An Introduction to the History of Western Europe

by James Harvey Robinson

The Estates General summoned.

Meanwhile the ministers were becoming very hard pressed for funds to meet the regular expenses of the government. The parlements had not only refused to register taxes but had done everything that they could to embarrass the ministers and destroy the confidence of those who might otherwise have lent money to the government. There seemed no other resort except to call the representatives of the people together. The Estates General were accordingly summoned to meet on May 1, 1789.

General ignorance in regard to the Estates General.

The old system of voting by classes in the Estates General.

220. It was now discovered that no one knew much about this body of which every one was talking, for it had not met since 1614. The king accordingly issued a general invitation to scholars to find out all they could about the customs observed in the former meetings of the Estates. The public naturally became very much interested in a matter which touched them so closely, and there were plenty of readers for the pamphlets which now began to appear in greater numbers than ever before. The old Estates General had been organized in a way appropriate enough to the feudal conditions under which they originated.[393] All three of the estates of the realm—clergy, nobility, and third estate—each sent an equal number of representatives, who were expected to consider not the interests of the nation but the special interests of the particular social class to which they respectively belonged. Accordingly, the deputies of the three estates did not sit together, or vote as a single body. The members of each group first came to an agreement among themselves and then a single vote was cast for the whole order.

Objections to this system.

It was natural that this system should seem preposterous to the average Frenchman in 1788. If the estates should be convoked according to the ancient forms, the two privileged classes would be entitled to twice the number of representatives allotted to the other twenty-five million inhabitants of France. What was much worse, it seemed impossible that any important reforms could be adopted in an assembly where those who had every selfish reason for opposing the most necessary changes were given two votes out of three. Necker, whom the king had recalled in the hope that he might succeed in adjusting the finances, agreed that the third estate might have as many deputies as both the other orders put together, namely six hundred, but he would not consent to having the three orders sit and vote together like a modern representative body.

The cahiers.

Besides the great question as to whether the deputies should vote by head or by order, the pamphlets discussed what reforms the Estates should undertake.[394] We have, however, a still more interesting and important expression of public opinion in France at this time, in the cahiers,[395] or lists of grievances and suggestions for reform which, in pursuance of an old custom, the king asked the nation to prepare. Each village and town throughout France had an opportunity to tell quite frankly exactly what it suffered from the existing system, and what reforms it wished that the Estates General might bring about. These cahiers[396] were the "last will and testament" of the old régime, and they constitute a unique historical document, of unparalleled completeness and authenticity. No one can read the cahiers without seeing that the whole nation was ready for the great transformation which within a year was to destroy a great part of the social and political system under which the French had lived for centuries.