Estates General of 1588

The Estates General of 1588 was a national meeting of the three orders of France; the clergy, nobility and common people. Called as a part of the concessions Henri III made to the Catholic ligue in the aftermath of the Day of the Barricades, the Estates were formerly convoked on 28 May. Initially intended to begin in September, the meeting would be delayed until October. While he waited for the Estates to begin Henri dismissed all his ministers, replacing them with largely unknown men. The election of delegates witnessed an unusually bitter campaign, as both Henri and the leaders of the ligue, represented by Henry I, Duke of Guise competed to get deputies loyal to them selected, with the ligue seeing considerably more success than the king. On 16 October the Estates formerly opened, and quickly the ligueur deputies imposed their will on the king, forcing him to reaffirm concessions he had made in July. Matters soon turned to finance, with the Third Estate taking the lead in combining an advocacy for war against Protestantism with a refusal to countenance any raising of taxes. Indeed, they proposed a wide-ranging series of radical reforms that would have reduced Henri to the status of a constitutional monarch. In late October, the duke of Savoie invaded the French territory of the Marquisate of Saluzzo. After some initial success, the Estates refused to approve for a war against the duke.

Humiliated and frustrated by the continued defiance of the Estates, and seeing the hand of the duke of Guise behind their every act of resistance, Henri resolved to cut the head of the ligue by assassinating the duke of Guise. On 23 December the duke was lured into a side chamber and cut to pieces, his brother was executed the following day. While this radical coup had a chilling effect on the Estates, aided by the arrest of a series of leading members of the Estates, a degree of defiance among the Third Estate continued, with proposals for a tribunal of leading financiers in early January. On 16 January Henri brought the Estates to a close. They had been a failure, and by now his assassination of the duke of Guise had brought France into civil war, with the majority of French cities including Paris declaring themselves in insurrection against him. In a difficult position he was forced into alliance with his Protestant cousin Navarre in an effort to take back his kingdom.