The Formation and Progress of the Tiers État, or Third Estate in France 2 vols 2 he includes documents about the medieval communes and their charters. the TIERS ÉTAT, or THIRD ESTATE IN FRANCE. by AUGUSTIN THIERRY. VOL. II.
Table of contents
The action of the cities upon the rural districts is one of the great social facts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; municipal liberty, in all its stages, flowed down from one to the other, either by the influence of example and the contagion of ideas, or by the effect of a political patronage or a territorial incorporation. Having up to this time entertained scarcely a hope beyond that of being discharged Edition: Traits both of blind fury and touching moderation marked this new crisis in the condition of the country people: But these concessions, however large they might be, could not produce a complete, a general change.
The obstacles were immense.
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The whole system of the landed property had to be destroyed and replaced. There was not in this instance the speedy and sympathetic action of revolution like that which favoured the revival of the municipal cities; the work was long, it required for its accomplishment a period of no less than six centuries. Municipal cities restored, cities under the government of the consulate, of the commune, or simply of the citizens, towns and villages enfranchised, a multitude of small states, more or less complete, asylums opened to shelter the life of industry under the protection of political, or perhaps of only civil liberty—such were the foundations that were laid in the twelfth century for an order of things which, developing itself up to our times, has grown into the form of modern Edition: These elements of social renovation did not possess within themselves the means of mutual alliance, or of subduing the adverse influences which surrounded them; the power which had created them was only able to preserve them more or less intact in their original isolation.
It was necessary that a power, at once external and superior, should come to their assistance by openly attacking that territorial aristocracy, which had borrowed its last form from the conquest and usages of the Germans. After the feudal dismemberment, Royalty looked round in vain for its proper position. German by origin, but taking its shape in Gaul, and imbued with imperial traditions, it had never forgotten its Roman principle—equality before itself and before the law.
That principle vainly asserted by the Merovingians against the insuperable pride of the Frankish conquerors received its final rebuff at the decline of the second race. At that time two ideas, which are, as it were, the poles of all really civil society, the idea of the prince and that of the people, disappeared; and, under the name of State, there appeared nothing more than a hierarchy of local sovereigns, each master of a part or parcel of the national territory.
The revival of an urban society re-opened the ways of civilization preserved by tradition, and prepared everything for the renovation of political society. The King of France found in the cities—reconstituted in municipal form, what the citizen renders to the State, Edition: I do not mean to assert that the revival of the royal authority was caused solely and immediately by the revolution which gave rise to the communes. These two important events were produced independently of one another, from tradition rendered fruitful by propitious circumstances; they encountered, and simultaneously influenced each other.
Their coincidence was marked by a kind of impulse towards all that constitutes public prosperity; the resumption of improvement in the state of the material objects of life speedily accompanied the accession of a new class of freemen. In the twelfth century, a clearance of forests and wastes, unheard of till then, was effected. The ancient cities grew into importance, new cities arose and were peopled by families escaped from serfdom; Edition: In the following century appear the judicial and legislative reforms; they break in upon the feudal law, and inaugurate a new civil law which passed from the sphere of the municipalities into the high sphere of the State.
Originating in the charters of the communes, and in the customs drawn up for the cities or the boroughs, this law of the bourgeoisie, opposed to that of the nobles, was distinguished from it by its very essence. It had for its basis natural equity, and regulated according to its principles the condition of individuals, the constitution of the family, and the transmission of hereditary property. It established the division of paternal or maternal property, real or personal, between all the children, the equality of brothers and sisters, and, in the case of married persons, the common right in property acquired during marriage.
The social revolution was also accompanied and maintained in its development by a scientific revolution, by the revival of the study of the Roman laws, and other monuments of that ancient and admirable jurisprudence. The impulse was here also given by Italy, where the public teaching of the law never ceased during the whole course of the Middle Ages, and maintained an obscure existence at Ravenna before it reflourished at Bologna.
From the twelfth century, numerous students, in their travels passing the Alps, carried into France the new doctrine of the commentators on the civil law; and that law was soon professed concurrently with the canon law in many cities of the South, and also at Angers and Orleans. The maxims and rules drawn from the imperial codes by minds ardent and anxious for truth and justice found their way from the schools into practice; and, under their influence, a whole class of civilians and politicians, the head and soul of the bourgeoisie, sprung up, and commenced in the upper courts the struggle of the common law and equity against custom, privileges of class, and actions illegal and unjust.
There, proclaimed and applied day after day, the theory of the imperial power, of the public authority, one and absolute, equal towards all, the sole source of justice and law, reappeared. The civilians following the letter, if not the tradition, upwards even to the Roman times, placed themselves in idea at that point, and thence contemplated the civil and political order of their own times. In looking at the influence which they exercised upon the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, we might say that they had gathered from their studies this conviction, that in the then existing state of society only two things were lawful, the crown and the bourgeoisie.
We might even say that they anticipated the Edition: It is certainly the fact that the civilians of the Middle Ages—judges, counsellors, officers of the crown—have for six centuries prepared the way of future revolutions. Impelled by their professional instincts, by that spirit of bold logic which follows up from inference to inference the application of a principle, they commenced, without measuring its extent, that immense task to which, after them, the labour of succeeding centuries applied itself—to re-unite in one single hand the sovereignty which had been parcelled out, to lower all that was above them to the classes of the bourgeoisie, and to raise to their level all that was below.
