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In July 1794 Robespierre was arrested and executed as were many of his fellow Jacobins, thereby ending the Reign of Terror, which was succeeded by the Thermidorian Reaction.

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Napoleon leads coup d’état and seizes control of France

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Napoleon leads coup d’état and seizes control of France

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Napoleon Bonaparte took power in France on November 9th/10th 1799. The coup of 18/19 Brumaire in the Year VIII of the republican calendar is generally taken to mark the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of Napoleon Bonaparte's dictatorship. The Corsican had returned from Egypt on October 9th.

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On July 27, 1794, Robespierre and a number of his followers were arrested at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. The next day Robespierre and 21 of his followers were taken to the Place de la Révolution (now the Place de la Concorde), where they were executed by guillotine before a cheering crowd.

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Monarchy abolished, French Republic established

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Monarchy abolished, French Republic established

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During the French Revolution, the proclamation of the abolition of the monarchy (French: Proclamation de l'abolition de la royauté) was a proclamation by the National Convention of France announcing that it had abolished the French monarchy on 21 September 1792, giving birth to the French First Republic.

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Nine months after the execution of her husband, the former King Louis XVI of France, Marie Antoinette follows him to the guillotine on October 16, 1793. The daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, she married Louis in 1770 to strengthen the French-Austrian alliance.

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Committee of Public Safety in control of French Government

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Committee of Public Safety in control of French Government

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The Committee of Public Safety was created by the National Convention in 1793 with the intent to defend the nation against foreign and domestic enemies, as well as to oversee the new functions of the executive government. Members were elected and served for a period of one month.

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He was brought to trail for treason and executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. His wife, Mary Antoinette, was executed in the same way nine months later.

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The Constitution of 1795 established a liberal republic with a franchise based on the payment of taxes, similar to that of the Constitution of 1791; a bicameral legislature to slow down the legislative process; and a five-man Directory.

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Reign of Terror, also called the Terror, French La Terreur, period of the French Revolution from September 5, 1793, to July 27, 1794 (9 Thermidor, year II). During this time they Guillotined anyone who broke the rules or went against them.

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Louis XVI and family forced to leave Versaille and return to Paris.

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Louis XVI and family forced to leave Versaille and return to Paris.

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Louis XVI's indecisive response was one of the causes of the forcible transfer of the royal family from the Palace of Versailles to the Tuileries in Paris on 6 October 1789 after The Women's March on Versailles.

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National Assembly abolishes all legal privileges of nobles and clergy

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National Assembly abolishes all legal privileges of nobles and clergy

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The National Constituent Assembly, acting on the night of 4 August 1789, announced, "The National Assembly abolishes the feudal system entirely." It abolished both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate (the nobility) and the tithes gathered by the First Estate (the Catholic clergy).

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In the end, France declared war on Austria first, with the Assembly voting for war on 20 April 1792, after the presentation of a long list of grievances by the newly appointed foreign minister Charles François Dumouriez, who sought a war which might restore some popularity and authority to the King.

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Terrible weather, heavy rain, hard winters and too hot summers led to three very bad harvests in France. This led to peasants and farmers having smaller incomes, while food prices rose sharply. The poor harvests also meant that many French farmers became unemployed.

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Royal Family Tries to Sneak Out of France

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Royal Family Tries to Sneak Out of France

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The royal family left the Palace of Versailles on 6 October 1789 for the Tuileries Palace in Paris. As they were leaving a guard stopped them and they thought they could get away but some people in the streets spotted them and they got arrested and held in the palace until King Louis XVI execution.

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Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

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Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

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It came about in the summer of 1789. It was an idea from the Estates-Generals. It was drafted to have a declaration of principles. There were many proposals to follow it.

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Louis the XVI Calls a Meeting of the Estates-General

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Louis the XVI Calls a Meeting of the Estates-General

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The political and financial situation in France had grown rather bleak, forcing Louis XVI to summon the Estates General. This assembly was composed of three estates – the clergy, nobility and commoners – who had the power to decide on the levying of new taxes and to undertake reforms in the country. The opening of the Estates General, on 5 May 1789 in Versailles, also marked the start of the French Revolution.

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The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France, on 14 July 1789, when revolutionary insurgents stormed and seized control of the medieval armory, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille. At the time, the Bastille represented royal authority in the center of Paris. They tore it down brick by brick so that there was nothing left of it.

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More than any other event of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, which began in 1789, changed the face of modern politics across Europe and the world.

It overturned the longstanding French system of monarchical government and introduced the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity, and human and civil rights to modern political practice. It also helped to usher in modern nationalism and nation-states. And it became a model of revolutionary political change that was followed throughout the world from Europe, to Haiti, Latin America, Russia, and East Asia.

And it all began one July day when the people of Paris captured a fourteenth-century gothic prison known as the Bastille.

In the summer of 1789, Paris was at a boil. The people had been suffering from food shortages and the weight of taxes used to pay King Louis XVI's vast debts. And they found themselves in the midst of unprecedented political turmoil caused by the opening of the Estates General, France's Parliament, for the first time in more than one hundred years. Many Parisians were also angered by the dismissal of the popular minister Jacques Necker on 11 July. But what really stirred them was the fact that, since the beginning of June 1789, Louis XVI had concentrated troops around Paris.

The sense of menace that the militarization of the city caused provoked a march to the Hôtel des Invalides, where they looted approximately 3,000 firearms and five canons. The weapons, however, required gunpowder, which was stored in the Bastille.

After arriving at the prison and negotiating with its governor, marchers burst into an outer courtyard and a pitch battle erupted. By the time it was over, the people of Paris had freed the prisoners held in the Bastille and taken the governor captive (the governor and three of his officers would soon be killed and then beheaded by an infuriated crowd, their heads paraded through the streets atop pikes). The cost was steep: nearly one hundred citizens and eight prison guards were killed.

All of this happened on July 14, which has been known in France and all over the world as "Bastille Day" ever since. Hearing that the Bastille had fallen, Louis XVI asked the duke de La Rochefoucauld: "So, is there a rebellion?" To which the duke retorted: "No, Sire, a revolution!"

Like many other iconic revolutionary acts, the storming of the Bastille was not intended as such. Yet, it was a pivotal moment in the unfolding of the French Revolution-the spark that forced the King to begin concessions and emboldened the people's movement to overthrow him (and later to behead both him and his wife in the hope of burying monarchy forever).

Throughout the nineteenth century, the fall of the Bastille was chronicled by historians, depicted by artists and celebrated by common people.

In 1880, the French chose to make the Storming of the Bastille their national holiday. Through all the upheavals of France's century of revolutions (1789-1871), the events of July 14 retained their power as the most powerful symbol of the people bringing down a despotic government and putting an end to arbitrary rule.

Today, in times of deterritorialized terror, outsourced prisons, bitcoins, and subcontracted state and military arbitrariness, the Storming of the Bastille might look like a quaint scene from an old-fashioned opera. Yet, the world in recent years has had its own share of Bastilles, from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Independence Square in Kyiv (not to mention the recent commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Movement).

The taking of the Bastille also reminds us that on the long, bumpy road toward representative democracy-that is, on the road toward the rule with the consent and for the benefit of the people-it is sometimes easier to strike down the visible signs of authoritarian power than to deal with the complicated, often shadowy sources of that power. And, after it took the French the better part of a century to embed the democratic ideals of 1789, the Bastille prompts us to remember just how hard it is for the voices of the people to be transformed into the enduring instructions of democratic governance and the rule of law.

The storming of the Bastille also reminds us that modern citizens were not only born out of acts of valor or cruelty, but also out of the act of remembering and out of the strong desire for justice.

The fall of the Bastille was one of the moments in the eruption of the modern popular historical consciousness and the power of history and historical consciousness to the proper functioning of a democratic society.

In 1789, the Bastille was not just a prison but also served as an archive holding the documents of the Parlement de Paris, of the King's household, and of the Parisian police. Pillaged, scattered and burned during and after the fall of the fortress, large parts of the archive were recovered by Beaumarchais and by the Russian diplomat and bibliophile Pierre Dubrowsky.

Realizing the importance of the Bastille archives, the Commune de Paris appealed to the citizens to return any documents they might have in their possession in order to help document the future trial of royal despotism. The citizens of Paris answered promptly and 600,000 pieces were returned. Today, together with a copy of the documents saved by Dubrowsky, they constitute the Archives de la Bastille found at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

On July 14, 1789, the people of Paris seized not only a prison, but also control over their own historical memory, too. It is this sudden blooming of subjects into citizens, willing and able not only to change history, but also to contribute to its writing, which set the precedent for all the revolutions of the modern age.

It is a privilege which we should strive not to lose.

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More than any other event of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, which began in 1789, changed the face of modern politics across Europe and the world. It overturned the longstanding French system of monarchical government and introduced the ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity, and human and civil rights to modern political practice.

