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.
Crisis of royal authority
Day of the Barricades
By May 1588, Henri was ready for a showdown with the Catholic ligue and introduced troops into the capital, hoping to suppress their partisans in the city. His plan backfired, and militant elements of the population began rioting. The riot was quickly harnessed by the aristocratic members of the ligue, with the duke of Brissac leading a force of students and monks against the soldiers, driving them back across the city. Henri, increasingly alarmed decided he had little choice but to flee the capital, leaving it in the hands of the duke of Guise and the ligue, who quickly instituted a revolution in the cities administration.Concessions
After the humiliation of the Day of the Barricades, Henri was forced to make several capitulations to the ligue. While in exile from the capital in Rouen he agreed to sign their proposed Edict of Union and pardon all the participants in the coup in the capital. By this act he would exclude the Protestant Navarre from the succession in favour of Navarre's Catholic uncle Cardinal Bourbon, and conduct a war against heresy, the details of which were to be worked out an Estates General. He further removed his hated favourite the duke of Épernon from the majority of his offices, and established the ligues leader, the duke of Guise as the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. With these climb downs made Paris was once again under his authority, and he departed Rouen on 21 July.Ministerial revolution
By letters patent published on 29 May and 8 July, Henri issued the calls for the convoking of the Estates General. The Parisian ligue wanted Henri to return to the capital, however Henri made his excuses that he was needed at Blois the location of the upcoming Estates General. He arrived at Blois for the upcoming meeting on 1 September, accompanied by his mother and his various ministers. On 8 September he sacked almost all his ministers, and replaced them with largely unknown men. was appointed garde des sceaux, giving him the authority of Chancellor, and Ruzé and Revol were established as new secretaries of state.Explaining his reasoning for this palace revolution to his mother, Henri opined that Chancellor Cheverny was corrupt. As for his former ministers, 'Bellièvre was a crypto-Protestant, Villeroy was vain, Brûlart was a nonentity, and Pinart would sell his own parents for money'. He offered a different explanation to the Papal Legate Morosini, explaining how he suspected that the soon to be convened Estates would have demanded their sacking, and thus he was beating them to the punch. Morosini found the explanation plausible, envisioning that the men would be blamed for the high taxation, but also thought that their links to the king's mother Catherine de Medici had a part to play. The Venetian ambassador suspected the men had been leaking state secrets to Guise.
The new men were little known administrators, Montholon possibly never having seen the king before. The reshuffle came with a change in administration style, Henri now governing far more directly than he had, with his ministers not to open his letters privately as they had in previous years.
Ambitions
The ligue had hoped that the upcoming Estates General would be used to further the plans for a war against heresy. Henri however had different ambitions for the gathering, and looked to use it to isolate the noble ligueurs from their urban base, thus regaining the initiative he had lost so decisively during the Day of the Barricades. He had further need of the Estates due to the ruinous state of royal finances, the crown's debts had increased from 101 million at the time of the Estates General of 1576, to 133 million. Between a quarter and third of royal expenditure was devoted to servicing debts. In his letter to the provinces, in which he made the call for the Estates, Henri promised that he would do all in his power to carry out their wishes.Unable to attend the Estates, due to being at war with the crown and a Protestant, Navarre desired nevertheless to moderate the meeting away from any radical course against him. In August he warned that he was willing to defend his rights, and that the delegates for the Estates should work towards a productive peace, so that a general council could resolve doctrinal issues between Protestants and Catholics. He implied that if such a council were to occur, he would be open to abjuring. When the Estates convened, he was able to rely on his Catholic cousins Montpensier, Conti and Soissons to represent his position against the Catholic fundamentalists and they sought to temper the Estates attitude towards him.
Delegates
A bitter election of deputies to the Estates followed, with Henri and the ligue competing to get their candidates elected. The duke of Guise wrote to the Spanish ambassador Mendoza, explaining that 'I am not forgetting anything on my side, having sent to all provinces and bailliages to secure a contrary outcome'. He further added that 'the largest number of deputies will be for us'.With delegates chosen, they drew up their cahiers, lists of grievances they wished to be addressed, before heading to Blois. Though it had initially been intended for the Estates to begin their deliberations on 15 September, too few delegates had arrived by that time for things to be started, so the opening was pushed back a month.
Elections in the provinces
Champagne
In the Guisard heartland of Champagne, the duke of Guise's brother, Cardinal Guise helped engineer suitably ligueur deputies, personally choosing Esclavolles as a deputy of the Second Estate for Troyes among others. Departing from the city for the Estates, he brought with him to Blois all the delegates from Troyes that he had chosen.Cardinal Guise was not however the First Estates delegate for Troyes, instead having secured selection through the baillage of Vermandois. Overall the ligue and its leaders had more success in securing ideologically loyal candidates among the First and Third Estates, while the Second reflected more the clientage networks of the provincial noblesse seconde. Much of the local Champenois nobility was either neutral concerning the ligue or allied with the lieutenant general Joachim de Dinteville in support of the crown's cause.