The Days of the French Revolution

1 THE DAY OF THE TENNIS-COURT OATH 20 June 1789

On Saturday, 2 May 1789, the King waited in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles to receive the deputies of the clergy and the nobility. The clergy, as the pre-eminent order, came in first, the double doors being opened wide and then firmly closed behind them. The nobility were also received in private although, in accordance with the usual ceremonial practice, the doors were not fully closed after their entry but left slightly ajar. As though to emphasize their inferior status, the Third Estate were not received in the Hall of Mirrors but, after being kept waiting for over three hours, were presented to the King in another apartment where they were ushered past him in file. The King, standing between his two brothers, could not bring himself to address a single word to any of them other than one old man of exceptionally benign appearance to whom he said, ‘Good morning, good man.’ The others, having made their bows, turned away, feeling much disheartened by the King’s inability to display the least indication of friendliness and by the courtiers’ haughty reserve.

The next day was Sunday, a day of preparation, argument and discussion, during which it became clearer than ever that none of the three orders was completely united in its aims. Among the clergy there were passionate radicals such as the Abbé Henri Grégoire from Nancy; there were defenders of the ancien régime like the clever and articulate Abbé Maury, the son of an artisan, who set his face firmly against change from the beginning; and there were those who followed the Archbishop of Vienne in preaching moderation. Among the Nobility there were many who supported the fat and fiery Duval d’Eprémesnil and the brilliant orator Jacques de Cazalès, a dragoon officer from a minor noble family in the south, in advocating an uncompromising stand in defence of their privileges. But there were also those, like the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt and the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, who, more accommodating and, incidentally, of more imposing pedigree, were prepared to compromise. There were equally pronounced differences among the members of the Third Estate, some of whom believed that their ends should be obtained by agreement with the King and with the the other two orders, and others of whom insisted that there must be no compromise even at the risk of violence. The delegates from Brittany, for example, and many of those from Provence and Franche Comté, soon came to be recognized as the most uncompromising, while those from Dauphiné were generally far more moderate.

On Monday, 4 May, the deputies of all three orders came together for a procession through the streets of Versailles to a Mass of the Holy Spirit at the Church of Saint Louis. As on Saturday, the members of each order were separated and distinguished by their dress: the Third Estate, all wearing tricornes and clothed in plain, official suits of black cloth with cambric ruffs, led the way immediately behind the guard; the nobles followed them, splendidly attired in plumed hats, satin suits with lace ruffs, silver waistcoats and silk cloaks, swords hanging from their belts. Lagging behind the rest, as though unwilling to be associated with them, was the Duc d’Orléans, the debauched, hard-drinking and witty demagogic Prince of the blood, who was believed to have designs on the throne and certainly spent a great deal of money in making himself popular with the people, and in the furtherance of mysterious plots. Behind him marched the parish priests in black habits, followed by the bishops in their episcopal robes and the King’s musicians. ‘Neither the King nor the Queen appear too well pleased,’ wrote Gouverneur Morris, soon to become American Minister in Paris and that day a guest at Versailles of the Intendant of the Royal Gardens. ‘The King is repeatedly saluted as he passes along with the Vive le Roi but the Queen receives not a single acclamation. She looks, however, with contempt on the scene in which she acts a part and seems to say, “For the moment I submit but I shall have my turn.”’

When she appeared in the church, sparkling with jewels, some deputies cheered but others murmured ‘Shame!’ for she had kept them waiting for no less than three hours. The King, however, was well received, pleasing the Third Estate by smiling approvingly at the end of the sermon, which had been given by the Bishop of Nancy who had taken the opportunity to deliver a lecture to the Court, the burden of which His Majesty had missed since he had fallen asleep.

The next day the meetings began. Various buildings had been set aside for the deputies, including the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs on the Avenue de Paris, which was normally used for storing theatrical scenery and costumes and was now specially decorated with tasselled hangings and gold and white painted columns, and a hall behind it in the Rue des Chantiers, which had recently been built for the Assembly of Notables and had just been enlarged and redecorated.

It was in this hall that the deputies of all three orders came together for the official opening of the convention. Gouverneur Morris was there, sitting on a cramped bench, to watch them arrive: ‘When M. Necker comes in he is loudly and repeatedly clapped and so is the Duke of Orleans, also a bishop who has long lived in his diocese and practised there what his profession enjoins…An old man who refused to dress in the costume prescribed [for the Third Estate] and who appears in his farmer’s habit, receives a long and loud plaudit…The King at length arrives…’ ‘He waddled in clumsily,’ the Comtesse de La Tour du Pin observed. ‘His movements were graceless and abrupt; and, as his sight was so poor and it was not customary to wear spectacles, he screwed up his face’ as he peered at the deputies.

He was wearing a suit of cloth-of-gold, a huge diamond in his hat which he carried in his hand. The Queen, accompanied by Charles de Barentin, Keeper of the Seals, followed him in a white silver-spangled dress, a heron plume in her now thinning hair. The King, welcomed by shouts of Vive le Roi!’ sat down on his velvet-covered throne and put on his plumed hat, a sign that the privileged orders might put on theirs. And, as they did so, the Third Estate, either unaware of the custom or in defiance of it, put theirs on, too. The King immediately, therefore, took his off again, all the deputies following suit. He then replaced his hat as the Queen sat down in an armchair next to him.

He thereupon rose to make a short address. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘The day I have been eagerly waiting for has at last arrived, and I find myself surrounded by the representatives of the nation which it is my glory to command…A general restlessness and an exaggerated desire for change have captured men’s minds and would end by leading public opinion completely astray were they not to be given proper direction by your wisdom and moderation.’ He made a brief allusion to the inequality of taxation, added that he hoped all three orders would cooperate with him for the good of the state, and sat down to respectful applause. Barentin then spoke, but he spoke so softly that few of his sentences could be heard, and those that were were most unimpressively delivered. The deputies, some of whom were plainly annoyed by his condemnation of the ‘false and exaggerated maxims’ of the recent spate of pamphlets, were thankful when he sat down, leaving it to Necker to explain in more detail the condition of the country’s finances. This Necker did at inordinate length, boring Madame de La Tour du Pin so much that the speech seemed ‘never ending’. Occasionally passing sheets of facts and figures to an assistant who read them out for him in a tedious monotone when his own voice failed, he spoke for over three hours. He detailed the present situation of the Treasury, propounded its past achievements, elaborated on its future prospects, but made only passing references to proposed measures of constitutional reform, largely limiting himself to giving vague advice and inviting the delegates to reflect upon the Government’s difficulties. No firm instructions were given either as to procedure or to the vital matter of voting. The speech was heard with a certain restlessness but politely and without interruption, and after it was over and the King arose to depart, there were loud cries of ‘Vive le Roi!’ To Gouverneur Morris’s surprise and satisfaction there were also cries of ‘Vive la Reine!’, the first he had heard in several months. The Queen had sat throughout the proceedings with ‘great dignity’, wrote Madame de La Tour du Pin, though ‘it was plain from the almost convulsive way in which she used her fan that she was very agitated’. She now acknowledged the cheers with a low curtsey; this produced a louder acclamation and another, lower curtsey.

Despite the polite cheers for the King and Queen, in which far from all the deputies joined, the Third Estate left the hall in a mood of obvious disappointment. ‘Necker,’ complained one of them, ‘said nothing at all about a constitution and seems to accept the division of the three orders.’

