What did Rousseau mean by a "general will" that makes you free?

Rousseau meant that freedom is not doing whatever you like but obeying laws you have made yourself, together with your fellow citizens. In The Social Contract (1762) he asked how a political community could have legitimate authority that is compatible with individual freedom. His answer was that only the general will of the people has the right to legislate, because only then do people obey only themselves and so remain free.

The general will is not simply what each person wants at the moment. It seems to involve a legislature of all adult members of the community, restricted to making general laws for the common good, laws that apply equally to all. Rousseau, who objected to extreme wealth inequality, also argued that equality is essential for liberty, so legislation ought to preserve it. Scholars still argue about exactly what he meant.

The book challenged kings directly, since it argued against the idea that monarchs were divinely empowered to legislate. In France its distribution was prohibited and Rousseau fled to avoid imprisonment, though the controversy came mainly from his chapter on civil religion, not from his ideas on liberty and sovereignty.

Readers have split over the idea ever since. Rousseau himself stressed that the general will exists to protect individuals against the mass, not to sacrifice them to it. But Robespierre and Saint-Just, during the Reign of Terror, saw themselves as inspired by him, and in 1819 Benjamin Constant criticised his more radical followers for believing that everything should give way to collective will.