Convening of the Estates-General
Louis XVI convened the Estates-General on 5 May 1789 at Versailles — the first such assembly since 1614 — in a desperate attempt to address France's fiscal collapse. The format itself was immediately contentious: the First Estate (clergy) and Second Estate (nobility) each had one vote as a body, regardless of how many deputies each contained, giving the privileged orders a permanent majority over the Third Estate (everyone else), who represented 97% of the population but would always be outvoted two to one. When the Third Estate demanded voting by head — which would give them numerical parity with the combined clergy and nobility — the Crown sided with the privileged orders and deadlock ensued. The Third Estate refused to verify its own credentials until the voting question was settled, meeting separately and declaring itself a National Assembly on 17 June 1789. Louis attempted to lock them out of the meeting hall; they reconvened in the royal tennis court. The structural dispute over voting procedure — a technical question about assembly organisation — proved to be the fulcrum on which the entire social order tipped into revolution.
- Year: 1789 CE
- Category: Political
