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States-general   Listen
noun
States-general  n.  
1.
In France, before the Revolution, the assembly of the three orders of the kingdom, namely, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate, or commonalty.
2.
In the Netherlands, the legislative body, composed of two chambers.






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"States-general" Quotes from Famous Books



... Nemours in 1746, had the support of Dupont, deputy to the States-General in 1789, who was his fellow-citizen; he was intimate with the Abbe Morellet, also the pupil of Rouelle the chemist, and an ardent admirer of Diderot's friend, Bordeu, by means of whom, or his friends, he gained a large practice. Denis Minoret invented the Lelievre balm, became ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe

... occupied the greatest share of his attention during this Session, was the Memorial of Lord Auckland to the States-General,—which document he himself brought under the notice of Parliament as deserving of severe reprobation for the violent and vindictive tone which it assumed towards the Commissioners of the National Convention. It was upon one of the discussions connected with this subject that a dispute, as to ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... concern the king, the kingdom, the churches, and all and sundry." This assembly, which really met on the 10th of April, at Paris, in the church of Notre-Dame, is reckoned in French history as the first "states-general." The three estates wrote separately to Rome; the clergy to the pope himself, the nobility and the deputies of the communes to the cardinals, all, however, protesting against the pope's pretensions in matters temporal, the two laic orders ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... visit England. Reasons of state assume great privileges. Whatever appears advantageous is lawful, and every thing that is necessary is honourable in politics. While the King of England sought the protection of Spain in the Low Countries, and that of the States-General in Holland, other powers sent ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... nothing at the hands of the son. The neighbours of Macedonia as far as the Danube and all the states of the Greek peninsula had been cowed to submission again in one swift and decisive campaign. The States-General of Greece, re-convoked at Corinth, confirmed Philip's son in the Captain-Generalship of Hellas, and Parmenio, once more despatched to Asia, secured the farther shore of the Hellespont. With about forty ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... is not to be found in the last century. Cromwell was addressed as Brother by European potentates and they sought his friendship when it appeared useful. The most honourable Princes joined in alliance with the States-General before they were recognised by Spain. Why should Prussia now alone, to its own ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... King's illness, the debates on the Regency, the expectation of a change of Ministry, completely diverted public attention from Indian affairs; and within a fortnight after George the Third had returned thanks in St. Paul's for his recovery, the States-General of France met at Versailles. In the midst of the agitation produced by these events, the impeachment was for a time ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... similarly energetic personalities, and offer them similar opportunities. And then, it was part of his honest geniality of character to admire those who "get on" in the world. Himself had been, almost from boyhood, in contact with great affairs. A member of the States-General which had taken so hardly the kingly airs of Frederick Henry, he had assisted at the Congress of Munster, and figures conspicuously in Terburgh's picture of that assembly, which had finally established ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater

