Estates-General

Estates-General, national representative body in France before 1789. Its basic function was to give consent to royal taxation. Its members were divided into three classes, or estates: the clergy, the nobility (both small minorities), and the third estate, which represented the great majority of the people. The Estates-General, first convened by King Philip IV in 1302, was most powerful in the 14th and early 15th centuries. Under Charles VII the monarchy began to develop independent sources of revenue and relied less on the Estates-General. After 1614 the body did not meet until 1789, when Louis XVI summoned it to deal with the financial crisis that gripped France on the eve of the French Revolution. In June 1789 the third estate, joined by some of the clergy and nobility, began the Revolution by defying the king and declaring itself a National Assembly.