That war of equity against existing law, of ideas against facts, which breaks out at intervals in human societies, has always two periods of a very dissimilar character: Two famous reigns which, following so close together, form one of the most remarkable contrasts that history can present, the reigns of Louis IX. This revolution, begun with so much mildness and caution by the king, at once a saint and a great man, appeared in the hands of his grandson harsh, violent, arbitrary, and even iniquitous. From the manner in which the measures, whose ultimate object was an order of things better and fairer for all, were pursued, it had not the power, in spite of its spirit and its tendency, to excite the affections of the people: Never, perhaps, was there a social crisis of an aspect more gloomy than that: Only above that disorder, pregnant with ruin and suffering, but the cradle of future order, a voice was heard from time to time, the voice of an absolute king, who in the name of the law of nature proclaimed the right of liberty to all, and in the name of the law of God rebuked the institution of serfdom.
The civilians of the fourteenth century, the founders and ministers of the royal aristocracy, met with the fate common to great revolutionists: But in spite of these inevitable relapses, and of the concessions made under feeble reigns, two things continued to increase without check, the number of free men under the denomination of bourgeoisie Edition: A revolution, less striking and less spontaneous than the communal revolution, subsequently adopted, as its substructure, the results of the latter; and, by slow but uninterrupted efforts, succeeded in making of a multitude of small and separate states one single society, connected with one sole centre of jurisdiction and government.
In the first place, it was laid down as a principle that no commune could be established without the consent of the king; next, that the king alone had power to create communes; next, that all the cities, communal or consulate, were ipso facto under his immediate seigniory. By a strange fiction, the privilege of the bourgeois, a right essentially belonging to property, attached to the dwelling and conferred by the occupation of it, became a kind of personal privilege. The bourgeois could change his jurisdiction without changing his residence—declare himself a freeman and citizen Edition: The privilege was no longer merely local, but became personal; and, by the side of the bourgeoisie of the cities and the communes, it imperceptibly created a new class of free commoners roturiers , to whom might be given by way of distinction the denomination of citizens of the kingdom.
All these circumstances resulted from a new social principle, from a right subversive of existing rights; and none of them was established without a protest and a struggle. It was not so with the famous institution which made the bourgeoisie a political order, represented by its deputies in the great assemblies of the kingdom.
These assemblies, the tradition of which had passed from German customs into the system of the feudal monarchy, were composed of deputies elected respectively by the nobility and clergy, and forming either one common body or two separate chambers. The cities, by their privileges, which they had acquired by open force, or which were conceded to them by good will, were become, like the castles, an integral part of the feudal hierarchy, and feudality recognised in all its members the right of free consent in the grant of taxes and subsidies.
It was one of the old usages, and the best principle of that system. The urban population enjoyed this privilege without the necessity of claiming it, and without its being disputed by any party. The increase of expenses and the wants of royalty, which made it necessary to call fresh means of administration into existence, in the midst of which the fourteenth century commenced, must have naturally Edition: Some important events which occurred in the first year of the century gave an unusual solemnity and the character of a national representation to convocations, which were up to that time partial, and which took place one after the other without attracting much attention.
The court of Rome, in violation of the regulations and treaties which limited its power in France, claimed a right of temporal supremacy over the affairs of the kingdom.
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This name of Tiers Etat, when used in its ordinary sense, properly comprises only the population of the privileged cities, but in effect it extends much beyond this; it includes not only the cities, but the villages and hamlets—not only the free commonalty, but all those for whom civil liberty is a privilege still to come.
However restricted, too, by its exclusively municipal character, the representation of the third order might be, it had always the merit of believing itself charged with the duty of pleading, not the cause of this or that section, of this or that class of the Edition: Its part was subordinate and undefined in the States-General, which succeeded those of , under Philippe le Bel and his successors, up to the end of the fourteenth century, and which were generally convoked on the occurrence of wars, or of a new reign.
But in the reign of John, the public distress and the unusual amount of national calamity caused an outburst of feeling and ambition in the communes of France which made them attempt projects unheard of up to that time, and lay hold of all at once and for a moment that preponderance of the Tiers Etat which Edition: The two centuries which had passed since the revival of the municipal liberties had given to the rich bourgeois of the cities the experience of political life, and had taught them to know and desire all that constitutes a well-regulated society, either within the circle of the city walls or over a wider extent.
Without doubt the representatives of the bourgeoisie in the first States-General, when summoned to vote subsidies, and to see how they were dispensed, were forcibly struck with the contrast there exhibited between the royal administration with its rash measures, its crafty expedients, its old or fresh abuses, and the urban administration, following its immemorial laws, scrupulous, upright, just, whether of its own accord or in spite of itself.
Among those men of clear and active intelligence, the most enlightened would naturally conceive the idea of introducing into the centre of the State the system which they had seen practised under their own eyes, which they had practised themselves in accordance with the local tradition Edition: This idea, timidly expressed at first in the presence of royalty, which did not pay attention to it, and of the privileged bodies which did not look beyond themselves for counsel, was openly declared when extraordinary necessities, brought on by war from without and by ruin from within, compelled the king and his ministers to look for assistance at any sacrifice, and showed clearly their own inability to remedy the public misfortunes.
From this position of circumstances arose the spirit of reform which burst forth so suddenly and energetically in the States-General of The resolutions of that assembly, which immediately received the force of law by a royal ordinance, contain, and in some points even exceed, the modern guarantees of which the system of constitutional monarchy consists. The initiative of the Tiers Etat prevailed, by the force of good sense and administrative experience, in those deliberations which, as far as outward appearance is concerned, were common Edition: The disaster of Poitiers excited in the minds of the people a sentiment of national grief, mixed with indignation and scorn at the nobility who had fled before an army so inferior in number.