... The States-General were to be immediately assembled, and De Guise, once the poetic lover of Marguerite, through his emissaries canvassed all France to ensure the triumph of the party of the church against Henri de Navarre and his queen—the Marguerite ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... estates. Affras Rachmailovich and Judah Bogdanovich figure among the merchant princes of Livonia and Lithuania; and Francisco Molo, who settled later in Amsterdam, was financial agent of John III of Poland in 1679. The influence of the last-named was so great with the Dutch States-General that the Treaty of Ryswick was concluded with Louis XIV, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... East River and Long Island Sound and ascertained that the long strip of land on the south was an island. He saw and named Block Island, and entered Narragansett Bay and the harbor of Boston. His report led the States-General to grant a charter for four years from October 11, 1614, to a company formed to trade in the region which Block had explored, the territory "lying between Virginia and New France," being called the New Netherland. When the charter expired, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... colonies against Great Britain, that delegates were sent to Holland to demand redress for their commercial and other grievances, as well as a share in the government of the Colony. The Company was by this time in financial straits, and less powerful with the States-general of the Netherlands than it had formerly been. Long negotiations followed, reforms were promised, and at last, in 1792, two commissioners were sent out to investigate and frame measures of reform. The measures they promulgated ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... level of his governing class could be maintained. He said nothing of what education might accomplish for the people. He did not examine the obvious consequences of their economic status. Had his eyes not been obscured by passion the work of that States-General the names in which appeared to him so astonishing in their inexperience, might have given him pause. The "obscure provincial advocates ... stewards of petty local jurisdictions ... the fomenters and conductors of the petty war of village ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... the causes which excited this general commotion, existed before the assembly of the States-General in 1789. It is therefore important to take a mental view of the moral and political situation of France at that period, and to follow, in imagination at least, the chain of ideas, passions, and errors, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... were admitted to civic rights they might use their power to overthrow the Church Establishment.[20] Clearly the opinion of the House was drifting away from him on that question; and it is a proof of his growing indifference to questions of Reform that now, four days after the assembly of the States-General of France at Versailles, he should have held to views so repugnant to ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... administration' was formed, when he was admitted into the cabinet. In the following year, however, he went, for the last time, to Holland, as ambassador, and succeeded beyond the expectations of his party in the purposes of his embassy. He took leave of the States-General just before the battle of Fontenoy, and hastened to Ireland, where he had been nominated Lord-Lieutenant previous to his journey to Holland. He remained in that country only a year; but long enough to prove how liberal were ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... this side of the water, and, when on shore, he had lived in a state of abject misery, although he had the means of comfortable support. He was now fifty-five years of age. Since he had been appointed to the Yungfrau, he had been employed in carrying despatches to the States-General from King William, and had, during his repeated visits to the Hague, made acquaintance with the widow Vandersloosh, who kept a Lust Haus, [Pleasure house] a place of resort for sailors, where they drank and danced. Discovering that the comfortably fat lady was also ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... AARSSEN, FRANCIS VAN (1572-1641), a celebrated diplomatist and statesman of the United Provinces. His talents commended him to the notice of Advocate Johan van Oldenbarneveldt, who sent him, at the age of 26 years, as a diplomatic agent of the states-general to the court of France. He took a considerable part in the negotiations of the twelve years' truce in 1606. His conduct of affairs having displeased the French king, he was recalled from his post by Oldenbarneveldt in 1616. Such was ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... fine strong frigate building secretly at Amsterdam. But this proved to be one more of Jones's many disappointments, for the British minister to the Netherlands discovered the destination of the vessel and protested to the States-General. The result was that the commissioners were forced to sell the ship to France, to keep her out of the hands of England, and Jones was compelled to make his invasion ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... political freedom for the city of Haarlem, on account of which he suffered a severe imprisonment in the Hague in 1560, and at a later time was compelled to flee into temporary exile. He attracted the attention of William of Orange, who discovered his abilities and made him Secretary to the States-General in 1572, prized him highly for his character and abilities, commissioned him to write important state papers, and intrusted very weighty ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... government to announce in precise and solemn terms the convocation of the States-General in 1789, that bankruptcy might be averted and the national honour saved. Said he: "The year in which the king assembles the nation will be the finest in his life. Everybody knows that he has been deceived, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... capitulated. "After several conferences between the Portuguese commander's deputies and the admiral, it was resolved that all the unmarried Portuguese should retire, and that those married could be free to remain, if they took the oath of allegiance to the States-general and to Prince Maurice. Each one was allowed to take his gun or musket, but all the cannon, ammunition, and arms of the king were to remain in the fort." The admiral and fifty men went to the captured fort, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... the vote of the third estate was doubled by the States-General of 1789, property was grossly violated. The nobility and the clergy possessed three-fourths of the soil of France; they should have controlled three-fourths of the votes in the national representation. To double the vote ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... the queen took ground against the view of the king's brothers in favor of the double representation of the Third Estate, and persuaded her husband to comply with the wishes of the nation and call together the States-General. He has gone over to the camp of her enemies, and rages against the queen, because she is inclined to favor the wishes of the people. And yet this very people is turned against her, does not believe in the love, but only ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... fellow, who had very evident aspirations in the direction of my fair Esther. After dinner we went into M. d'O 's private closet, and thereupon he drew two long questions out of his pocket. In the first he desired to know how to obtain a favourable decision from the States-General in an important matter, the details of which he explained. I replied in terms, the obscurity of which would have done credit to a professed Pythoness, and I left Esther to translate the answer into common sense, and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... cause of the Revolution, and took part under Dumouriez and Pichegru in the campaigns of 1792 and 1793, and was soon promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. When Pichegru in 1795 overran Holland, De Winter returned with the French army to his native country. The states-general now utilized the experience he had gained as a naval officer by giving him the post of adjunct-general for the reorganization of the Dutch navy. In 1796 he was appointed vice-admiral and commander-in-chief of the fleet. He spared no efforts to strengthen it and improve its condition, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... Government intend to invite the monarchies of Europe to celebrate the destruction by a mob of the Bastille on July 14, 1789? Hardly, I suppose! Or the Convocation of the States-General at Versailles on May 5, 1789? Certainly not—for the States-General were convoked, not under the 'principles of 1789,' but in conformity with an ancient usage and ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... would be able or not, willing or not, to cooeperate with its rulers in the work of the government and the reform of abuses. On more than one occasion such cooeperation did not seem entirely impossible or improbable. The admirable wisdom and moderation shown by the Tiers-Etat in the States-General of 1614, the divers efforts of the Parliament of Paris to check extravagant expenditure, the vigorous struggles of the provincial assemblies to preserve some relic of their local liberties, seemed to promise that France would continue to advance under the leadership indeed of the monarchy, yet still ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... task of historians to trace through the preceding generations the long train of causes that made the transformation of French institutions absolutely inevitable; but it is not so often remembered that when the States-General met in 1789 by far the larger part of the benefits of the Revolution could have been attained without difficulty, without convulsion, and by general consent. The nobles and clergy had pledged themselves to surrender their feudal ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... subordinate places; the kin of Patrick Henry revived their ancestor's glory by as zealous a devotion to the new revolution. With personages like these in every office the society of the new capital revived the brilliancy of the French Directory and also the character of the States-General, while Holland held the Spains at bay. The blockade had not yet pinched the affluent, nor beggared the industries of the well-to-do. Always famous for a brilliant bar, a learned judiciary, and a cultivated taste among its women, Richmond in ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... would practically be the parent of endless agitation and mischief. To expect that the members could pronounce on no new question without a fresh reference to their constituents, would be to reduce them from the position of representatives to that of delegates; such as that of the members of the old States-general, in France, whose early decay is attributed by the ablest political writers in no small degree to the dependence of the members on their constituents for precise instructions. Another argument on which Mr. Grey insisted with great earnestness is worth preserving, though ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... Memorial to the States-General. Disagreement of the English and the Dutch. Colony on the Delaware. Purchase Of Manhattan. The First Settlement. An Indian Robbed and Murdered. Description of the Island. Diplomatic Intercourse. Testimony of De Rassieres. The Patroons. ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott

... Notables assembled at Versailles in the grand hall of the palace guards. In May, 1789, the Salon of Hercules witnessed the presentation of the twelve hundred deputies elected by the people in all parts of France to the States-General. The Assembly, "the true era of the birth of the French people," opened on May fifth in the immense Salle des Menus, on the Paris Avenue, outside the gates of the palace. During the thirty days that the deputies sat inactive under ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... control, board of works; vestry; county council, local board. audience chamber, council chamber, state chamber. cabinet council, privy council; cockpit, convocation, synod, congress, convention, diet, states-general. [formal gathering of members of a council: script] assembly, caucus, conclave, clique, conventicle; meeting, sitting, seance, conference, convention, exhibition, session, palaver, pourparler, durbar[obs3], house; quorum; council fire [N.Am.], powwow [U.S.], primary [U.S.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... before arrogantly rejected, and a congress was held at Breda from March till June, 1575. But the insurgents were suspicious, and Philip was inflexible; he could not be induced to dismiss his Spanish troops, to allow the meeting of the States-General, or to admit the slightest toleration in matters of religion; and the contest was therefore renewed with more fury than ever. The situation of the patriots became very critical when the enemy, by occupying ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... of undoubted ability, his character has come down to us by no means free from taint. Many of his despatches are quoted by Clarendon in that writer's great history. Downing also wrote: "A Reply to the Remarks of the Deputies of the States-General upon Sir G. Downing's Memorial," 1665,; and "Discourses vindicating his Royal Master from ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... element of turbulence and unrest ever present in the island. Under such conditions Governor Modyford found it necessary to temporise with the marauders, and perhaps he did so the more readily because he felt that they were still needed for the security of the colony. A war between England and the States-General then seemed imminent, and the governor considered that unless he allowed the buccaneers to dispose of their booty when they came in to Port Royal, they might, in event of hostilities breaking out, go to the Dutch at Curacao and other islands, and prey ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... judged so important, that the following year, the Dutch States-General entrusted to Jacob van Heemskerke, the command of a fleet of seven vessels, of which Barentz was named chief pilot. After touching at various points upon the coasts of Nova Zembla and of Asia, this squadron was forced by the pack ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... manageable under the new minister, and voted all the necessary taxes; but now the parliaments grew restive, refused to register the edicts, declaring that they had not the legal right to consent to taxes, that the States-General alone had authority to impose new ones. Brienne, indignant at this perverseness,—for hitherto they had claimed the sole right of registering taxes,—forced them to register the stamp-tax and the land-tax, and exiled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... We are numerous, but we have no very shining member yet. Come with me, and I will nominate you. Beginning thus, I promise you that you shall presently become a man of prominence in Picardy. Anon we may send you to Paris to represent us in the States-General. Then, when the change comes, who shall say to what heights it may not ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini

... Charles IX. (1560-1574) was only ten years old. She assumed the practical guardianship over him, and with it a virtual regency. The plan of the Guises had failed, and they had to give way. There were now two parties in the council. The States-general were called together in 1561, and a great religious colloquy was held before a brilliant concourse at Poissy, where Theodore Beza, an eloquent and polished scholar and a man of high birth, pleaded the cause of the Calvinists. In 1562 the Edict ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... your readers assign the origin of this jocular appellation? I would hazard the conjecture, that it may be corruption of Hogen Mogen, High Mightinesses, the style, I believe, of the States-General of Holland; and that it probably became an expression of contempt in the mouths of the Jacobites for the followers of William III., from whence it has passed to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various

... the province of Holland, the most important of them all, claimed for each province a right to determine its own state religion. Maurice the Stadholder, son of William the Silent, the military chief of the republic, claimed the right for the States-General. 'Cujus regio ejus religio' was then the accepted public doctrine of Protestant nations. Thus the provincial and the general governments were brought into conflict by their creeds, and the question whether the republic ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... her hands. Hence the appointment of the large-hearted L'Hopital as chancellor, and the assembly of notables at Fontainebleau (August), where the grievances against Rome found full expression, and where arrangements were made for a meeting of the States-general and a national council of the French Church. This resolution determined Pius IV to lose no further time. On November 29, 1560, he issued a bull summoning all the prelates and princes of Christendom to Trent ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... which was felt against him. This man, without being allowed to defend himself, was tried by an extraordinary commission of parliament for embezzling the public money, was condemned to death, and was hung on the gibbet of Montfaucon. Not daring to risk a convocation of the States-General of the kingdom, Louis X. ordered the seneschals to convoke the provincial assemblies, and thus obtained a few subsidies, which he promised to refund out of the revenues of his domains. The clergy even allowed themselves to be taxed, and closed their eyes ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... Inverness, and afterwards encamps at Fort-Augustus..... The Prince Pretender escapes to France..... Convulsion in the Ministry..... Liberality of the Commons..... Trial of the Rebels..... Kilmarnock, Balmerino, Lovat, and Mr. Ratcliff, are beheaded on Tower- hill..... The States-general alarmed at the Progress of the French in the Netherlands..... Count Saxa subdues all Flanders, Brabant, and Hainault..... Reduces the strong Fortress of Namur, and defeats the Allied Army at Roucoux..... The French and Spaniards are compelled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... 1782, drew him into the intrigue of the diamond necklace, for which he was sent to the Bastille, and which gave him the name of le cardinal Collier; he was acquitted in 1786, and in 1789 elected to the States-General; in 1791 he refused to take the oath to the Constitution, and went to Ettenheim in the German part of his province, where he died on the 17th of ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... well one day call out, 'Death to the King!' instead of, 'Long life to the King!' Louis XIV. was well aware of it, and several councillors of the upper chamber lost their lives for having advised the assembling of the states-general in order to find some remedy for the misfortunes of the country. France never had any love for any kings, with the exception of St. Louis, of Louis XII, and of the great and good Henry IV.; and even in the last case the love of the nation ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... both Spain and Portugal. At first they attempted to adopt a route which would not bring them into collision with their old masters; and in three voyages, between 1594 and 1597, William Barentz attempted the North-East Passage, under the auspices of the States-General. He discovered Cherry Island, and touched on Spitzbergen, but failed in the main object of his search; and the attention of the Dutch was henceforth directed to seizing the Portuguese route, rather than finding a ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... and his wife were both of them notable people. He had been elected deputy for the noblesse to the States-General in 1789, and had taken at first the popular side; but as time went on he became estranged from Mirabeau, and was among the earliest to emigrate in 1790. For the rest of his life he was engaged in plotting ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

