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The Estates General meeting
The suggestion to summon the Estates General came from the Assembly of Notables installed by the king on 22 February 1787. It had not met since 1614. The usual business of registering the king's edicts as law was performed by the Parlement of Paris. In this year it was refusing to cooperate with Charles Alexandre de Calonne's program of badly needed financial reform, due to the special interests of its noble members. Calonne was the Controller-General of Finances, appointed by the king to addres -
Painting by Auguste Couder showing the opening of the Estates-General
The initial roster of Notables included 137 nobles, among them many future revolutionaries, such as Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, and Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution. Lafayette had served in George Washington's army. Much of the debt had been incurred on behalf of the Americans. The final defeat of Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown was due in large part to the participation of the French army and navy -
Engraving by Isidore-Stanislaus Helman (1743-1806)
As the king and Parliament could accomplish no more together, De Brienne over the winter pressed for an alternative plan: to resurrect even more archaic institutions: the Grand Bailliages, or larger legal jurisdictions that once had existed, would assume Parliament's legal functions, while the Plenary Court, last known under Louis IX of France, when it had the power to register edicts, would assume the registration duties of the Parliament, leaving it with no duties to perform. The king planned