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The New Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution of France. It gave them a constitutional monarchy when their absolute monarchy fell.

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The Constitution of 1791 was the revolutionary government's first attempt at a written constitutional document. Motivated by Enlightenment ideas and the American Revolution, it was intended to define the limits of power in the new government. By the time of its adoption, however, the situation in France had changed significantly and the Constitution of 1791 was no longer fit for purpose.

Desire for a framework

The road to a constitution began on June 20th 1789, when the newly formed National Assembly gathered in a Versailles tennis court and pledged not to disband until France had a working constitution.

Their desire for a constitution was a product of the Enlightenmen and the American Revolution. The deputies of the Third Estate believed that any reforms to the Ancien Régime must be outlined in and guaranteed by a written framework. A constitution would define the authority, structure and powers of the new government. This would prevent or limit the abuses and injustices of the old order.

The National Assembly set about drafting a national constitution almost immediately. The process was a long and difficult one, hampered by differences of opinion, growing radicalism and the events of 1789-91.

Their deliberations eventually produced the Constitution of 1791, which was ratified in September that year. This document established a constitutional monarchy and incorporated several political ideas from the Enlightenment. The fate of the 1791 Constitution, however, hinged on the attitude and actions of King Louis XVI.

Why a written constitution?

Fascination with constitutions and constitutional government was a creature of the Enlightenment. Before the 18th century, monarchical and absolutist governments acted without any written constitution. The structures and power of government were shaped and limited by internal forces and events - if they were limited at all.

Britain, to cite one example, had no written constitution. The power of the British monarchy had been constrained by Britain's nobility, its parliament, the Civil War (1642-51), the Glorious Revolution (1688) and other factors - but these constraints were agreed rather than prescribed. Over time, the British system developed a balance of power between monarch, parliament, aristocracy and judiciary.

But this idea that political power would sort itself out over time was not acceptable to Enlightenment philosophers. Men like John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu and Thomas Paine believed that government must be founded on rational principles and organised in a way that best serves the people. The best device for ensuring this was a written constitution, a foundation law that defines the structures and powers of government, as well as rules and instructions for its operation.

The American model

The French revolutionaries had before them a working model of a national constitution. The United States Constitution was drafted in 1787 and ratified by the American states the following year. The American constitution embraced and codified several Enlightenment ideas, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's popular sovereignty and Montesquieu's separation of powers.

There was one significant difference: the American constitution established a republican political system with an elected president as its chief executive. In France in 1789-90, the National Constituent Assembly remained wedded to the idea of a constitutional monarchy. The Assembly wanted to retain the king but to ensure that his executive power was subordinate to both the law and the public good.

This presented the Assembly with two concerns. First, they had to find a constitutional role for the king and determine what political powers, if any, he should retain. Second, a constitutional monarchy would be entirely dependent on having a king loyal to the constitution. In the years that followed, both would cause problems for the national government.

Hammering out a constitution

The preparation and drafting of the constitution began on July 6th 1789, when the National Constituent Assembly appointed a preliminary constitutional committee. This committee was made permanent and expanded to 12 men on July 14th, the day of the Bastille raid (the two events were unrelated).

Among the members of the constitutional committee were Charles de Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun; the radical Bretonist Isaac le Chapelier; the conservative lawyer Jean-Joseph Mounier; and Emmanuel Sieyès, author of What is the Third Estate?

Almost immediately, the constitutional committee cleaved into two factions. One faction favoured a bicameral (double chamber) legislature and the retention of strong executive powers for the king, including an absolute veto. This group, which included Mounier and the Marquis de Lafayette, was dubbed the Monarchiens or 'English faction'. A second group wanted a strong unicameral (single-chamber) legislature and a monarchy with very limited power. This group, led by Sieyès and Talleyrand, won the day in the National Constituent Assembly.

Who elects the government?

By October 1789, the committee was wrestling with the question of exactly who would elect the government. They decided to separate the population into two classes: 'active citizens' (those entitled to vote and stand for office) and 'passive citizens' (those who were not). 'Active citizens' were males over the age of 25 who paid annual taxes equivalent to at least three days' wages. It was, in effect, a property qualification on voting rights.

In today's world, where universal suffrage is the norm, this seems grossly unfair - but property restrictions on voting were quite common in 18th century Europe. Voting was not a natural right conferred on all: it was a privilege available to those who owned property and paid tax. By way of comparison, England in 1780 was a nation of around eight million people, yet only 214,000 people were eligible to vote.

The National Constituent Assembly's property qualifications were considerably more generous than that. They would have extended voting rights to around 4.3 million Frenchmen. Despite this, radicals in the political clubs and sections demanded that voting rights be granted to all men, regardless of earnings or property.

Royal prerogatives

The other feature of the Constitution of 1791 was the revised role of the king.

The constitution amended Louis XVI's title from "King of France" to "King of the French". This implied that the king's power emanated from the people and the law, not from divine right or national sovereignty. The king was granted a civil list of 25 million livres, a reduction of around 20 million livres on his spending before the revolution.

In terms of executive power, the king retained the right to form a cabinet, to select and appoint ministers. A more pressing question was whether he would have the power to block laws passed by the legislature. Again, this was resolved with debate and compromise. The Monarchiens, most notably Honore Mirabeau, argued for the king to be granted an absolute veto, the executive right to block any legislation. Democratic deputies argued for a more limited veto and some for no veto at all.

It was eventually decided to give the king a suspensive veto. He could deny assent to bills and withhold this assent for up to five years. After this time, if assent had not been granted by the king, the Assembly could enact the bill without his approval.

The Constitution sabotaged

Even as the constitution was being finalised, it was being overtaken by the events of the revolution. In June 1791, the king and his family stole away from the Tuileries and fled Paris; they were detained at Varennes the following morning.

The king's attempt to escape Paris and the revolution brought anti-royalist and republican sentiment to the boil. The National Constituent Assembly tried riding out the storm by claiming the royal family had been abducted and reinstating the king - but the Cordeliers, the radical Jacobins and the sans culottes of Paris were not buying it.

The Constitution of 1791 was passed in September but it had been fatally compromised by the king's betrayal. France now had a constitutional monarchy but the monarch, by his actions, had shown no faith in the constitution. In a conversation with the conservative politician Bertrand de Molleville, Louis XVI suggested that he would bring about change by making the new constitution unworkable:

"I am far from regarding the constitution as a masterpiece. I think it has a great many defects. If I had been permitted to make some observations, some useful changes might have been made. But it is too late for that now. I have sworn to maintain the constitution, wars and all, and I am determined to keep my oath. It is my opinion that that execution of the constitution is the best way of making the people see the changes that are necessary."

A historian's view:
"When the Constitution of 1791 was finally adopted, it embodied a fundamental contradiction and a recipe for constitutional impasse. To safeguard national sovereignty from the dangers of representation it permitted the monarch to veto legislative decrees - and hence paralyse the Assembly... As a result of the veto the Constitution of 1791, as Brissot remarked, could only function under a 'revolutionary king'... Once it appeared, in the spring of 1792, that Louis XVI's exercise of the veto was frustrating rather than upholding the will of the nation, the monarch and the Constitution itself were under siege."
Gary Kates

1. The Constitution of 1791 was drafted by the National Constituent Assembly and passed in September 1791. It was France's first attempt at a written national constitution.

2. The Assembly delegated the task of drafting the constitution to a special constitutional committee. It began in July 1789 by debating the structure the new political system should have.

3. The Assembly eventually concluded that France should be a constitutional monarchy with a unicameral (one house) legislature. Voting rights were restricted to 'active citizens', i.e. those who paid a minimum amount of taxation.

4. The constitution retitled Louis XVI as "King of the French", granted him a reduced civil list, allowed him to select and appoint ministers and gave him suspensive veto power.

5. The king's flight to Varennes in June 1791 rendered the Constitution of 1791, and thus the constitutional monarchy, unworkable. It also fuelled a spike in Republican sentiment in Paris.

Citation information
Title: "The Constitution of 1791"
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/constitution-of-1791/
Date published: August 1, 2020
Date accessed: September 08, 2020
Copyright: The content on this page may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

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The Constitution of 1791 was the revolutionary government's first attempt at a written constitutional document. Motivated by Enlightenment ideas and the American Revolution, it was intended to define the limits of power in the new government. By the time of its adoption, however, the situation in France had changed significantly and the Constitution of 1791 was no longer fit for purpose.

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Tennis Court Oath, French Serment du Jeu de Paume, (June 20, 1789), dramatic act of defiance by representatives of the nonprivileged classes of the French nation (the Third Estate) during the meeting of the Estates-General (traditional assembly) at the beginning of the French Revolution.

