Reasons for failure of the States-General.—It is sometimes said that the States-General did not represent France; it is more correct to say that it represented France too well—in its want of cohesion, its class divisions, its absence of local government. Nor were the circumstances of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries propitious. During that period, the hundred years’ war, and the religious wars, led the people of France to lean on the King; the privileges of the feudal nobles prevented any unanimity between the upper and lower classes, and allowed the bureaucracy to gain such strength that it was impossible subsequently to overthrow it.
Thus the causes of failure may be tabulated as follows:—
1. The existence of three Houses prevented unanimity, more especially because they represented class divisions which were deep. The nobility being a caste dependent on blood; while the upper offices of the Church were also filled by nobles.
2. There was no class of country gentry as in England, from whom the knights of the shire were elected, and who united with the burgesses in the House of Commons.
3. The number of royal officials elected as deputies of Tiers État was generally very large.
4. The Estates-General of Orleans (1439), in establishing a permanent army by the Ordonnance sur la Gendarmerie, was held to have granted to the King a permanent tax, the Taille; and this, in spite of several protests, was subsequently increased at the royal will.
5. Since the nobles and clergy were exempt from the Taille—the first because they served in the feudal array; the latter because of their clerical privileges—the deputies of these two orders did not support the Tiers État in their attempt to control the purse. Thus the States-General lost the control of the purse.
6. There was no efficient local government like that of the English shire. The real power being in the hands of the royal officials, the Baillis and the Sénéschals, and later, of the Intendants.
Provincial Estates.—It is true that all the Provinces of France originally had their Provincial Estates composed of three orders.