... some written or unwritten, universal, undisputed law applicable to all cases. Perhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative enactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General in A. D. . But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling law, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and lawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse comprehensiveness ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... together oftener than about once in five years. If the state had had more financial ballast, and the church had been less high and top-heavy, Charles might seemingly have weathered the storm and let parliament subside into impotence, as the Bourbons let the States-General of France, without any overt breach of the constitution. After all, the original design of the crown had been to get money out of parliament, and the main object of parliament had once been to make the king live of his own. A king content with parsimony might lawfully dispense with parliament; ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... of '88 and '89, while all France was astir with elections and preparation for elections for that meeting of the States-General, which was looked to as the nearing dawn after a long night of blackness and misery, Condorcet thought he could best serve the movement by calling the minds of the electors to certain sides of their duty which they might be in some danger of overlooking. One ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... Ruremonde, and Maestricht; the civic authorities coming to meet his coaches: salvos of cannon saluting him, canopies of state being erected for him where he stopped, and feasts prepared for the numerous gentlemen following in his suite. His grace reviewed the troops of the States-General between Liege and Maestricht, and afterwards the English forces, under the command of General Churchill, near Bois-le-Duc. Every preparation was made for a long march; and the army heard, with no small elation, that it was the commander-in-chief's intention to ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... of Pisa were corrected by the council of Constance; the emperor Sigismond acted a conspicuous part as the advocate or protector of the Catholic church; and the number and weight of civil and ecclesiastical members might seem to constitute the states-general of Europe. Of the three popes, John the Twenty-third was the first victim: he fled and was brought back a prisoner: the most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest; and after subscribing his own condemnation, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... Ireland and the protection of Britain, and he desired they would settle the revenue in such a manner that it might be collected without difficulty and dispute. The sum total of the money expended by the states-general in William's expedition amounted to seven millions of guilders, and the commons granted six hundred thousand pounds for the discharge of this debt, incurred for the preservation of their rights and religion. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... remarkable political progress of the new American Nation. By 1788 the demand for reform in France had become so insistent, and the condition of the treasury of the State was so bad, that it was finally felt necessary to summon a meeting of the States-General—a sort of national parliament consisting of representatives of the three great Estates: clergy, nobility, and commons—which had not met ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... Frederick IV of Denmark, Augustus II of Poland, and Czar Peter, formed an alliance against Sweden; and in the course of 1710 the Emperor of Germany, Great Britain, and the States-General concluded two treaties guaranteeing the neutrality of all the States of the Empire. This suggests to Mr. Froth and his friends the idea that there is a 'Neutrality Army' ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... all connexion with a Protestant people who had brought their king to the block. Holland took the lead in acts of open hostility to the new power as soon as the news of the execution reached the Hague. The States-General waited solemnly on the Prince of Wales, who took the title of Charles the Second, and recognized him as "Majesty," while they refused an audience to the English envoys. Their Stadtholder, his brother-in-law, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... the New to the Old Whigs. Meanwhile he despatched his son to Coblenz to give advice to the royalist exiles, who were then mainly in the hands of Calonne, one of the very worst of the ministers whom Louis XVI. had tried between his dismissal of Turgot in 1774, and the meeting of the States-General in 1789. This measure was taken at the request of Calonne, who had visited Burke at Margate. The English Government did not disapprove of it, though they naturally declined to invest either young Burke or any one else with authority from themselves. As little came of the mission ...
— Burke • John Morley

... clans—the Bear, the Rock, the Cord, the Deer—with several small dependent groups. There was government of a sort, republican in form. They had their deliberative assemblies, both village and tribal. The village councils met almost daily, but the tribal assembly—a sort of states-general—was summoned only when some weighty measure demanded consideration. Decisions arrived at in the assemblies were ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... buttoned up since early morning in a nobleman's uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated; this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the merchant-class—les etats generaux (States-General)—evoked in him a whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the French Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal—that ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... of this house was lost in the obscurity that covers the early period of the province, while under the government of their high mightinesses the states-general. Some reported it to have been a country residence of Wilhelmus Kieft, commonly called the Testy, one of the Dutch governors of New-Amsterdam; others said that it had been built by a naval commander who served under Van Tromp, and who, on being disappointed of preferment, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... administration as President, he had served as commissioner to the court of France, "Minister Plenipotentiary for the Purpose of Negotiating a Treaty of Peace and Commerce with Great Britain"; commissioner to conclude a treaty with the States-General of Holland; minister to England after the conclusion of peace, and finally as Vice-President under Washington. His services in every capacity in which he was engaged for his country showed his great ability and zeal: ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... unanimity. And the history of every political establishment in which this principle has prevailed, is a history of impotence, perplexity, and disorder. Proofs of this position might be adduced from the examples of the Roman Tribuneship, the Polish Diet, and the States-General of the Netherlands, did not an example at home render foreign precedents unnecessary. To require a fixed proportion of the whole body would not, in all probability, contribute to the advantages of a numerous agency, better then merely ...
— The Federalist Papers

... the old Sanskrit law-books, the king is bidden to be "towards servants and subjects as a father" (75. 122), and even Mirabeau and Gregoire, in the first months of the States-General, termed the king "le pere de tous les Franqais," while Louis XII. and Henry IV. of France, as well as Christian III. of Denmark, had given to them the title "father of the people." The name pater patrice was not borne by the Caesars alone, for the Roman ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... said that the Queen's hair turned grey during the return from Varennes to Paris; but Carlyle (French Revolution, 1839, i. 182) notes that as early as May 4, 1789, on the occasion of the assembly of the States-General, "Her hair is already grey with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... insipid for a while, and acquired a taste for manuscript as having more flavor. People did not smoke as yet in those days. At last, from flavor to flavor, he began to chew parchment and swallow it. Now, at that time a treaty was being negotiated between Russia and Sweden. The States-General insisted that Charles XII. should make peace (much as they tried in France to make Napoleon treat for peace in 1814) and the basis of these negotiations was the treaty between the two powers with regard to Finland. Goertz ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... XVI. That king was false to every principle of royal government when he re-established the parliaments suppressed by his grandfather. Louis XV. saw the matter clearly. The parliaments, and notably that of Paris, counted for fully half in the troubles which necessitated the convocation of the States-general. The fault of Louis XV. was, that in breaking down that barrier which separated the throne from the people he did not erect a stronger; in other words, that he did not substitute for parliament a strong constitution of the provinces. There lay the remedy for the evils of the monarchy; ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... evening to give us battle on the morrow, although the deputies of the States-General, content with the advantages that had been already gained, and not liking to run the risk of failure, were, opposed to an action taking place. They were, however, persuaded to agree, and on the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... which had drawn upon France the menaces of Catharine, had opened to Volney a political career. As deputy in the assembly of the states-general, the first words he uttered there were in favor of the publicity of their deliberations. He also supported the organization of the national guards, and that of the communes ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... prisoner was indeed the signal for every man of thought or feeling and of heart to draw back from the Revolution. Thousands of earnest men who had at first thought that the hour of life and liberty commenced with the meeting of the States-General, and who had gone heart and soul with that body in its early struggles for power, had long since shrunk back appalled at the new tyranny which had sprung ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty

... and right mind by the crushing superiority of his dramatic genius. He, who hungered and thirsted for glory, what glory could he hope for among all these monkeys of Frenchmen, jabbering and gesticulating about their States-General, their Montgolfier, their St. Pierre, their Condorcet, their Parny, their Necker, who had not even the decent feeling to know Italian, and who bowed and smiled and doubtless mixed him up with Metastasio and Goldoni when ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... profit, took all. Venice being a situation where a man goes but to the door for his employment, the honor is great and the reward very little; but in Holland a councillor of state has L1,500 Flemish a year, besides other accommodations. The States-General have more. And that commonwealth looks nearer her penny than ours ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... over-trading to be to a shopkeeper as ambition is to a prince. The late king of France, the great king Louis, ambition led him to invade the dominions of his neighbours; and while upon the empire here, or the states-general there, or the Spanish Netherlands on another quarter, he was an over-match for every one, and, in their single capacity, he gained from them all; but at last pride made him think himself a match ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... undertake the mission. But the Recollets, mendicants by profession, were as weak in resources as Champlain himself. He repaired to Paris, then filled with bishops, cardinals, and nobles, assembled for the States-General. Responding to his appeal, they subscribed fifteen hundred livres for the purchase of vestments, candles, and ornaments for altars. The King gave letters patent in favor of the mission, and the Pope gave it his formal authorization. By this ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... in 1614 that the Dutch States-General, in the charter given to a company of merchants, named the Hudson Valley New Netherland. To facilitate trade this company made a treaty with the Five Nations and subordinate tribes, memorable as the first compact formed between the whites and the savages. In it the Indians were regarded as ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... A States-General will be called at some epoch not distant; they will probably establish a civil list, and leave the government to temporary provisions of money, so as to render frequent assemblies of the national representative ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... themselves, were these the Chosen People he had clothed with such romantic glamour?—fat burghers, clucking comfortably under the wing of the Protestant States-General; merchants sumptuously housed, vivifying Dutch trade in the Indies; their forms and dogmas alone distinguishing them from the heathen Hollanders, whom they aped even to the very patronage of painters; or, at the other end of this bastard brotherhood of righteousness, sore-eyed wretches trundling ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... months, to begin with May, 1607, was arranged between Spain and the United Provinces, in which for the first time Spain gave up its claims to control the latter. This paved the way to the long truce of twelve years signed at the meeting of the States-General at Bergen-op-Zoom, in April, 1609, in which the independence of the United Provinces was recognized (see Vol. XI, p. 166, note 27). But that independence was completely recognized and assured only by the treaty of Westphalia ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... cruel generals—the pitiless Parmas and Alvas—and departing, he embraced the other noblemen with such cold warmth as was native to him, but upbraided Orange bitterly for the action of the States, and when Orange replied the action was not his, but the States-General, Philip, beside himself with rage, cried, "Not the States, but you! you! you!" Thus King Philip passed into Spain, and the Prince of Orange into the second ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... confederations in their character. Spain was a Federation, for although it had a king reigning over the whole country, it had its local governments for the administration of local affairs. The British Isles are a quasi-Confederation, and the old French dukedoms were confederated in the States-General. It is a principle that runs through all the history of civilization in one form or another, and exists alike in monarchies and democracies; and having adopted it as the principle of our future government, there were only the details ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... foul, he so reduced ancient authorities as to make them a fragment, a pretense, a souvenir. The nobles are simply his officials or his courtiers. Since the Concordat he nominates the dignitaries of the Church. The States-General were not convoked for a hundred and seventy-five years; the provincial assemblies, which continue to subsist, do nothing but apportion the taxes; the parliaments are exiled when they risk a remonstrance. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... of the Netherlands was the first which Charles V. abdicated. Before a solemn convention in Brussels he absolved the States-General of their oath, and transferred their allegiance to King Philip, his son. "If my death," addressing the latter, as he concluded, "had placed you in possession of these countries, even in that case so valuable a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... which they had obtained on the mainland, they were so hard pressed by the superiority of the Dutch fleet, that they at last came forward with more acceptable proposals than they had before made. The English government advised the States-General to show compliance on all other points if their independence were acknowledged: not to stand out even if this were recognised only for a while through a truce, for in that case they would obtain better conditions on the other points: and that in regard to these England would protect them.[344] ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... A popular corruption, or rather perversion, of the Dutch Hoogmogend-heiden, 'High Mightinesses', the title of the States-General. In a transferred manner it is used as a humorous or Contemptuous adjective of those affecting grandeur and show; 'high and mighty.' The phrase is common. Needham, Mercurius Pragmaticus, No. 7 (1648), speaks of the 'Hogan Mogan States of Westminster'. Tom Brown (1704), ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... aspirations. They questioned the right of the few to oppress the many, and the public heart was soon stirred by new ideas, and in a movement that followed, Lafayette was conspicuous for a while. The king, like many tyrants, was weak and vacillating, and soon a body called the states-general assumed the reins of government, while the king was in fact a prisoner. The terrible Bastile, whose history represented royal despotism, was assailed by the citizens of Paris and pulled down. The privileges of the nobility and clergy were abolished, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,