In 1614 each of the three orders had retired to examine the credentials of its deputies on its own. Now, in 1789, they were again expected to conform to this rule, and the next day both nobles and clergy, meeting in the halls allocated to them, began to do so; but the Third Estate contended that the credentials of every deputy should be examined at an assembly of the entire convention. They remained in the large hall in the Rue des Chantiers. No rostrum had yet been built there; and the public, who were freely admitted, crowded round the deputies, offering them advice, shaking them by the hand, clapping them on the back, cheering popular speakers, booing others. The confusion of the early debates was aggravated by the deputies not yet knowing one another, by conflicts between those who favoured conciliation and those who did not, by their disinclination to adopt any rules of procedure which might indicate that they were organized as a separate order and thus at the mercy of the combined voting power of the privileged orders. A dean was appointed to supervise the debates, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, a respected astronomer and member of the French Academy whose father had been a court painter and custodian of the royal art collection at Versailles. But he found it impossible to exercise much control over them.

By the end of the month it had at least been decided that a concerted effort must be made by the Commons to persuade the parish priests among the clergy to come to join them. There were good grounds for hope that many of these priests would respond with enthusiasm. It was certainly well known that they were quite out of sympathy with the more conservative of the prelates and that there had been bitter exchanges during debates in the clergy’s hall. An abbé who had spoken slightingly of the Third Estate had been roughly told by a priest to hold his tongue; another priest had forcefully reminded the bishops, ‘In this place, my lords, we are all equal’; a third told the reactionary Abbé Maury, ‘The village priests may not have the talents of Academicians but they have at least the sound common sense of villagers!’

Encouraged by these disputes among the clergy, a large delegation from the Third Estate, led by the enormously fat Gui Jean Baptiste Target, a deputy from Dauphiné, proceeded to the hall where the clergy were assembled. ‘The gentlemen of the Commons,’ announced Target, ‘invite the gentlemen of the clergy, in the name of the God of Peace and for the national interest, to meet them in their hall to consult upon the means of bringing about the concord which is so vital at this moment for the public welfare.’ A number of the clergy greeted these words with cheers and would have accepted the invitation immediately had not the more conservative amongst them insisted on discussing it first. The deputation thereupon returned to the Commons who decided to remain in session until the clergy’s answer arrived. Hours passed and the answer did not come. The invitation was repeated; the clergy replied that they needed further time to consider it; the Commons said they were prepared to wait all day and all night if necessary.

Alarmed by the overtures being made to the priests and by the growing unrest in Paris and Versailles which was exacerbated by food shortages, the bishops turned to the King and asked him to intervene. Consequently, on 4 June, Necker proposed that each order should examine the credentials of its own members but allow the others to raise objections when the results were announced. If no decision could be reached, the King was to act as arbitrator.

On the day that this proposal was announced, however, the Dauphin died at the age of eight. Overwhelmed with grief the King shut himself up in his rooms at Versailles then withdrew for a week to Marly. While he was away, the Parisian deputies, whose elections had been delayed, began to settle themselves into the rooms reserved for them at Versailles and to harden the Commons’ determination ‘to appear formidable in the eyes of their enemies’. Among the Parisian deputies was the Abbé Sieyès who proposed that the clergy and nobility should now be asked to join the Commons, that those who did not should be considered to have forfeited their rights as representatives – in other words, that the Third Estate should constitute itself the representative body of the nation as a whole without the King’s consent.

A roll on which the names of clergy and nobles willing to join the Commons was accordingly opened on 12 June. Over the next few days not a single noble put down his name; as an order they merely promised to consider the Third Estate’s request ‘with their most studied attention’. But on 13 June three curés from Poitou appeared at the entrance to the Commons’ hall. They agreed, they said, to having their names put down on the roll. Their words were greeted with an outburst of clapping and cheering as deputies rushed towards them, embracing them with tears in their eyes. The next day another six priests, and two days later a further ten, followed their example.

Encouraged by this break in the privileged orders’ ranks, Sieyès now proposed that, as the Third Estate represented ninety-six per cent of the nation, they should immediately start the work the country was waiting to see performed. As a first step the name of Estates General should be officially abandoned and the Third should confer upon itself a title that implied its unique authority.

The debate that ensued was stormy, and at the centre of the storm was a vehemently gesticulating figure with bloodshot eyes and a massive neck, the Comte de Mirabeau.

