuing the issues that had been raised in the Assembly of Notables. Their proper legal function, besides giving advice to the king, was only to register, or record, his edicts as law, a matter of simple obedience, which the king's two predecessors had been able to command, sometimes by sternness, threats, and losses of temper. Unless registered, the edicts were not lawful.

On 6 July 1787, Loménie forwarded the Subvention Territoriale and another tax, the Edit du Timbre, or "Stamp Act," based on the American model, for registration. The Parlement refused, an illegal act, demanding accounting statements, or "States," as a prior condition. It was the king's turn to refuse. The members of the Parlement began to jest that they required either the accounting States or the Estates General. The king could not let this slight to his authority pass. The Parlement was commanded to assemble at the king's palace at Versailles, where, on 6 August he ordered them in person to register the taxes. On 7 August, back in Paris, the Parlement declared, in earnest this time, that the order was null and void, repudiating all previous registrations of taxes. Only the Estates General, they said, could register taxes.

For the second time the king summoned the Parlement away from Paris, where crowds of people cheered their every act from the street, this time to meet at Troyes, Champagne, on 15 August. He did not personally appear. By messenger he and the Parlement negotiated an agreement: the king withdrew the Stamp Tax, and modified the Land Tax to exclude the lands of people of title, in return for the assured registration of further loans. The Parlement was allowed to return on 20 September. Encouraged, Loménie with the support of the king went beyond the intent of the Parlement, which was to grant specific loans. He proposed an Emprunt Successif, "Successive Loan," until 1792, giving the king a blank check. When the Parlement delayed, the king resorted to a ruse: he scheduled a Royal Hunt for 19 November. On that day at 11:00 AM the king and his peers noisily entered the session of the Parlement dressed in hunting clothes. They would confer with each other and have the decisions registered immediately, they said.

Nearly the entire government was now face-to-face. They argued the problems and issues concerned until dusk, some six hours later. The Parlement believed that the problem had gone beyond the government and needed the decisions of the Estates General, which did not correspond to the king's concept of monarchy. At the end of the day the king demanded the registration of the Successive Loan. Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, a previous Notable, a relative of the king, and an ardent revolutionary, known as Philippe Égalité, asked if this were a Royal Session of the Peers, or a session of the Parlement. On being told it was a Royal Session, he replied that edicts were not registered at Royal Sessions. The king retorted Vous êtes bien le maître, "do as YOU will," with some sarcasm, as the king's will was legally required, and strode angrily from the session with retinue. Lettres de Cachet, or arbitrary arrest warrants, followed on the 20th, for Orléans and two others. They were taken into custody and held under comfortable conditions away from Paris, Orléans on his country estate. The Parlement began a debate on the legality of Lettres de Cachet. The men being held became a cause célèbre.

As the king and the Parlement could accomplish no more together, Brienne over the winter pressed for an alternative plan: to resurrect even more archaic institutions: the Grand Bailliages, or larger legal jurisdictions that once had existed, would assume Parliament's legal functions, while the Plenary Court, last known under Louis IX of France, when it had the power to register edicts, would assume the registration duties of the Parlement, leaving it with no duties to perform. The king planned a sudden revelation and dismissal of the Parlement. However, Jean-Jacques Duval d'Eprémesnil heard the government presses running and bribed the printer to give him the proofs of the edict. Hearing it read the next day, 3 May 1788, the Parlement swore an oath not to be disbanded, and defined a manifesto of their rights.

Warrants were issued for Eprémesnil and another, but they escaped from their homes over the rooftops in the early morning to seek refuge with the Parlement. The king sent his guards into the meeting of the Parlement to arrest them. They surrendered. The Parlement filed silently out between a line of guards. The commander gave the key to the building to the king.

The Return of Necker

The transfer of power to the new government was to begin on 8 May 1788, with the registration of the edicts establishing it in the regional Parlements. The latter refused unanimously, following the Parlement of Paris. If the king's commissioners forced the issue, the Parlement abandoned the meeting place, only to return the next day to declare the registration null and void. Armed protest swept the kingdom. Street fighting broke out at Rennes, Brittany. A deputation sent to Paris from there was imprisoned in the Bastille. The Bretons in Paris founded the Breton Club, later the Jacobin Society. The Grand Bailliages could not be created, and the Plenary Court met only once.

