This chapter explains the origins of the Estates General, in practice from the 1484 meeting, and how deputies were chosen, how the meetings of the Estate General operated, and why kings convoked them in its 1560, 1561, 1576, 1588–1589, and 1614 meetings. It also explains the differences between the Estates General and meetings of provincial estates and bailiwick assemblies.

This book is designed for readers interested in the rise of absolutism in seventeenth-century France, as well as those interested in language and political discourse of this period. It demonstrates how the political discourse in the late Middle Ages, based on ancient Roman ideas that government existed for the common good (le bien public, or la chose publique, a French translation of the Latin res publica), began to evolve in the 1570s. Though references to the common good continued to be used right up to the French Revolution, they began to be overtaken by the language of the State (le bien de l’État). This evolution in language existed at every social level from the peasant village up to the royal court, and they accompanied the rise of absolutism in France, as the book demonstrates by analyzing scores of local, regiona,l and national lists of grievances presented to provincial estates and the Estates-General.