Order Text

Order

1105

Old regime France has frequently been described as a society of orders in which individuals and families had certain status in a hierarchy of social categories. Although used interchangeably here and elsewhere with the three estates— clergy, noble, and Third—orders also referred to divisions within the estates. Further, social strata often transcended all these categories, in part because of blurred boundaries between them, making a strict classification by “order” or “estate” difficult. By insisting on electing deputies by estates in the calling of the Estates-General, the government highlighted the tensions between the legal definitions and the actual situation.