Were there elections in France under the absolute monarchy?
score:19
Yes.
Absolutism is rarely, if ever, as absolute as the name suggests. Even after the ascension of Louis XIV, the Estates of France continued to meet in assemblies. The most famous and powerful was of course the Estates General, a national body which admittedly only met once in this period. And it ended up ushering in the French Revolution.
However, on the local level, the Estates Provincial met regularly. French provinces under the Ancien Régime could be divided into two types based on the arcane constitution of Medieval France: the pays d'élections and the pays d'états. The latter had a right to regional assemblies consisted of representatives from the three Estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. Most survived till their suppression during the Revolution.
For example, in Brittany:
The Estates grew substantially larger in the seventeenth century. Very few delegates came in the sixteenth century, whereas the seventeenth-century meetings attracted enormous numbers of people ... the Third Estate had an average of sixty deputies, representing some twenty -five to thirty-five towns.
- Collins, James B. Classes, Estates and Order in Early-Modern Brittany. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Despite what the other answer states (at the time of writing), these were not merely "groups of citizens got together and voted amongst themselves for things". Rather, they were fully legitimate constitutional government bodies of the Kingdom of France, and they dealt with the royal court in that capacity.
One of their responsibilities was taxation. Though the king could tax the pays d'élections at will, technically the provincial assemblies formally voted their consent in the pays d'états. In practice, though, the king essentially determined the amount without their input.
France was divided in pays d'élections and pays d'états, that is, provinces with or without a provincial parliament. There were two kinds of administrative districts, each with its own system of taxation ... [the pays d'états] managed to preserve a representative provincial assembly that voted the don gratuit ('gratutious offering').
- Onnekink, David, and Gijs Rommelse, eds. Ideology and foreign policy in early modern Europe (1650-1750). Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2011.
Nonetheless, the assemblies were very much an active branch of the French state. They played an active part in local politics and governance, and while ultimately unable to defy the king, they often negotiated with and petitioned the royal court on behalf of local interests.
In the 1660s, the Estates again acted vigorously to protect the mercantile interests of the province ... one of the constant themes of the contracts of the Estates was the abolition of the periodic prohibitions on grain exports, clearly protecting their own economic interest ... the towns often came to the Estates with specific local problems and the Estates frequently came to their aid, even against noblemen.
- Collins, James B. Classes, Estates and Order in Early-Modern Brittany. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Upvote:0
As a French speaker you would probably have access to much better resources on this than I. But...
My understanding for France in that period is that the only national political power the common people had came from the Estates General. It didn't have a lot of power, and most of what it could do was only advisory in nature. But it could provide for new taxes to the crown if for some reason the monarch didn't feel strong enough to simply impose them on his own.
There was no Estates General called between 1614 and 1789. That encompasses the entire reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715).
Of course some localized groups of citizens got together and voted amongst themselves for things. For instance, some of the Estates Provincial still met during that period. However, I don't think there was any such vote that produced any results that The Crown felt bound to respect.
The only incidents of civil unrest I could dig up during this period were led by members of the First or Second Estates (Clergy and Nobility respectively), and didn't seem to have any popular elected element.
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