Convening of the Estates-General
The Estates General met at Versailles in May 1789 for the first time since 1614 and had turned itself into a National Assembly within seven weeks. It was summoned because the state was bankrupt. Successive controllers-general had failed to tax the nobility and clergy, an assembly of notables had refused to help in 1787, and the parlements insisted that only the Estates General could consent to new taxation — which they said believing it would strengthen them. The elections produced cahiers de doléances, notebooks of grievances compiled in every parish and guild in France, some 60,000 of which survive and constitute the most detailed self-portrait any society has produced of itself. The question that broke it was procedure. The three estates had traditionally sat and voted separately, which gave the clergy and nobility two votes to the commons' one; the third estate had been granted double representation in numbers and no promise about how voting would work. They refused to verify their credentials separately, sat in the hall for six weeks doing nothing, and on 17 June declared themselves the National Assembly on the argument that they represented ninety-six per cent of the nation. Parish clergy began crossing over. Locked out of their chamber on 20 June, they met in a tennis court and swore not to separate until France had a constitution. The king ordered the estates to sit together on 27 June, having lost. The Bastille fell on 14 July, and the assembly abolished feudal privilege on 4 August.
- Year: 1789 CE
- Category: Political