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The swearing of the Tennis Court Oath (French, Serment du jeu de Paume) was a pivotal moment in the French Revolution. It took place in a royal tennis court at Versailles some six weeks into the Estates General. There, more than 500 members of the Third Estate and a scattering of liberal nobles and clergymen swore a solemn pledge to bind together and keep meeting as a National Assembly until France had its own constitution capable of achieving "the true principles of monarchy" and "the regeneration of public order".

On June 17th 1789, members of the Third Estate, joining by a few liberal allies from the other Estates, began calling themselves the 'National Assembly. On the morning of June 20th, this group gathered to enter the meeting hall at the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs, only to find the doors locked and guarded by royal troops.

Interpreting this as a hostile move by King Louis XVI and his ministers, the National Assembly proceeded to the nearest available space, one of Versailles' indoor tennis courts. Gathering on the floor of this court, the 577 deputies took an oath, hastily written by Emmanuel Sieyès and administered by Jean-Sylvain Bailly. Together, they pledged to remain assembled until a new national constitution had been drafted and implemented.

Like the fall of the Bastille a fortnight later, the Tennis Court Oath was soon etched into history as a memorable gesture of revolutionary defiance against the old regime. The prominent artist Jacques-Louis David later immortalised the oath in a dramatic portrait.

Background

The Tennis Court Oath followed several days of tension and confrontation at the Estates General. Frustrated by the procedures of the Estates General, particularly the procedure of voting by order, the Third Estate spent the first week of June contemplating what action to take.

On June 10th, Sieyès rose before the Third Estate deputies and proposed inviting deputies from the other Estates to form a representative assembly. This occurred on June 17th when deputies of the Third Estate, along with several nobles and clergymen, voted 490-90 to form the National Assembly.

This was a clear challenge to royal authority - nevertheless, it took several days for the king to respond. Following the advice of Jacques Necker, Louis scheduled a séance royale ('royal session') involving all three Estates on June 23rd. There, the king planned to unveil reforms aimed at winning the support of moderates who he believed held the numbers in the Third Estate.

The oath is taken

The king's plans to win over the Third Estate were thwarted by the events of June 20th and the swearing of the Tennis Court Oath.

Historians have long mused over why the doors of the Menus-Plaisirs were locked. Some have suggested it was a deliberate royal tactic, an attempt to stop the Estates meeting before the séance royale. It was more likely to have accidental, a procedural order that assumed the Estates would not meet again until June 22nd (June 20th was a Saturday).

Whatever the reason, the Third Estate deputies interpreted the barred doors as a hostile act, an indicator of their suspicious mood. They left the Menus-Plaisirs and proceeded to the next open building, the Jeu de Paume, a real tennis court used by Louis XIV. The oath was administered by Jean-Sylvain Bailly and signed by 576 members of the Third Estate. There was one abstention: Joseph Martin d'Auch, the deputy from Castelnaudary, refused to sign the oath on the grounds that it insulted the king.

The full text of the oath read:

"The National Assembly, considering that it has been summoned to establish the constitution of the kingdom, to effect the regeneration of public order, and to maintain the true principles of monarchy; that nothing can prevent it from continuing its deliberations in whatever place it may be forced to establish itself; and, finally, that wheresoever its members are assembled, there is the National Assembly... It decrees that all members of this Assembly shall immediately take a solemn oath not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated upon firm foundations; and that, the said oath taken, all members and each one individually shall ratify this steadfast resolution by signature."

David's famous portrait

In 1790, the noted artist Jacques-Louis David began preparations for a grand painting to visualise and honour the swearing of the Tennis Court Oath.

While the events of the revolution prevented David from completing the painting, his preliminary engraving (above) survives and provides the best-known representation of the events of June 20th. The Tennis Court Oath was watched by people in the higher galleries; David consulted these witnesses when deciding on composition and placement.

Among the prominent revolutionaries shown in David's engraving are Isaac Le Chapelier (1); the journalist Bertrand Barère (2); three religious leaders Dom Gerle (3), Henri Grégoire (4) and Jean-Paul Rabaut Saint-Étienne (5); the famous astronomer and later mayor of Paris who administered the oath, Jean-Sylvain Bailly (6); the author of the oath Emmanuel Sieyès (7); the future mayor of Paris Jérôme Pétion (8); Maximilien Robespierre (9); the constitutional monarchists Honore Mirabeau (10) and Antoine Barnave (11); and the lone abstainer from the oath, Joseph Martin d'Auch (12).