Those nobles who passed through the cities and towns on their return from the battle were pursued with imprecations and outrages. It was at the summons of this prince that the states assembled again at Paris before the time which they had appointed. The same deputies returned to the number of , of whom were of the bourgeoisie; and the work of reform, rudely sketched in the preceding session, was resumed under the same influence, with an enthusiasm which partook of the character of revolutionary impulse.
The assembly commenced by concentrating its action in a committee of twenty-four members, deliberating, as far as appears, without distinction of orders; it then intimated its resolutions under the form of petitions, which were as follow: The authority of the states declared supreme in all affairs of administration and finance, the impeachment of all the counsellors of the king, the dismissal in a body of the officers of justice, and the creation of a council of reformers taken from the three orders; lastly, the prohibition to conclude any truce without the assent of the three states, and the right on their part to re-assemble at their own will without a royal summons.
The lieutenant of the king, Charles Duke of Normandy, exerted in vain the resources of a precocious ability to escape these imperious demands: The States governed in his name; but dissension, springing from the mutual jealousy of the different orders, was soon introduced into their body. The preponderating influence of the bourgeois appeared intolerable to the nobles, who, in consequence, deserted the assembly and retired home.
The deputies of the clergy remained longer at their posts, but they also withdrew at last; and, under the name of the States-General, none remained but the representatives of the cities, Edition: At this point appears a man whose character has Edition: It is strange to find the whole of it comprised in the three Edition: Marcel lived and died for an idea—that of hastening on, by the force of the masses, the work of gradual equalisation commenced by the kings themselves; but it was his misfortune and his crime to be unrelenting in carrying out his convictions.
To the impetuosity of a tribune who did not shrink even from murder he added the talent of organization; he left in the grand city, which he had ruled with a stern and absolute sway, powerful institutions, noble works, and a name which two centuries afterwards his descendants bore with pride as a title of nobility. While the bourgeoisie, formed under the influences of municipal liberty, raised itself by a sudden but transient enthusiasm to the spirit of national liberty, and in some measure anticipated the future, a strange and hideous spectacle was exhibited by the demiservile population of the villages and hamlets.
We mean the Jacquerie; its dreadful excesses, and its no less dreadful repression.
In those days of crisis and agitation, the general vibration of society affected the peasantry, and encountered among them the passions of hatred and vengeance which had been accumulated and bayed back during centuries of oppression and misery. Peasants armed with clubs and knives rose and marched in bands, increasing as they advanced, attacking the castles with sword and flame, murdering all they found in them—men, women, and children; and, like the barbarians of the great invasion, unable to give an account of the objects which they sought, or the motive which instigated them.
Beauvais, Senlis, Amiens, Paris, and Meaux, accepted it, either as assistance, or as a diversion in their favour. In spite of the acts of barbarity committed by the rebel peasants, almost everywhere the urban population, Edition: Those two movements, different as they were, of the two great classes of the commonalty, terminated simultaneously—one to revive and carry all before it when its time should come; the other to leave nothing behind it but an odious name, and sad recollections.
The attempt of Edition: With him perished the persons who had represented the city in the council of the states, as well as those who had ruled as chiefs or ringleaders of the municipal council. Nevertheless, all was not lost in that first and unfortunate trial. The Prince, who struggled two years against the Parisian bourgeoisie, borrowed something of its political tendencies, and learnt a lesson in the school of those whom he had conquered.
He annulled what the States-General had decreed, and constrained him to do for the reform of abuses; but the violence of that reaction lasted but a few days, and Charles V. His government was arbitrary but regular, economical, imbued with the spirit of order, and, above all, with the spirit of nationality.
Trained early to patience and statecraft in a position of peril and difficulty, he had none of the eager and chivalrous impetuosity Edition: In him royalty presents a new character, which separates it from the Middle Ages and connects it with modern times. He was the first of those kings who appeared as the redressers of wrong after a period of danger, devoted to business, placing consideration before action, able and persevering—princes eminently politic, whose type re-appeared more strikingly under different aspects in Louis XI.
We have reached a point where our social history, disengaged from its origin and complete in its elements, unfolds itself in a simple and regular form, like a river which, rising from many sources, collects its waters as it advances into one single mass, contained within the same banks. At this point the powers, whose action, simultaneous or divergent, has constituted up to our times the drama of political revolutions, display themselves in their definitive character.
Royalty is seen advancing uninterruptedly along the way, pointed out by the traditions of imperial Rome, favouring the spirit of civilisation, but opposed to the spirit of liberty, innovating with reluctance, and with the jealous anxiety of superintending everything itself; the nobility preserving and cherishing their inheritance of German usages softened down by Christianity, opposing to the dogma of an Edition: Such is the state of society; with regard to its institutions, royalty, in its unlimited prerogative, regains and embraces them all, except one only, the States-General, whose power, ill-defined, a shadow of the national sovereignty, makes its appearance at seasons of crisis, to condemn present evil and to pave the way to future good.
From to , the States, although rarely assembled, although without regular influence on the government, played a considerable part as an organ of public opinion. The commonalty had its principles, which it never lost an Edition: The reformation of the laws and customs by the infusion of civil liberty and equality, the overthrow of all the barriers raised by privilege, the extension of the common law to all classes—such was the perpetual plea, and, if we may use the expression, the voice of the Tiers Etat. We can follow this voice speaking more loudly from age to age in proportion as time advances and progress is accomplished.