... condition that reforms would be instituted; the people paid and the king reformed. In France, on the contrary, during the Middle Ages, the people tried not to pay, and the king tried not to reform. Thus the levying of the subsidy voted by the States-General of 1356-7, was the cause of bloody riots in France; the people, unenlightened as to their own interests, did their best to destroy their defenders: the agents of the States-General were massacred at Rouen and Arras; King ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... obligation to him, and the Frieslander Viglius, who had dropped into her soul the wormwood whose bitterness she still tasted, and whose motto, "The life of mortals is a watch in the night," seemed to flash from his green eyes. Not a single woman had been admitted to the distinguished assembly of the States-General, the city magistrates, and illustrious invited guests, who as spectators sat on benches and chairs opposite to the stage, and this placed the kindness of Granvelle, whom the Netherland dignitaries were said to detest, in a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... would have been better," said William, "if what did happen had not happened. But it cannot be helped now, and we have had nothing to do with it. Let us push on, Captain, that we may arrive at Alphen before the message which the States-General are sure to send to me to ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... Castle, where he could see the old hall of the States-General, from the window of which Count Thurn had thrown the Imperial governors Martiniz and Slavata; the Protestants say that they fell on a dungheap, but the Catholics maintain ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... indeed, apprehensive, that the Pensionary would be alarmed at the whole frame of Monsieur de Torcy's paper, and particularly at these expressions, "That the English shall have real securities for their trade, &c." and "that the barrier for the States-General shall be such as England shall agree upon and approve." It was natural to think, that the fear which the Dutch would conceive of our obtaining advantageous terms for Britain, might put them upon trying underhand for themselves, and endeavouring to overreach us in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... The States-General, entirely devoted to Prince Maurice, determined, in spite of the States of Holland, to convoke a national Synod in Holland itself, at Dort. The Provinces of Holland, Utrecht, and Overyssel protested against this resolution: Barnevelt was so thunderstruck ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... and frigid air. Let us pass over Togut and Saint Turgot; and the founder of a hospital in the thirteenth century; and the great-great-grandfather who sat as president of the Norman nobles in the States-General of 1614, and the grandfather who deserted arms for the toga. History is hardly concerned in this solemn ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley

... this as the first practical step towards the Revolution, it will be proper to enter into some particulars respecting it. The Assembly of the Notables has in some places been mistaken for the States-General, but was wholly a different body, the States-General being always by election. The persons who composed the Assembly of the Notables were all nominated by the king, and consisted of one hundred and forty members. But as M. Calonne could not depend upon ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... man, with a long grey beard and ordinary grey clothes," entered the inn and begged for a private interview. He then fell on his knees, and pulling off his disguise, discovered himself to be Mr. Downing, then ambassador from Cromwell to the States-General. He informed Charles that the Dutch had guaranteed to the English Commonwealth to deliver him into their hands should he ever set foot in their territory. This warning probably saved ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... presented by his Excellency, the Duc de la Vauguyon, Ambassador of France, to the States-General of the United Provinces. The Hague, December 7th, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... soul of honour, was intensely mortified at this breach of faith on the part of his sons, and after calling together the states-general at Amiens to obtain the subsidies necessary for paying the remaining portion of his ransom, he himself, with a train of two hundred officers and their followers, crossed to England to make excuses to Edward for the treachery of the princes. Some historians represent ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... Estates in France had left a memory not dear to the crown.[2] They had, in truth, given the kings {36} moments of grave concern; and their representatives had not been summoned since 1614. Moreover, Louis XIV was not a ruler to tolerate such rival pretensions as the States-General ...
— The Fighting Governor - A Chronicle of Frontenac • Charles W. Colby

... unluckily at the end of two German campaigns, which I felt the expense of with a much larger income, and have not yet recovered;(607) as, far from having a reward, it was with great difficulty I got the reimbursement of the extraordinary money my last command through Holland cost me, though the States-General, had, by a public act, represented my conduct so advantageously, to our court; so that on the whole I think no man was ever more contemptuously used, who was not a wretch lost in character and reputation. It requires all the philosophy one can Master, not to show the strongest ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... routed soldiery turned into free companies of bandits, while the lords captured at Crecy or Poitiers procured the sums needed for their ransom by extortion from the peasantry. The reforms demanded by the States-General which met in this agony of France were frustrated by the treachery of the Regent, John's eldest son Charles, Duke of Normandy, till Paris, impatient of his weakness and misrule, rose in arms against the Crown. The peasants too, driven ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... states, and each state or province is a composition of equal and independent cities. In all important cases, not only the provinces but the cities must be unanimous. The sovereignty of the Union is represented by the States-General, consisting usually of about fifty deputies appointed by the provinces. They hold their seats, some for life, some for six, three, and one years; from two provinces they continue in appointment during pleasure. The States-General have authority ...
— The Federalist Papers

... the entire coasts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The directors of this company consisted of seventy-two persons, divided into five chambers, of whom eighteen were chosen to administer the affairs of the Company, together with a nineteenth person, nominated by the States-General. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr

... great movements of thought in ancient and modern times have been nearly connected in time with government by discussion. Athens, Rome, the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the communes and states-general of feudal Europe, have all had a special and peculiar quickening influence, which they owed to their freedom, and which states without that freedom have never communicated. And it has been at the time of great epochs of thought—at the Peloponnesian War, at the fall of the Roman Republic, at the ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... When the States-General were at war with Spain, Brower started on a visit to Antwerp, whither his reputation had already proceeded him. Omitting to provide himself with a passport, he was arrested as a spy, and confined in the citadel, where the Duke ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... impossible finances of France after the fall of that magnificent spendthrift, Monsieur Colonne. He, in turn, had been swept from his office and replaced by the pompous and incompetent Necker. Lafayette, the deus ex machina of the times, had asked for his States-General, and now in this never-sufficiently-to-be-remembered year of 1789 they were to ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... The sun shedding its rays on two maidens, one of whom, with breast-plate and helmet, and personifying the States-General of the Netherlands, holds with her left hand a staff surmounted by a cap of Liberty over the head of her companion. The latter, an Indian queen (America), holds in her left hand a lance, a shield ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... beginning the course of this National Assembly in steadily gathering unexpected power to itself has reminded me of the old States-General in France in the days just before the Revolution, and I could not help looking for Danton and Robespierre among the fiery orators in gown and queue on this occasion. Significantly, too, I now hear on the authority of an eminent scholar that Carlyle's great masterpiece is the most popular ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... organization. The Italian cities. Government of Venice. Government of Florence. The Lombard League. The rise of popular assemblies in France. Rural communes arose in France. The municipalities of France. The States-General was the first central organization. Failure of attempts at popular government in Spain. Democracy in the Swiss cantons. The ascendancy of monarchy. Beginning ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... that too, he adds, without risking his reputation—so general was the fury of gambling. It became very soon mixed up with the most momentous circumstances of life and affairs of the gravest importance. The States-general, or parliamentary assemblies, consisted altogether of gamblers. 'It is a game,' says Madame de Sevigne, 'it is an entertainment, a liberty-hall day and night, attracting all the world. I never before beheld the States-general of Bretagne. The States-general ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... of service in the Low Countries. He was still in Holland when the summons came to cross the ocean in the service of the Virginia Company. On the recommendation of Henry, Prince of Wales, the States-General of the United Netherlands consented "that Captain Thomas Dale (destined by the King of Great Britain to be employed in Virginia in his Majesty's service) may absent himself from his company for the space of three years, and that his said company shall remain meanwhile ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston

... grew into vast combinations like the leagues of modern Europe. Five of the states acquired at different times such a preponderance that their rulers are styled Wu Pa, the "five dictators." One of these, Duke Hwan of western Shantung, is famous for having nine times convoked the States-General. The dictator always presided at such meetings and he was recognised as the real sovereign—as were the mayors of the palace in France in the Merovingian epoch, or the shoguns in Japan during the long period in which the Mikado ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... weakness, against death Somers, Lord South, Dr. Robert Spinke, J. Spinoza, Baruch Stage, the, the necessity for its reformation Stanhope, Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield State, the, ruined by corruption of manners States-General, the Stearne, Dr. John, Bishop of Clogher Steele, Sir R. his opinions of the "Project," in the "Tatler" his opinion of Swift in the "Apology" the "Guardian" "Englishman" Stephen, Leslie, "History of English Thought in Eighteenth Century" Stillingfleet, Edward, Bishop of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... far down. When the French Revolution broke out, therefore, he easily became a factor in the upheaval, but endeavored always to restrain the people from fury and vandalism. In 1789, he was elected by the clergy of the bailliage of Nancy to the States-General, where he cooeperated with the group of deputies of Jansenist ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... was doomed to steady decline. Down to Louis XIV, her hope was thought to lie in the consolidation of the royal authority and the suppression of the feudal power of the nobles; down to 1789, in the tiers etat and the States-General; after the Commune of 1871, in the maintenance of a Republic supported by universal suffrage. The ideals of 1830 and of 1848 have been practically attained; there are, finally, no new and more liberal political expedients to hope for,—and never has France ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... of the impeachment were voted in the summer of 1794. But in those eight years some of the most astonishing events in history had changed the political face of Europe. Burke was more than sixty years old when the states-general met at Versailles in the spring of 1789. He had taken a prominent part on the side of freedom in the revolution which stripped England of her empire in the West. He had taken a prominent part on the side of justice, humanity and order ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... vanquished and slain five Moorish kings in the battle of Campo d'Ourique, where he was unanimously chosen as sovereign of Portugal by his army. This dignity was confirmed to him by the first assembly of the states-general at Lamego. In commemoration of this event, the Portuguese arms bear five standards and five escudets.[1] After the unfortunate expedition of Dom Sebastian I. to Africa, where he was slain in the battle of Alcazar, the crown devolved upon his great uncle, the Cardinal ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various

... had embarked on a struggle in which the greatest potentates had been worsted, determined to appeal to the patriotism of all classes of his subjects and fortify himself on the broad basis of such popular opinion as then existed. For the first time the States-General were summoned, after the burning of the papal bull in Paris on the memorable Sunday of 11th February 1302. Their meeting marks an epoch in French history, and for the first time members of the Tiers Etat (the third estate, or commons), sat beside ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... January the Parliament of Paris decreed Cardinal Mazarin an enemy to the king and the state, and bade all subjects of the king to hunt him down. War was declared against the queen regent and her favorite, the cardinal. Had it been the States-General in place of the Parliament, the French Revolution might have then and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... Prussian ambassador; and Lord Whitworth, the Minister from England, made numerous presentations of their countrymen to the First Consul, who was well pleased that the Court he was forming should have examples set by foreign courtiers. Never since the meeting of the States-General had the theatres been so frequented, or fetes so magnificent; and never since that period had Paris presented so cheering an aspect. The First Consul, on his part, spared no exertion to render the capital more and more worthy ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... to the practical politicians of the Convention, the diplomatists of the Directory, the generals of the Consulate. The Empire was far from realising that bright vision of a regenerate nation which had dazzled the eyes of Frenchmen in the first hours of the States-General. Liberty was sacrificed to efficiency; equality to man's love for titles of honour; fraternity to desire of glory. So it has been with all human effort. Man is imperfect, and his imperfection mars his fairest achievements. ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... as he had hoped,"—Dutch perhaps won't rise, after all this flogging and hoisting?" Perhaps we may soon get a useful and glorious Peace, in spite of my Lord Stair, and of M. van Haren, the Tyrtaeus of the States-General [famed Van Haren, eyes in a fine Dutch frenzy rolling, whose Cause-of-Liberty verses let no man inquire after]: Stair prints Memoirs, Van Haren makes Odes; and with so much prose and so much verse, perhaps their High and Slow ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Mme. de Beauharnais, who some years later withdrew to her father's home in Martinique. Her husband sailed to America with the forces of Bouille, and remained there until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he returned, and was elected a deputy to the States-General. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... and hearing lectures according to the standard of men. Grotius at eleven was the pupil and companion of Scaliger and the learned band of Leyden; at fourteen he was part of the company which went with the ambassadors of the States-General to Henry IV.; at sixteen he was called to the bar, he published an out-of-the-way Latin writer, Martianus Capella, with a learned commentary, and he was the correspondent of De Thou. When Bacon was hardly sixteen he was admitted ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... smiled at James I. threatening the States-general by the English ambassador, about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused the doctrines of Arminius against those of the contra-remonstrants, or Calvinists; the ostensible subject was religious, or rather metaphysical-religious doctrines, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... East India Company, formed by the consolidation (1602) of the various trading companies in the Orient, by the States-General of Holland. This was for many years one of the richest and most successful of the world's great commercial associations; but in the eighteenth century its condition became one of decline. When Holland and Belgium were conquered ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various

