Question

1. What was the state general?​

Answer 1

In France under the Old Regime, the Estates General (French: États généraux) or States-General was a legislative and consultative assembly of the different classes (or estates) of French subjects. It had a separate assembly for each of the three estates (clergy, nobility and commoners), which were called and dismissed by the king. It had no true power in its own right—unlike the English parliament it was not required to approve royal taxation or legislation[1]—instead it functioned as an advisory body to the king, primarily by presenting petitions from the various estates and consulting on fiscal policy.[2] The Estates General met intermittently until 1614 and only once afterwards, in 1789, but was not definitively dissolved until after the French Revolution.[2] It was distinct from the provincial parlements (the most powerful of which was the Parliament of Paris) which started as appellate courts but later used their powers to decide whether to publish laws to claim a legislative role.