It is this which during five centuries has stirred the great currents of opinion. The initiative which the Tiers Etat took in conceiving and projecting reforms is the fact, which is most intimately connected with the social movement, of which we have lived to see, if not the final close, at least a glorious and decisive phase—a movement continued under remarkable vicissitudes, whose progress resembles that of the rising tide, which seems to advance and recede without interruption, but which still gains ground and reaches its destined point.
The north and south of France were not in the same social position during the Middle Ages; the south was more advanced in civilisation, more flourishing, and under a less arbitrary system of government. There the impress of Rome was more distinctly retained both in the language and manners of the people; there the municipal spirit, maintained by the number and wealth of the cities, preserved both its power and character more efficiently.
The administrative reforms, the work of royalty, took place in the north, and only reached the south by a reaction. There was always on one side or the other a sort of discordance in their feelings and their actions; and the trace of this is still to be observed even in the midst of our modern unity. Thence arises the necessity of contracting the scene of this Edition: The Tiers Etat drew its strength and spirit from two different sources, the one complex and municipal—namely, the commercial classes; the other simple and central—namely, the class of the judicial and financial officers of the crown, whose number and power rapidly increased, and who, with rare exceptions, all sprang from the commonalty.
To this twofold origin corresponded two classes of political ideas and sentiments. The spirit of the bourgeoisie, properly so called, or urban corporations, was liberalin principle, but narrow and stationary in practice, attached to its local immunities, to its hereditary rights, to the independent and privileged existence of the municipal cities and communes. The spirit of the judicial and administrative bodies admitted only one right, that of the Government; only one liberty, that of the Prince; only one interest, that of order under one absolute guardianship; and their reasoning did not regard the privileges of the Edition: Thence arose in the Tiers Etat of France two divergent tendencies, always at war, but always corresponding to the same final object, which, alternately modifying each other, and combining under the influence of new ideas of a loftier and more generous kind, have given to our revolutions since the thirteenth century their character of a slow but always certain course towards civic equality, national unity, and unity of government.
Another fact in our history as ancient and not less characteristic is the particular part taken by the bourgeoisie of Paris. Paris was the chief centre of commerce and important scientific institutions; it was there that intellectual activity displayed itself on a larger scale than in any other city of the kingdom. Public spirit there assumed a form at once municipal and general. We have seen the people of Paris taking the lead in aggressive opinion during the democratic attempts of ; we shall find it doing the same at every period of social crisis, under Charles VI.
I resume the thread of my narrative at the reign of Charles V. That prince recovered one by one the dismembered portions of the kingdom; he rendered France more powerful abroad, and more civilised at home; he expended much in the accomplishment of great undertakings, and still found the means of Edition: He established under the name of ordinary aids permanent taxes, thus violating at one blow both the feudal and the municipal liberties.
He did this with decision, but not, there is reason to believe, without scruples; and on his death-bed he regarded it with regret. Royalty found itself for the first time in opposition to the bourgeoisie; the new monarchical order was divided against itself by the imposition of regular taxation—a vital question which it was necessary to solve, and which, on the accession of Charles VI.
The sensation produced by the report of the repentant expressions attributed to the late King did not permit the further collection of the general subsidies by authority, nor indeed a hope of their concession by the assembly of the three orders. The guardians of the young King attempted, as Edition: This was the signal for an armed rebellion. The lower classes and the youth of Paris, forcing the arsenal of the city, provided themselves with sledge-hammers, which they found there in great quantity, and rushed upon the farmers of the tax, the collectors and royal officers, massacring the one, and forcing the other to flight.
The example of Paris was imitated with more or less violence in the principal cities of the central and northern provinces. This spirit of resistance on the part of the French bourgeoisie was encouraged by some external occurrences, by the example of Ghent, which city, at the head of a party formed in the communes of Flanders, Edition: There existed between the bourgeoisie of Paris and the Flemish insurgents not only sympathy, but correspondence by letters, with a promise of mutual efforts in behalf of a common cause, in which were comprised the defence of local privileges against the central power, and the hostility of the commonalty against the nobility.
That victorious campaign, which had the appearance and the effect of a triumph on the part of the nobility over the commonalty, Edition: The royal army entered Paris as a conquered city, breaking down the barriers, and passing over the gates torn from their hinges. The money thus raised amounted to immense sums; but the princes and the courtiers helped themselves so freely Edition: Twenty-nine years elapsed, during which the imbecility of the King, the quarrels of the princes, the civil war, and, soon after, the foreign invasion, were added to the confusion of a Government without order, and to ruin of every kind.
The reaction of had wounded the bourgeoisie far more deeply than that of The last mentioned had merely struck a blow at their political ambition; the other had impoverished, dispersed, deprived it of its glory and hereditary influence. The city of Paris, among others, found itself depressed in two ways—by the loss of its municipal immunities, and by the ruin of the families who had governed and directed it with their counsels in the times of its liberty. This degradation of the upper class, composed of the high mercantile body and the lawyers of the supreme courts, had given a step to the intermediate class, consisting of the wealthier among those who exercised manual professions—a class less enlightened and less refined in manners, to which the force of circumstances now gave the influential power over the affairs and feelings of the city.
Thence sprung that character of unrestrained demagoguism which the Parisian population exhibited when, having recovered its liberties and its Edition: The Duke of Burgundy, one of the princes who were striving by force of arms to obtain the guardianship and power of the imbecile King, had allied himself, in order to increase his forces, with the bourgeoisie and declared himself the protector of the popular interests.
This policy was successful; he became master of the State, and the re-establishment of the old free constitution of Paris was his work. These men, whose profession had been handed down from father to son from time immemorial, and whose shambles were a sort of fiefs, had collected around them an hereditary set of dependents called flayers, Edition: This Government possessed the affection of the common people, and became an object of alarm to the commercial class of the bourgeoisie and to all that still remained of families distinguished by an ancient respectability.
