Estates General (France)

In France under the Ancien Régime, the Estates General (États généraux eta ʒeneʁo) or States-General was a legislative and consultative assembly of the different classes (or estates) of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates (clergy, nobility and commoners), which were called and dismissed by the king. It had no true power in its own right as, unlike the English Parliament, it was not required to approve royal taxation or legislation. It served as an advisory body to the king, primarily by presenting petitions from the various estates and consulting on fiscal policy. The Estates General first met in 1302 and 1303 in relation to King Philip IV's conflict with the papacy. They met intermittently until 1614 and only once afterward, in 1789, but were not definitively dissolved until after the French Revolution. The Estates General were distinct from the parlements (the most powerful of which was the Parliament of Paris), which started as appellate courts but later used their powers to decide whether to publish laws to claim a legislative role. The Estates General had similarities with institutions in other European polities, generally known as the Estates, such as the States General of the Netherlands, the Parliament of England, the Estates of Parliament of Scotland, the Sejm of Poland-Lithuania, the Cortes of Portugal or Spain, the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) of the Holy Roman Empire, the Diets (Landtage) of the "Lands", the Parliamentum Publicum of Hungary, and the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates. Unlike some of these institutions, however, France's Estates General were only summoned at irregular intervals by the king, and never grew into a permanent legislative body. The first national assembly of the Estates General was in 1302, summoned by King Philip IV, to address a conflict with Pope Boniface VIII. The letters summoning the assembly of 1302 are published by Georges Picot in his collection of Documents inédits pour servir à l'histoire de France.

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Related concepts (2)

Estates of the realm

The estates of the realm, or three estates, were the broad orders of social hierarchy used in Christendom (Christian Europe) from the Middle Ages to early modern Europe. Different systems for dividing society members into estates developed and evolved over time. The best known system is the French Ancien Régime (Old Regime), a three-estate system which was made up of clergy (the First Estate), nobles (Second Estate), peasants and bourgeoisie (Third Estate).

France

France (fʁɑ̃s), officially the French Republic (République française ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz), is a country located primarily in Western Europe. It also includes overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean.