Estates-General

The Estates-General was a French representative assembly of clergy, nobility, and commoners, convened irregularly by the monarchy. Its three estates traditionally deliberated and voted separately.

Estates of the Realm: A social and political division of society into legally recognized groups with distinct rights and duties. The French assembly embodied this wider European system of ranked social orders.
Three Estates: The clergy, nobility, and commoners, understood as the three legally recognized orders of pre-revolutionary French society. Each estate formed a distinct component of the assembly.
Estates-General of 1789: The assembly convened at Versailles in May 1789 amid a fiscal crisis and demands for political reform. It was the final and most consequential meeting of the Estates-General.
French Revolution: A period of political and social upheaval in France beginning in 1789 and ending with Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power. The assembly’s transformation opened the revolutionary sequence.
Philip IV of France: King of France from 1285 to 1314, whose conflicts with Pope Boniface VIII helped prompt an assembly in 1302. His 1302 summons is commonly treated as the Estates-General’s first meeting.
Voting by Order: A procedure in which each estate casts one collective vote, regardless of the number of its deputies. This rule allowed the clergy and nobility to outvote the much larger Third Estate.
Tennis Court Oath: A June 1789 pledge by deputies not to separate until France had a constitution. The oath marked the deputies’ break with the assembly’s traditional proceedings.
National Constituent Assembly: The French assembly that drafted a constitution and reorganized the state from 1789 to 1791. It succeeded the National Assembly as deputies undertook constitutional reconstruction.
Étienne Marcel: A Parisian merchant and prévôt des marchands who led a reform movement during the crisis of 1356–1358. His movement pressed the Estates-General to oversee royal government during the Hundred Years’ War.
Voting by Head: A procedure in which each deputy casts an individual vote rather than voting as a corporate order. The Third Estate sought this alternative to voting by order.

Linked from 8 pages