One among them, Simon Caboche, was the man of action of that second period of revolution to which his name remains attached, and in which the spirit of reform shown in re-appeared a moment to be immediately compromised by the brutal and degraded actions of the faction on which it relied.
We are here struck by a circumstance which is not Edition: In the municipality of Paris, in , Jean de Troyes, a celebrated physician, a man of eloquence and learning, sat side by side with the butchers Saint-Yon and Legoix in perfect agreement of opinions. With the notion, as far as appears, of associating all the powers of the Tiers Etat in behalf of that great attempt, it invited the Parliament to unite with itself and the citizens of Paris, in order to obtain justice and reform. The Parliament refused—the hour of ambition had not yet come for that body; and, besides, it did not choose to commit itself with theorists who were without experience of affairs, and with democrats of the crossways.
The university and the corporation of the city will take good care to do nothing which it ought not. The court was divided, and the King incapable of understanding or deciding anything; the Prince, who then governed in his name, thought that he should manage the people to his own purposes, and was in reality managed by them.
Their demand was granted; and the two bodies which comported themselves as if they were the representatives of the public opinion, the university and the city, were authorised to present a plan of administrative and judicial reform. Commissioners, whose names are unknown, set themselves to the work, and obtained permission to have all the ancient ordinances preserved in the archives delivered to them for examination. A plot was hatched against the security of the city, and the popular indignation was excited to the highest degree.
There was a tumultuous rising in arms; and the bastille of Saint-Antoine, that citadel of royalty in Paris, commenced by Charles V. At length, on the 25th of May, , the resolutions of the new reformers, reduced, like those of the States Edition: This ordinance, which contains no less than two hundred and fifty-eight articles, is a complete code of administration, establishing a hierarchy of elective functionaries, laying down rules for conduct of affairs and responsibility, limiting the offices both in number and power, and promising to subjects of all classes guarantees against injustice, oppression, and the abuse both of power and law.
There are contained in it a vast enumeration of prescriptions of every kind, in which two ideas seem to prevail—the centralisation of the judicial and that of the financial government; all terminates, on the one part, in the Chamber of Accounts, and, on the other, in the Parliament. The jurisdiction of forests and waters, frequently attended with tyranny to the rural districts, is curtailed in its extent, and subjected to an appeal to Parliament. It is enacted that the rural usages be everywhere respected; that the peasants may arm themselves to pursue robbers; that they have the right of hunting wolves, of destroying the new warrens made by the seigneurs, and of refusing to pay them any duty established without authority.
The peculiar character of this important ordinance, Edition: The experience of the preceding century had borne its fruits; the temper of the Parisian bourgeoisie, in spite of its new fit of revolutionary passion, was in reality more settled down and moderated. Under that anarchical domination of the municipality, itself domineered over by a faction of brutal and violent persons, sober thoughts of the common weal, till then suppressed, now found their way through the midst of the disorder, and were, perhaps, produced by it.
The very persons who presided over these excesses, or who abetted them by their assent, were not destitute of civic virtues; their hearts were capable of sentiments of patriotism which, from their expression, we should be led to believe modern. But while men could be found capable of conceiving this administrative law of ancient France, there were none to execute and maintain it. Persons of mature wisdom and versed in public matters had at that time neither will nor political energy.
They held themselves aloof, and the work remained in the hands of the visionary and turbulent—of the butchers and their allies. By intolerable excesses these persons hastened on a reaction which led to their fall, their banishment, and the abandonment of the reforms which had been obtained with so much labour: In this way some of the Tiers Etat, encouraged by a revolutionary crisis to invest themselves with a constituent power, entertained at the commencement of the fifteenth century the idea of remoulding at one cast the administration of the kingdom, and to give it fixed principles, a reasonable foundation, and uniform action.
If the plan which they drew up was never tried, it has yet remained as a monument of political wisdom, in which appears in a striking manner the kind of lasting bond which tied together all the classes of the commonalty in one and the same cause. The commissioners delegated by the city and university of Paris did that which the deputies of the entire body of the bourgeoisie had done in the States-General; they devoted their attention to the population of the rural districts, they took measures in its behalf which show at once their sympathy for it, and the improvement which had taken place in its condition since the end of the twelfth century.
Since that period, indeed, the collective enfranchisement of the peasantry by whole villages and seigniories had continually increased in frequency and extent. That government, in its application to the rural districts, propagated among them the name of commune, which served to distinguish it in the cities of the centre and the north of France; and from this circumstance arose that tendency to a change in the meaning of the word which made it lose its first sense, which was so restricted and forcible.
Yet, however, this mass of enfranchised serfs, still attached to the domain by some bond, or at least entirely subjected to the jurisdiction of the seigneur—this population, though it did not immediately gain relief from the power asserted by the people, could already be reckoned among the active forces of the nation; it was as a body of reserve, imbued with the spirit of patriotism, and capable of a spontaneous Edition: This was seen when the defeat of Agincourt, more fatal than that of Poitiers, had brought a series of reverses on France, when the nobility, the bourgeoisie, and royalty itself were reduced step by step to the degradation of a treaty, which bequeathed the crown and delivered up the country to a foreign prince.
A reign succeeds the long and difficult toil of the national deliverance, in which the principal counsellors were bourgeois; and the grandson of Charles V. Talents and intellects of the first order were placed at his disposal, and toiled for him, in times of war with all the powers of genius warmed by patriotism, in peace with all the enlightenment of public opinion.