Convening the Estates-General

Edict of 24 January 1789

The Estates-General were summoned by a royal edict, dated to 24 January 1789. It comprised two parts: a Lettre du Roi and a Règlement.

The Lettre announces:

"We have need of a concourse of our faithful subjects, to assist us surmount all the difficulties we find relative to the state of our finances ... These great motives have resolved us to convoke the assemblée des États of all the provinces under our authority ..."

The King promised to address the grievances of his people. The "most notable persons" of each community and judicial district were summoned "to confer and to record remonstrances, complaints, and grievances." Elections for Deputies were to be held. The letter went on to say that the King intended "reform of abuse", "establishment of a fixed and durable order", and "general prosperity". The Lettre is signed "Louis".

Lettres de Convocation were sent to all the provinces, with the Règlement prescribing the methods of election. During the preceding autumn, the Parlement of Paris had decided that the organization of the convention would be the same as in 1614, the last time the Estates had met. Some 175 years had gone by since then. The Estates were thus not a functional institution in French society. By reviving them as much as possible like they had been, the King and the Parlement intended to control the authority of the people. The previous Estates had voted by order, with each Estate (or its majority) having one vote: that is, the Nobles and the Clergy could together outvote the Commons by 2 to 1.

If, on the other hand, each delegate's vote was equal, the majority would prevail. The issue was widely discussed in the press during the autumn of 1788. The people would nevertheless accept any national convention, confident that enough members of the Nobility and the Clergy would be with them to sway the votes. A National Party was formed. It argued that France had never had a constitution and the proper function of the Convention was to establish one. The royalist defenders, on the other hand, accepted the absolute monarchy as the constitution. Just to be certain, the press began to demand that the Commons be allocated twice as many delegates as each of the other two Estates. In an attempt to bolster his failing popularity, the king acceded to this measure of "doubling the Third". He was confident of his influence over the Nobility and Clergy.

Elections of early Spring 1789

The First Estate represented 100,000 Catholic clergy; the Church owned about 10 percent of the land and collected its own taxes (the tithe) on peasants. The lands were controlled by bishops and abbots of monasteries, but two-thirds of the 303 delegates from the First Estate were ordinary parish priests; only 51 were bishops. The Second Estate represented the nobility, about 400,000 men and women who owned about 25 percent of the land and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their peasant tenants. About a third of the 282 deputies representing the Second Estate were nobles, mostly with minor holdings. The Third Estate, representing 95 percent of the population, was doubled to 578 men. Half were well educated lawyers or local officials. Nearly a third were in trades or industry; 51 were wealthy landowners.

The Réglement that went out by post in January thus specified separate voting for delegates of each Estate. Each tax district (cities, boroughs, and parishes) would elect their own delegates to the Third Estate. The Bailliages, or judicial districts, would elect delegates to the First and Second Estates in separate ballots. Each voting assembly would also collect a Cahier, or "Notebook", of grievances to be considered by the Estates-General. The election rules differed somewhat depending on the type of voting unit, whether city, parish, or some other. Generally the distribution of delegates was by population: the most populous locations had the greatest number of delegates. The City of Paris was thus dominant. The electorate consisted of males 25 years and older, property owners, and registered taxpayers. They could be native or naturalized citizens.

The number of delegates elected was about 1200, half of whom formed the Third Estate. The First and Second Estates had 300 each. But French society had changed since 1614, and these Estates-General were not identical to those of 1614. Members of the nobility were not required to stand for election to the Second Estate, and many of them were elected to the Third Estate. The total number of nobles in the three Estates was about 400. Some of the nobles of the Third Estate were among the most passionate revolutionaries. Election to the Third Estate would not save them from the guillotine during the Terror, but that was an unknown future.

The Nobles in the Second Estate were the richest and most powerful in the kingdom. The king could count on them, but that was of little use to him in the succeeding course of history. He had also expected that the First Estate would be predominantly the noble Bishops. The electorate, however, returned mainly parish priests, most of whom were sympathetic to the Commons. The Third Estate elections returned predominantly magistrates and lawyers. The lower levels of society, the landless, working men, though present in large numbers in street gangs, were totally absent from the Estates-General, as the king had called for "the most notable persons".

The grievances returned were mainly about taxes, which the people considered a crushing burden. Consequently, the people and the king were totally at odds from the very beginning. Aristocratic privilege was also attacked. The people resented the fact that nobles could excuse themselves from most of the burden of taxation and service that fell on the ordinary people. A third type complained that the ubiquitous tolls and duties levied by the nobility hindered internal commerce.