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti de Mirabeau was then forty years old. His great-grandfather, whose ancestors had been rich merchants of Marseilles, had been created a marquis after acting as a suitably indulgent host to King Louis XIV; his outspoken grandfather had been so badly wounded at Cassano in 1705 that, obliged thereafter to wear an arm in a sling and his head supported by a silver stock, he was wont to say that it was a battle in which he had lost his life; his father had also served as a soldier for a time, but had resigned his commission early to become a farmer and the author of various radical books, which brought upon him the disfavour of the Government who required him to remain upon his farm to the south of Fontainebleau.

Honoré, his eldest surviving son, was born here in 1749 with two teeth in his mouth and an inexhaustible energy which was to be the despair of his family and household. At the age of three he contracted smallpox which left his face deeply pitted for life and thus increased his ugliness and contributed to the dislike his difficult father felt for him. After attending a military school in Paris he received a commission in the cavalry regiment which his grandfather had once commanded, but, like his father, he did not remain in the army long. Unattractive as his appearance was, his vivacity, charm, adventurous high spirits and entertaining conversation made him attractive to women for whom he himself had a voracious sexual appetite, making love to anyone who would have him and committing incest, so it was said, with his sister. A young lady to whom his colonel was attached fell in love with him and this led to a scandal which ended with his being imprisoned on the Île of Ré. In the hope that he might settle down and restore the family fortunes, he was, upon his release, married to the plain and extremely rich daughter of the Marquis de Marignane from whom he soon parted and, deep in debt, was incarcerated in prison once again. Removed from the Château d’If to a less rigorous confinement near Pontarlier, he made use of his relative freedom to visit the town where he was introduced into the house of a local nobleman whose pretty if rather vapid and ill-educated wife, Marie-Thérèse de Monnier, or Sophie, as he called her, fell helplessly in love with him. He fled to Switzerland where Sophie joined him; from Switzerland they travelled together to Holland where he made a precarious living by journalism and where he heard that he had been sentenced to death for rapt et vol at Pontarlier and beheaded in effigy; and from Holland he was brought back to France by the police and imprisoned yet again at Vincennes.

At Vincennes he occupied his time in writing passionate letters to Sophie and the obscene Erotica biblion as well as political works of a less self-indulgent nature, including his celebrated attack on prison abuses, Lettres de cachet, which was published after his release from Vincennes in 1782 and translated into English in 1787. This treatise, which led to the closure of the prison of Vincennes, added some lustre to his literary reputation, but he was otherwise regarded with as widespread misgiving as ever. He grew tired of Sophie, who consoled herself with a young army officer and then committed suicide, while he began an affair with Madame de Nehra, the daughter of a Dutch statesman, whom he was to desert in turn for Madame Lejay. At the same time he became involved in no less than three scandalous law suits, after which he had to leave France again, first for Holland, then for England.

‘He had a tall, square, heavy figure,’ wrote someone who met him at a dinner party at about this time. ‘The abnormally large size of his head [in which the eyes were unnaturally protuberant] was exaggerated by a mass of curled and powdered hair. He wore evening dress with enormous buttons of coloured stone, and the buttons of his shoes were equally large. His whole costume was remarkable for an extravagant fashionableness which went well beyond the bounds of good taste…He had a reserved expression, but his eyes were full of fire. Trying to be polite, he bowed too low, and his first words were pretentious and rather vulgar compliments.’

‘His vanity was certainly excessive,’ added another observer, the fastidious and percipient law reformer, Sir Samuel Romilly, who translated one of Mirabeau’s political theses into English, ‘and, like many of his countrymen who were active in the calamitous Revolution which afterwards took place, not sufficiently scrupulous about the means by which [the reform of society] was to be accomplished.’ Yet, for all his manifest faults, Mirabeau, ‘in his public conduct as well as in his writings, was desirous of doing good…His ambition was of the noblest kind and he proposed to himself the noblest ends.’