It is a fact, already remarked and well worthy of being so, that that opinion had for its representatives, as the King for his Ministers, men sprung from the middle classes of the then existing state of society, the inferior nobility and the higher bourgeoisie. The spirit of reform and improvement which, in Edition: The question of permanent taxation, and taxes imposed without the concession of the states, Edition: The militia of the cities, hitherto organised, independently of and without the agency of royalty, was now fused into a royal and at the same time national army.
The privileged class of the Tiers Etat experienced a diminution of its political rights; but the form of modern monarchy, of that government which was destined for the future to be at once single and free, was discovered. Its fundamental institutions already had existence; the task henceforward was to maintain, extend, and root it in the habits of the people. The reign of Charles VII. Such moments are always grand in the history of a people, but their nature is to last but a short time; the common effort does not support itself, fatigue and disunion supervene, and the reaction soon commences.
The same powers which had established the new system of government were not able to preserve them intact; they were collective, and, as such, too much subject to change; the work of numbers required, in order that it might be saved from ruin, to be committed to the hands of an Edition: That individual, that personality, jealous, active, self-willed, was found in Louis XI.
If any personages of history seem marked by the seal of Providence to perform a mission, the son of Charles VII. He who had raised the standard of opposition in concert with the aristocratic interests against his father, made himself the guardian and abettor of all that was odious to the aristocracy. He applied all the energies of his existence, all that he had of intellect and passion, of virtue and vice, to this purpose. His reign was a daily struggle for the cause of unity of power, and the cause of social equality—a struggle carried on after the manner of savages by cunning and cruelty, without courtesy and without mercy.
Thence arises the mixture of interest and repugnance which is excited in our minds by a character so strangely original. The despot Louis XI. The condemnation which he deserves, and with which he will remain charged, is the ignominy which the human conscience throws on the memory of those who have thought that Edition: This King, who affected to be one of the people by his tone, dress, and manners, who conversed familiarly with all sorts of persons, and wished to know, see, and do everything by himself, has some points of character which are only to be observed in the same degree in democratic dictatorships.
In the judgment, therefore, which is formed of him, we must consider at the same time what he accomplished, and what he wished to accomplish—both his works and his designs. He meditated the establishment throughout his kingdom of unity of customs, weights, and Edition: Industry, confined to the corporations which had given it new birth after the revival of the cities, was altogether municipal; he endeavoured to make it national. He summoned merchants to his council of state, to advise with them upon the means of extending and encouraging commerce; he opened new markets, and promoted the undertaking of fresh manufactures; he paid attention to roads, canals, maritime commerce, the working of mines; he attracted by privileges contractors of works and foreign artisans, and simultaneously kept up a standing army four times as numerous as in days past; he built fleets, extended and fortified the frontiers, and carried the power of the kingdom to a point hitherto unheard of.
He caused much suffering and experienced much himself in his life of labour, policy, fears, expedients, and continual anxiety. His large views, his thoughts for the commonweal, the changes which he meditated, affected only a small number of those who heard them from his own Edition: The mind of the age perceived nothing of these things, but, by way of retaliation, it has caught to the life in Louis XI. In the life of nations, however salutary at intervals the despotism of a superior mind may be, it is seldom that its influence, if prolonged, does not lead those who are subjected to it to experience an extreme fatigue which makes them glad to find relief in the government of ordinary minds, or even in the risks of political liberty.
The death of Louis XI. It was on the 5th Edition: Never, moreover, since the assembly of , had the question of the power of the states been so clearly stated and so boldly discussed. There were flashes of political independence and eloquence; but all evaporated in words which had no effect, or nearly none, against admitted facts. There was a strong disposition in some way to efface the reign of Louis XI. The impulse in favour of a centralised administration, one and absolute, was too strong; and from these discussions, full of life and interest in the journal in which they are preserved to us, there resulted in reality only some modification, some promises and hopes which were soon falsified.
Among the speeches delivered in that assembly, there is one which cannot be read at the present day without astonishment, for it contains propositions such as the following: But the traditions of the Tiers Etat did not speak to them in a language which could lead them to a similar creed of political faith; it was still too near its sources, too much bound to its old beaten track. It paid no attention to principles, which three centuries later became its weapon in the great revolutionary struggle, and only interested itself in the Edition: It was on this point alone that the deputies of the commonalty maintained the right of the States-General, whose liberty and sovereignty in every respect were laid down by others.
The political movement of was no longer possible in ; it had taken as its principle the spirit of municipal liberty in its highest degree of action. The dream of Etienne Marcel and his party was a confederation of sovereign cities having Paris at their head, and governing the country by means of a diet under the king as suzerain. But this old spirit of the French bourgeoisie had gradually disappeared to make way for another less desirous of local rights and personal independence than of public order and national vitality. In the states of the chamber in which the deputies of Paris voted was the first to make concessions, which obliged the assembly to raise the amount of the money which it had agreed to grant.
In every respect the representatives of the bourgeoisie, as far as we are able to distinguish their share in the resolutions voted by a majority of the whole body, and not by the three orders separately, Edition: Nothing remained but to glean after him, or to ease the springs of government which he had strained at all points, to demand the execution of his designs which were still incomplete, and the remedy of evils which he had occasioned by the impetuosity and the extravagances of his absolute will.
The principal articles of the chapter of the Tiers Etat in the general cahier of the three orders were—the diminution of the taxes and the reduction of the royal troops, the suppression of the poll tax as arbitrary, the resumption of alienated portions of the royal domain, the vigorous execution of the acts guaranteeing the liberties of the Gallican Church, and the compilation of the customs, which would be a first step towards the unity of law. The assembly of took care not to vote any subsidy except under the name of a free grant and a concession.
