According to the sixteenth-century antiquarian, Pierre de Saint-Julien, the Estates General of Burgundy had originated with the Gauls as a meeting of druids, soldiers and plebeians. The three estates of his own time were allegedly descended from these distant ancestors, but, however fanciful his theories, it is true that the precise origins of the institution are obscure. The first authenticated meetings of an assembly of clergy, nobility and third estate took place during the reign of Philippe le Hardi in the mid-fourteenth century. Thereafter they gradually settled into a pattern of regular meetings called to vote the taxes required to fund the ambitious political and cultural policies of the Valois dukes. When catastrophe struck at the battle of Nancy on 5 January 1477, with the death of Charles le Téméraire, the last of the line, Louis XI seized the duchy of Burgundy. In an effort to win the affection of his reluctant new subjects, the French king recognised their rights and privileges, including the principle that no tax could be levied in the province without the consent of the Estates. Here was the basis of what would become known as the Burgundian constitution, and the Estates would remain central to the relationship between the crown and the province until 1789.

It is true that during the troubled years of the Wars of Religion the province followed its governor, Charles de Lorraine, duc de Mayenne, and was a bastion of the Catholic league.