"Jacques-Louis David recognised the gravity of the moment and the enthusiasm it released. He caught history in the making. Faces and bodies are frozen in an instant of the highest emotional intensity. The delegates are possessed by a common mission, which consists in preserving their newly won unity. The oath sworn in the tennis court outside the royal palace in Versailles... marks the beginning of the French Revolution. Language is at a loss as one tries to capture David's visualisation of a unity manifesting itself as quantity."
Stefan Jonsson, historian

The king responds

On June 22nd, two days after the Tennis Court Oath, the deputies of the Third Estate met at a Versailles church, together with 150 clergymen and two nobles. The king soon made an appearance and instructed those present to rejoin their Estates to continue their deliberations separately - but the leaders of the Third Estate refused.

When the séance royale opened the following day, Louis began by unveiling his reforms. The king promised a degree of representative government, with regular sessions of the Estates General. The taxation system would be overhauled in consultation with the Estates General, the legal system would be improved and lettres de cachet abolished.

While Louis was prepared to make political concessions and reforms, he would not accept constitutional changes. The Three Estates were an "ancient distinction" and an "integral part of the constitution", the king declared, and would therefore remain intact.

Defiance continues

Had Louis XVI proposed these reforms in 1788 or earlier, they may well have averted the revolution and saved his throne. As the historian Richard Cobb puts it, the Tennis Court Oath had "cut the ground from under the king's feet".

By mid-1789, however, maintaining the Three Estates in their ancient form was unacceptable to the Third Estate, particularly if it continued to be outvoted by the other two Estates. Accepting the king's reforms would also require the dissolution of the just-formed National Assembly.

When the séance royale ended and the king left the chamber, the deputies of the National Assembly defiantly remained. Stirred up by orators like Mirabeau, Bailly and Barnave, they affirmed the pledges made three days earlier in the Tennis Court Oath. The National Assembly would defy the king's orders and remain in session. When confronted by one of the king's envoys and asked to leave the hall, Mirabeau made his famous remark: "Go tell your masters who have sent you that we shall not leave, except by the force of bayonets".

Death of the Estates

When the king was told of the National Assembly and their continued defiance, he responded with indifference, reportedly muttering "Fuck it, let them stay".

Over the next three days dozens of clergymen and nobles, including the Duke of Orleans, a member of the royal court and a distant relative of the king, crossed the floor to join the National Assembly. On June 27th, the king backed down completely and ordered the remaining deputies of the First and Second Estates to join the National Assembly, thus giving it apparent constitutional legitimacy. The Tennis Court Oath, both a revolutionary act and an expression of popular sovereignty, had succeeded in forcing a royal backdown.

With one fell swoop, Louis XVI had abolished the Three Estates as separate political orders. Conservatives were furious about what the king had surrendered, however, when the news reached Paris it triggered great excitement and rejoicing. The bourgeois revolution, it seems, had won the day - but with large numbers of royal troops massing near Versailles and on the outskirts of Paris, there was still more confrontation to come.

1. The Tennis Court Oath was a pledge taken by Third Estate deputies to the Estates General. It was sworn in a Versailles tennis court on June 20th 1789.

2. After days of disputes over voting procedures, the king scheduled a séance royale for June 23rd. When the Third Estate gathered to meet on June 20th, they found the doors to their meeting hall locked and guarded.

3. Fearing a royalist conspiracy, the Third Estate responded by gathering in a nearby tennis court. There they pledged not to disband until the nation had drafted and implemented a constitution.

4. The Tennis Court Oath was written by Emmanuel Sieyès, administered by Jean-Sylvain Bailly and signed by 576 deputies with one abstainer. Later, the oath was famously depicted by the revolutionary artist Jacques-Louis David.

5. At the séance royale that followed, the king promised several major political and legal reforms but refused to disband the Three Estates. This led to further acts of defiance and, eventually, the absorption of the Estates into the National Assembly.
A record of the Tennis Court Oath (1789)
Citation information
Title: 'The Tennis Court Oath''
Authors: Jennifer Llewellyn, Steve Thompson
Publisher: Alpha History
URL: https://alphahistory.com/frenchrevolution/tennis-court-oath/
Date published: October 31, 2019
Date updated: November 9, 2023
Date accessed: December 1, 2023
Copyright: The content on this page is © Alpha History. It may not be republished without our express permission. For more information on usage, please refer to our Terms of Use.

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On June 20th 1789, Third Estate deputies found themselves locked out of a meeting hall at Versailles. Outraged, they decided to meet in a tennis court.