The king officiated from his position at the end of the hall beneath a majestic baldachin, with the queen and the princes of the blood around him. The deputies were seated in rows around the edge. The members of the Third Estate and a few of the Clergy and the Nobility would later constitute the first National Assembly.
This was followed by speeches by Barentin, the Keeper of the Seals, and Necker , the Minister of Finances, concerning the economic situation in the kingdom. The budget deficit was 56 million. The Revolution had begun…. Revise your French history with help from the artworks of the Palace of Versailles! Through our new partnership with the French American Cultural Foundation, American citizens can easily support the Palace of Versailles.
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The following day, the Third Estate discovered that the royal decree granting double representation also upheld the traditional voting by orders. The apparent intent of the King and his advisers was for everyone to get directly to the matter of taxes, but by trying to avoid the issue of representation they had gravely misjudged the situation. The Third Estate wanted the estates to meet as one body and for each delegate to have one vote.
The other two estates, while having their own grievances against royal absolutism, believed — correctly, as history would prove — that they would lose more power to the Third Estate than they stood to gain from the King. Necker sympathized with the Third Estate in this matter but lacked astuteness as a politician. He decided to let the impasse play out to the point of stalemate before he would enter the fray. Painting by Auguste Couder showing the opening of the Estates-General, ca.
The suggestion to summon the Estates General came from the Assembly of Notables installed by the King in February It had not met since On June 17, with the failure of efforts to reconcile the three estates, the Communes — or the Commons, as the Third Estate called itself now — declared themselves redefined as the National Assembly, an assembly not of the estates but of the people.
The King tried to resist. On June 20, he ordered to close the hall where the National Assembly met, but deliberations moved to a nearby tennis court, where they proceeded to swear the Tennis Court Oath by which they agreed not to separate until they had settled the constitution of France. Two days later, removed from the tennis court as well, the Assembly met in the Church of Saint Louis, where the majority of the representatives of the clergy joined them.
After a failed attempt to keep the three estates separate, that part of the deputies of the nobles who still stood apart joined the National Assembly at the request of the King. The Estates-General ceased to exist, becoming the National Assembly. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Search for:. Almost immediately, it became apparent that this archaic arrangement—the group had last been assembled in —would not sit well with its present members. Although Louis XVI granted the Third Estate greater numerical representation, the Parlement of Paris stepped in and invoked an old rule mandating that each estate receive one vote, regardless of size.
As a result, though the Third Estate was vastly larger than the clergy and nobility, each estate had the same representation—one vote. The First and Second Estates—clergy and nobility, respectively—were too closely related in many matters.
Both were linked intrinsically to the royalty and shared many similar privileges. As a result, their votes often went the same way, automatically neutralizing any effort by the Third Estate.
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