It demanded the convocation of the States-General within a period of two years, and did not separate till after it had obtained the promise. To judge of this by the zeal of the three orders to render their consent necessary, and by the picture which their cahiers traced out of the misery of the people oppressed by the burden of the taxes, were a great delusion; all seemed to say that the absolute monarchy was leading the country to its ruin, and yet it was not so.
The country remained under the arbitrary government; it had to bear fresh abuses, often enormous, of this government; it suffered without doubt; but, far from sinking, its vital powers were increased by a progress silent and imperceptible. It was a singular circumstance that, at the very time when the public voice had just proclaimed with bitterness the approaching exhaustion of the kingdom, by a caprice of foolish heroism on the part of Charles VIII.
The expenses of the armaments alone were more than were required for the whole reign of Louis XI. A long peace seemed to be the only means of salvation; and yet the era of important wars opened upon the nation without a crisis at home and with honour abroad. Once opened by our arms and by intestine feuds to foreign occupation, the country which preserved and fostered the traditions of Roman genius for the world became the field of battle and Edition: It lost the stormy independence which had formed its life, and henceforward declined without rallying in the midst of the progress of modern civilisation.
France had the misfortune to strike the first blows which caused that mighty ruin; but, once brought into contact, although under circumstances of violence, with the free states and principalities of Italy, she imbibed in those relations, hostile or friendly, a new spirit—a worship of the master-works of antiquity, and a passion to renew all their ideas and all their arts by her own study of them. At the same time that a wider and more secure way was opened to the national genius by that intellectual revolution, a fellowship of mind, also, was in some sort established among men of superior intelligence, whom the separation of ranks and classes had hitherto kept at a distance from one another; a certain equality instilled by a literary education lessened more and more the traditional difference of feeling and manners.
In this way the introduction of a public opinion was prepared by degrees, and cherished throughout the nation by all the new acquisitions of knowledge and intellect. This opinion, which seized upon everything, and changed everything after a century, dates, for those who wish to mark its origin, from the time, when a common stock of purely secular ideas, of studies springing from a source different from that of the schools of the Middle Ages, Edition: In spite of the doctrines which had resounded from the tribune in — the sovereignty of the people, the will of the people, the right of possession in the people over the public property —no change was made in the character of the States-General; they continued to be, as they were before, a last resource in time of danger, not a regular and permanent institution.
We might say that it was the destiny, the instinct of the French nation not seriously to desire political freedom so long as equality was impossible. It was from the breaking down of class government, and the reuniting everything to itself by the Tiers Etat, that the first attempt at a true representative constitution was destined to emanate anong us.
It was from the midst of the corporation of bourgeois legists, who, being invested with the judicial authority, had established absolute power for the king and the common law for the nation, that there arose in the sixteenth century a constant, enlightened, and courageous control over the acts of the Government. Some simple formalities without apparent consequence, the custom of promulgating the royal edicts in the court of Parliament, and of having them inscribed on the register of which the court had the custody, opened to that body of the judicature the road which led it to mix itself in the affairs of the State.
These self-organized meetings are today defined as the epoch event beginning the historical epoch era of the French Revolution , during which — after several more weeks of civil unrest — the body assumed a new status as a revolutionary legislature, the National Constituent Assembly July 9, This unitary body composed of the former representatives of the three estates stepping up to govern along with an emergency committee in the power vacuum existing after the Bourbon monarchy fled Paris.
Among the Assembly was Maximilien de Robespierre , an influential member of the Jacobins who would years later become instrumental in the turbulent period of violence and political upheaval in France known as the Reign of Terror 5 September — 28 July Whilst the estates were never formulated in a way that prevented social mobility, the English subsequently the British parliament was long based along the classic estate lines being composed on the "Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons".
Notwithstanding the House of Lords Act , the British Parliament still recognises the existence of the three estates: Thre Estaitis , also known as the community of the realm, and until composed of:. A Shire Commissioner was the closest equivalent of the English office of Member of Parliament , namely a commoner or member of the lower nobility. Because the Parliament of Scotland was unicameral, all members sat in the same chamber , as opposed to the separate English House of Lords and House of Commons. The Parliament also had University constituencies see Ancient universities of Scotland.
It was believed that the universities were affected by the decisions of Parliament and ought therefore to have representation in it. The Estates in Sweden including Finland and later also Russia's Grand Duchy of Finland were the two higher estates, nobility and clergy , and the two lower estates, burghers and land-owning peasants.
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Each were free men, and had specific rights and responsibilities, and the right to send representatives to the Riksdag of the Estates. The Riksdag, and later the Diet of Finland was tetracameral: Since early 18th century, a bill needed the approval of at least three Estates to pass, and constitutional amendments required the approval of all Estates. Prior to the 18th century, the King had the right to cast a deciding vote if the Estates were split evenly.
After Russia's conquest of Finland in , the estates in Finland swore an oath to the Emperor in the Diet of Porvoo. A Finnish House of Nobility was codified in in accordance with the old Swedish law of However, after the Diet of Porvoo, the Diet of Finland was reconvened only in In the meantime, for a period of 54 years, the country was governed only administratively. There was also a population outside the estates.
