Quotation from: A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 3

Written by: Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot


We have the journal of these states-general drawn up with precision and
detail by one of the chief actors, John Masselin, canon of and deputy for
Rouen, "an eminent speaker," says a contemporary Norman chronicle, "who
delivered on behalf of the common weal, in the presence of kings and
princes, speeches full of elegance." We may agree that, compared with
the pompous pedantry of most speakers of his day, the oratorical style of
John Masselin is not without a certain elegance, but that is not his
great and his original distinction; what marks him out and gives him so
high a place in the history of the fifteenth century, is the judicious
and firm political spirit displayed in his conduct as deputy and in his
narrative as historian. [The Journal, written by the author in Latin,
was translated into French and published, original and translation,
by M. A. Bernier, in 1835, in the _Collection des Documents inedits
relatifs d l'Histoire de France._] And it is not John Masselin only, but
the very assembly itself in which he sat, that appears to us, at the end
of five centuries, seriously moved by a desire for a free government, and
not far from comprehending and following out the essential conditions of
it. France had no lack of states-general, full of brilliancy and power,
between 1356 and 1789, from the reign of Charles V. to that of
Louis XVI.; but in the majority of these assemblies, for all the
ambitious soarings of liberty, it was at one time religious party-spirit
and at another the spirit of revolution that ruled and determined both
acts and events. Nothing of that kind appeared in the states-general
assembled at Tours in 1484; the assembly was profoundly monarchical, not
only on general principles, but in respect of the reigning house and the
young king seated on the throne. There was no fierce struggle, either,
between the aristocracy and the democracy of the day, between the
ecclesiastical body and the secular body; although widely differing and
widely separated, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate were not
at war, even in their hearts, between themselves. One and the same idea,
one and the same desire, animated the three orders; to such a degree
that, as has been well pointed out by M. Picot, "in the majority of the
towns they proceeded in common to the choice of deputies: the clergy,
nobles, and commons who arrived at Tours were not the representatives
exclusively of the clergy, the nobles, or the third estate: they combined
in their persons a triple commission;" and when, after having examined
together their different memorials, by the agency of a committee of
thirty-six members taken in equal numbers from the three orders, they
came to a conclusion to bring their grievances and their wishes before
the government of Charles VIII., they decided that a single spokesman
should be commissioned to sum up, in a speech delivered in solemn
session, the report of the committee of Thirty-six; and it was the canon,
Master John Masselin, who received the commission to speak in the name of
all. They all had at heart one and the same idea; they desired to turn
the old and undisputed monarchy into a legalized and free government.
Clergy, nobles, and third estate, there was not in any of their minds any
revolutionary yearning or any thought of social war. It is the peculiar
and the beautiful characteristic of the states-general of 1484 that they
had an eye to nothing but a great political reform, a regimen of legality
and freedom.

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