Opening of the Convention

On 5 May 1789, amidst general festivities, the Estates-General convened in an elaborate but temporary Île des États set up in one of the courtyards of the official Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs in the town of Versailles near the royal château. With the étiquette of 1614 strictly enforced, the clergy and nobility ranged in tiered seating in their full regalia, while the physical locations of the deputies from the Third Estate were at the far end, as dictated by the protocol. When Louis XVI and Charles Louis François de Paule de Barentin, the Keeper of the Seals of France, addressed the deputies on 6 May, the Third Estate discovered that the royal decree granting double representation also upheld the traditional voting "by orders", i.e. that the collective vote of each estate would be weighed equally.

The apparent intent of the king and of Barentin was for everyone to get directly to the matter of taxes. The larger representation of the Third Estate would remain merely a symbol, while giving them no extra power. Director-General of Finance Jacques Necker had more sympathy for the Third Estate, but on this occasion he spoke only about the fiscal situation, leaving it to Barentin to speak on how the Estates-General was to operate.

Trying to avoid the issue of representation and to focus solely on taxes, the king and his ministers had gravely misjudged the situation. The Third Estate wanted the estates to meet as one body and for each delegate to have one vote. The other two estates, while having their own grievances against royal absolutism, believed – correctly, as history was to prove – that they stood to lose more power to the Third Estate than they stood to gain from the king. Necker sympathized with the Third Estate in this matter, but the astute financier lacked equal astuteness as a politician. He decided to let the impasse play out to the point of stalemate before he would enter the fray. As a result, by the time the king yielded to the demand of the Third Estate, it seemed to all to be a concession wrung from the monarchy, rather than a magnanimous gift that would have convinced the populace of the king's goodwill.

Proceedings and abolition

The Estates-General reached an impasse. The first item on the agenda involved the verification of powers. Honoré Mirabeau, a noble himself but elected to represent the Third Estate, tried but failed to keep all three orders in a single room for this discussion. Instead of discussing the king's taxes, the three estates began to discuss separately the organization of the legislature. These efforts continued without success until 27 May, when the nobles voted to stand firm for separate verification. The following day, Abbé Sieyès (a member of the clergy, but, like Mirabeau, elected to represent the Third Estate) moved that the representatives of the Third Estate, who now called themselves the Communes ("Commons"), proceed with verification and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them.

On 13 June 1789, the Third Estate had arrived at a resolution to examine and settle in common the powers of the three orders and invited to this common work those of the clergy and nobles. On 17 June, with the failure of efforts to reconcile the three estates, the Communes completed their own process of verification and almost immediately voted a measure far more radical: they declared themselves redefined as the National Assembly, an assembly not of the estates, but of the people. They invited the other orders to join them, but made it clear that they intended to conduct the nation's affairs with or without them. As their numbers exceeded the combined numbers of the other estates, they could dominate any combined assembly.

The King tried to resist. Under the influence of the courtiers of his privy council, he resolved to go in state to the Assembly, annul its decrees, command the separation of the orders, and dictate the reforms to be effected by the restored Estates-General. On 20 June, he ordered the Salle des États, the hall where the National Assembly was meeting, closed. The Assembly moved their deliberations to the king's tennis court (Jeu de paume), where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath (Serment du jeu de paume), by which they agreed not to separate until they had settled the constitution of France. Two days later, deprived of use of the tennis court as well, the Assembly met in the Church of Saint Louis, where the majority of the representatives of the clergy joined them: efforts to restore the old order had served only to accelerate events.

In the séance royale of 23 June, the King granted a Charte octroyée, a constitution granted by royal favour, which affirmed, subject to the traditional limitations, the right of separate deliberation for the three orders, which constitutionally formed three chambers. This final attempt to restore the Estates-General failed, with a majority of the delegates having thrown in their lot with the new unicameral National Assembly. Finally, the King capitulated by requesting all remaining delegates of the First and Second Estates to join the National Assembly. The Estates-General ceased to exist, being reconstituted as the National Assembly (which soon renamed itself the National Constituent Assembly).

See also

• The French Revolution: A History

References

• Doyle, William. The Oxford History of the French Revolution (2003)
• Furet, Francois, and Mona Ozouf, eds. A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989) pp 45–53

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 
• This article incorporates text from the public domain History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.