Unlike in other areas, people had no "default" estate, and were not peasants unless they came from a land-owner's family. A summary of this division is:. In Sweden, the Riksdag of the Estates existed until it was replaced with a bicameral Riksdag in , which gave political rights to anyone with a certain income or property. Nevertheless, many of the leading politicians of the 19th century continued to be drawn from the old estates, in that they were either noblemen themselves, or represented agricultural and urban interests.
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Ennoblements continued even after the estates had lost their political importance, with the last ennoblement of explorer Sven Hedin taking place in ; this practice was formally abolished with the adoption of the new Constitution January 1, , while the status of the House of Nobility continued to be regulated in law until In Finland, this legal division existed until , still drawing on the Swedish constitution of However, at the start of the 20th century most of the population did not belong to any Estate and had no political representation.
A particularly large class were the rent farmers, who did not own the land they cultivated but had to work in the land-owner's farm to pay their rent unlike Russia, there were no slaves or serfs. Furthermore, the industrial workers living in the city were not represented by the four-estate system. The political system was reformed as a result of the Finnish general strike of , with the last Diet instituting a new constitutional law to create the modern parliamentary system , ending the political privileges of the estates.
The post-independence constitution of forbade ennoblement, and all tax privileges were abolished in The privileges of the estates were officially and finally abolished in , [13] although in legal practice, the privileges had long been unenforceable. As in Sweden, the nobility has not been officially abolished and records of nobility are still voluntarily maintained by the Finnish House of Nobility. The Low Countries , which until the late sixteenth century consisted of several counties, prince bishoprics, duchies etc. Later in the 15th and 16th centuries Brussels became the place where the States General assembled.
On these occasions deputies from the States of the various provinces as the counties, prince-bishoprics and duchies were called asked for more liberties. For this reason, the States General were not assembled very often. As a consequence of the Union of Utrecht in and the events that followed afterwards, the States General declared that they no longer obeyed King Philip II of Spain , who was also overlord of the Netherlands.
After the reconquest of the southern Netherlands roughly Belgium and Luxemburg , the States General of the Dutch Republic first assembled permanently in Middelburg , and in The Hague from onward. Without a king to rule the country, the States General became the sovereign power. It was the level of government where all things were dealt with that were of concern to all the seven provinces that became part of the Republic of the United Netherlands. During that time the States General were formed by representatives of the States i.
In each States a plurale tantum sat representatives of the nobility and the cities the clergy were no longer represented; in Friesland the peasants were indirectly represented by the Grietmannen. As a government, the States General of the Dutch Republic were abolished in A new parliament was created, called Nationale Vergadering National Assembly. It no longer consisted of representatives of the States, let alone the Estates: Eventually, the Netherlands became part of the French Empire under Napoleon After regaining independence in November , the name "States General" was resurrected for a legislature constituted in and elected by the States-Provincial.
In , when the Netherlands were united with Belgium and Luxemburg, the States General were divided into two chambers: The members of the First Chamber were appointed for life by the King, while the members of the Second Chamber were elected by the members of the States Provincial. The States General resided in The Hague and Brussels in alternate years until , when, as a result of the Belgian Revolution , The Hague became once again the sole residence of the States General, Brussels instead hosting the newly founded Belgian Parliament.
From on, the Dutch Constitution provides that members of the Second Chamber be elected by the people at first only by a limited portion of the male population; universal male and female suffrage exists since , while the members of the First Chamber are chosen by the members of the States Provincial. As a result, the Second Chamber became the most important. The First Chamber is also called Senate.
This however, is not a term used in the Constitution. Occasionally the First and Second Chamber meet in a Verenigde Vergadering Joint Session , for instance on Prinsjesdag , the annual opening of the parliamentary year, and when a new king is inaugurated. The clergy was represented by the independent prince-bishops , prince-archbishops and prince-abbots of the many monasteries.
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The nobility consisted of independent aristocratic rulers: Burghers consisted of representatives of the independent imperial cities. Many peoples whose territories within the Holy Roman Empire had been independent for centuries had no representatives in the Imperial Diet, and this included the Imperial Knights and independent villages.
The power of the Imperial Diet was limited, despite efforts of centralization. Large realms of the nobility or clergy had estates of their own that could wield great power in local affairs. Power struggles between ruler and estates were comparable to similar events in the history of the British and French parliaments. The Swabian League , a significant regional power in its part of Germany during the 15th Century, also had its own kind of Estates, a governing Federal Council comprising three Colleges: In the late Russian Empire the estates were called sosloviyes. The four major estates were: The division in estates was of mixed nature: Russian Empire Census recorded the reported estate of a person.
The Parliament of Catalonia was first established in as the Catalan Courts Corts Catalanes , according to American historian Thomas Bisson , and it has been considered by several historians as a model of medieval parliament. For instance, English historian of constitutionalism Charles Howard McIlwain wrote that the General Courts of Catalonia, during the 14th century, had a more defined organization and met more regularly than the parliaments of England or France.
The roots of the parliament institution in Catalonia are in the Sanctuary and Truce Assemblies assemblees de pau i treva that started in the 11th century. The members of the parliament of Catalonia were organized in the Three Estates Catalan: The parliament institution was abolished in , together with the rest of institutions of Catalonia, after the War of the Spanish Succession. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It has been suggested that The Estates be merged into this article. Discuss Proposed since September This article is about the medieval European concept of social hierarchy.
For the modern concept of partitioning the government, see Separation of powers. French Estates General and Estates General of Parliament of the United Kingdom. Social estates in the Russian Empire. Palmer, A History of the Modern World , p. Retrieved 26 October Administrative detainee Alien illegal immigrant refugee Citizen dual or multiple native-born naturalized second-class Convicted Migrant worker Political prisoner Stateless.