The national guard was organized under the marquis de Lafayette. Louis XVI meekly recalled Necker and went to the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, where he accepted the tricolor cockade of the Revolution from the newly formed municipal government, or commune. Parisians mobilized, and on July 14 stormed the Bastille fortress. At the same time, however, he surrounded Versailles with troops and let himself be persuaded by a court faction, which included the queen, Marie Antoinette, to dismiss (July 11) Necker. On June 27 the king yielded and legalized the National Assembly. When the king had their meeting place closed, they adjourned to an indoor tennis court, the jeu de paume, and there took an oath (June 20) not to disband until a constitution had been drawn up. The question soon arose whether the estates should meet separately and vote by order or meet jointly and vote by head (thus assuring a majority for the third estate, whose membership had been doubled).Īs Louis XVI wavered, the deputies of the third estate defiantly proclaimed themselves the National Assembly (June 17) on their invitation, many members of the lower clergy and a few nobles joined them. The aspirations of the bourgeoisie were expressed by Abbé Sieyès in a widely circulated pamphlet that implied that the third estate and the nation were virtually identical. Innumerable cahiers (lists of grievances) came pouring in from the provinces, and it became clear that sweeping political and social reforms, far exceeding the object of its meeting, were expected from the States-General. The chief purpose of the king and of Necker, who had been recalled, was to obtain the assembly's consent to a general fiscal reform.Įach of the three estates-clergy, nobility, and the third estate, or commons-presented its particular grievances to the crown. Elections were ordered in 1788, and on May 5, 1789, for the first time since 1614, the States-General met at Versailles. His attempts to procure money were thwarted by the Parlement of Paris (see parlement), and King Louis XVI was forced to agree to the calling of the States-General. Étienne Charles Loménie de Brienne succeeded Calonne. The Estates-General and the National Assembly They refused in an effort to protect economic privileges. French participation in the American Revolution had increased the huge debt, and Necker's successor, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, called an Assembly of Notables (1787), hoping to avert bankruptcy by inducing the privileged classes to share in the financial burden. Director general of finances Jacques Necker vainly sought to restore public confidence. The direct cause of the Revolution was the chaotic state of government finance. Turgot, was thwarted by the unwillingness of privileged groups to sacrifice any privileges and by the king's failure to support strong measures. Economic reform, advocated by the physiocrats and attempted (1774–76) by A. Rousseau, especially through his dogma of popular sovereignty. Most direct in his influence on Revolutionary thought was J. Voltaire attacked the church and absolutism Denis Diderot and the Encyclopédie advocated social utility and attacked tradition the baron de Montesquieu made English constitutionalism fashionable and the marquis de Condorcet preached his faith in progress. In addition to the economic and social difficulties, the ancien régime was undermined intellectually by the apostles of the Enlightenment. Backward agricultural methods and internal tariff barriers caused recurrent food shortages, which netted fortunes to grain speculators, and rural overpopulation created land hunger. For the most part, peasants were small landholders or tenant farmers, subject to feudal dues, to the royal agents indirect farming (collecting) taxes, to the corvée (forced labor), and to tithes and other impositions. King Louis XIV, by consolidating absolute monarchy, had destroyed the roots of feudalism yet outward feudal forms persisted and became increasingly burdensome.įrance was still governed by privileged groups-the nobility and the clergy-while the productive classes were taxed heavily to pay for foreign wars, court extravagance, and a rising national debt. In the fixed order of the ancien régime, most bourgeois were unable to exercise commensurate political and social influence. To some extent at least, it came not because France was backward, but because the country's economic and intellectual development was not matched by social and political change.
Historians disagree in evaluating the factors that brought about the Revolution. French Revolution, political upheaval of world importance in France that began in 1789.