... which England would not consent. Catherine was in alliance with Frederick of Prussia, and Chatham, hoping that the adhesion of England would be welcomed, designed a defensive alliance between Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia, which might take in Denmark, Sweden, the States-General, and any other power interested in withstanding Bourbon aggrandisement. To Catherine her alliance with Prussia was much more important than anything which she could obtain from England, and Chatham's design therefore ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... bi-weekly dinners, at one of which it has been mentioned Smith had a conversation with Turgot, were, as L. Blanc has said, the regular states-general of philosophy. The usual guests were the philosophes and encyclopedists and men of letters—Diderot, Marmontel, Raynal, Galiani. The conversation ran largely towards metaphysics and theology, and, as Morellet, who was often there, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... unsuccessfully provided for. [Footnote: Osgood, "The Colonial Corporation" (Political Science Quarterly, XI., 369-273).] The charter of the Dutch West India Company was granted by "The High and Mighty Lords, the Lords States-General of the United Netherlands," June 3, 1621. It had already been under discussion in the various representative bodies of the Netherlands for fifteen years, and had been a fixed idea in the brain of its projector, ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... by my residence, at different times, in Brittany in the years 1787 and 1788. The states of this province furnished the model of the States-General; and the particular troubles which broke out in the provinces of Brittany and Dauphiny were the forerunners of those of the nation ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... Charles were exhausted by his great exertions; arrears were due to his troops, who mutinied everywhere from his inability to pay them. He therefore assembled the Cortes, or states-general, of Castile, at Toledo, in 1539, stated his wants, and demanded subsidies. The clergy and nobility pleaded their own exemption and refused to impose new taxes on the other orders. Charles, in anger, dissolved the Cortes, and declared ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... Lieutenant-General of Burgundy, and provisional governor of the province during the absence of the Duc d'Aumale, then Governor of Paris; and in the same year he was deputed from the tiers-etat of Burgundy to the States-General, convoked at Blois by Henri III. It was on that occasion that he began to comprehend the designs of the Guises, and made the celebrated speech in favour of religious toleration which does so much honour to his memory. By Henri III he was successively appointed governor of the chancelry ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... embassy itself was occupied with the parades and ceremonies at the Hague, and at Utrecht, where they had a grand interview with the States-General, and at other great political centres, Peter traveled to and fro about Holland, visiting the different ports, and examining the shipping that he found in them, with the view of comparing the different models; for there were vessels in these ports from almost all the maritime countries of Europe. ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... were expected from the blockade system" now adopted, and that there were already signs that the Atchinese would before long be brought to terms. With regard to the sale of opium, he assured the States-General that "every possible means were being taken to reduce the sale of the drug, and to remedy its evil effects." He frankly recognized the importance of the question of coffee-culture, but at the same ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold

... country so far as importance and population go. The Hague is the royal residence and the seat of the Netherlands Government; but although, as a rule, Cabinet Ministers live there, most of the members of the First Chamber of the States-General live elsewhere, and a great many of their colleagues of the Second Chamber follow their example, preferring a couple of hours' railway travelling per day or per week during the time the States sit, to a ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... East Side, 1746 The Half Moon in the Highlands of the Hudson Earliest Picture of Manhattan Indians Trading for Furs Hall of the States-General of Holland Seal of New Netherland The Building of the Palisades Old House in New York, Built 1668 Van Twillier's Defiance Landing of Dutch Colony on Staten Island Governor's Island and the Battery in 1850 Dutch Costumes The Bowling Green in 1840 Selling ...
— The Story of Manhattan • Charles Hemstreet

... been moored head and stern right across Zwin, and a battery erected upon each shore to protect them; but Captains Hart and Allen twice swam down to communicate with friendly vessels below the obstacle, carrying despatches with them from the governor to the States-General, and from Roger Williams to the English commanders, urging that no time should be lost in assembling an army to march to the relief ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... a proclamation of the King appeared, well drawn up, and couched in firm, temperate, and sensible language, in which he declares that he will do all that the circumstances of the case may render necessary, but that all shall be referred to the States-General, and they shall decide upon the measures to be adopted. This will probably excite great discontent, and it is at least doubtful whether the Belgian Deputies will consent to go to the Hague at all. My belief is that this proclamation is the result of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... Talleyrand (1754-1838), a politician whose skill in unprincipled intrigue made him a power under every form of government, from the States-General that inaugurated the First Revolution until his death. Many epigrams like this testify to his cynicism, which anticipated remarkably the modern blague, as we find it, for instance, in "Le Gendre de ...
— Bataille De Dames • Eugene Scribe and Ernest Legouve

... and all-good people, which had been common a few years before, had succeeded an uneasy suspicion that the follies and vices of the people would frustrate all attempts to serve them. The wild and joyous exaltation, with which the meeting of the States-General and the fall of the Bastile had been hailed, had passed away. In its place was dejection, and a gloomy distrust of suspicious appearances. The philosophers and philanthropists had reigned. And what had their reign produced? Philosophy had brought with it ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... yet other signs of the age in the career of this cruel, crafty King. To strengthen himself in his struggle against the Pope, he called, in 1302, an assembly or "states-general" of his people; and, following the example already established in England, he gave a voice in this assembly to the "Third Estate," the common folk or "citizens," as well as to the nobles and the clergy. So even in France we find the people acquiring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... given by the States-General to Philip of Valois above Edward III, when he laid claim to the crown of France, led to that disastrous war, the prominent incidents of which are familiar to every one at all acquainted with the history of that time. Edward gained a naval victory over the French, and conquered ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... memorial, presented to the States-General by Sir Joseph Yorke, and two answers thereto, the one, "that they had no account to render to him of their conduct," the other, that "there are ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various



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