Certainly, if he was rude and provocative, argumentative, overbearing and vain, immoral and unscrupulous both with regard to women and to money, Mirabeau was une force de la nature who could not be disregarded. ‘I am a mad dog,’ he said himself, ‘from whose bites despotism and privilege will die.’ Charming when he chose to be, a gifted conversationalist, possessed of a rare gift for mastering complex issues, and combining a powerful intelligence with a deep knowledge of the ways of the world, Mirabeau was bound to be one of the most dominant figures in the Third Estate to which, having been rejected by his own order, he was elected as deputy for Aix. He was also one of the most distrusted. The Comtesse de La Tour du Pin described in her memoirs the effect he had upon the other deputies when he first appeared amongst them:

He entered the Chamber alone and took his place near the middle of the rows of backless benches which stretched one behind the other. There arose a very low but widespread murmur – a susurro–and the deputies already seated in front of him moved one bench forward, while those behind him moved back a little. He thus remained isolated in the middle of a very obvious space. Smiling contemptuously, he sat down.

During the debate on the Third Estate’s new title he aroused further distrust by his apparent desire to stem the tide of feeling that was pushing the Commons towards appropriation of complete sovereignty to itself. He proposed that the Third Estate should rename themselves ‘Representatives of the French People’, and was immediately asked whether he would have translated ‘people’ as populus, meaning the whole nation including the privileged orders, or – what was, in fact, his intention – as plebs, meaning the Commons alone. Made aware of the ambiguity in Mirabeau’s title, the Third Estate then turned to the consideration of other names, and tempers rose as some deputies made suggestions that others considered inappropriate or misleading. Voices grew higher and more angry, while outside the hall a summer storm raged, the wind howling at the windows. Bailly was urged to bring the session to a close, but he remained in his place, cool and imperturbable, until the tempest subsided and the most violent of the protesters left the hall. He then proposed that the rest of the deputies should also withdraw to meet again in calmer mood the following morning.

It was in such an atmosphere of confusion and uproar that so many of the debates were conducted. Often a hundred or so deputies were on their feet at the same time; and usually there was an impatient throng of them pushing against each other by the iron steps that led up to the rostrum. According to Arthur Young, who occasionally joined the noisy spectators in the public galleries, ‘Monsieur Bailly was absolutely without power to keep order’. There were still no rules of procedure and when it was suggested that lessons might be learned from the House of Commons in London, the proposal was rejected contemptuously as yet another example of that intolerable anglomania which the Comtesse de La Tour du Pin said had become so extreme at Court that people took to affecting English accents. So the debates remained uncontrolled: tedious speeches, prepared beforehand, were read out at length irrespective of whether or not they were relevant to the issues in dispute, petitioners arrived at the doors insisting that their grievances be immediately considered and from the galleries there came an almost continuous roar of approval or disapprobation and the occasional piece of rotten fruit.

When the debate on the Commons’ new title was resumed on 17 June, however, the atmosphere in the hall was less uproarious than usual. And when a deputy from Berry, prompted it seems by Sieyès, proposed the simple and explicit name ‘National Assembly’, it was approved by 491 votes to 89. On learning that this title had been assumed by the Third Estate, those of the clergy who wished to join them pressed harder than ever for union. A vote was taken on the issue, and as the result was announced, a priest threw open one of the windows of the hall and shouted to the crowds waiting expectantly outside, ‘Won! Won!’ Soon the bishops and the priests who had voted in favour of the motion came out of the hall to be surrounded by a wildly cheering throng who bore them away triumphantly, many of them in tears, shouting, ‘Long live the good bishops! Long live the priests!’

The next day, when the members of the self-styled National Assembly met to continue their deliberations, they found the door of their hall locked against them. Pressed by the Queen and by his family to make a stand against the revolutionary behaviour of the Third Estate, the King had decided to hold a meeting of all three orders, a séance royale, presided over by himself, and to announce that the actions of the Commons were illegal. In the meantime they and the clergy must be prevented from meeting.

But, undeterred by the locked doors of their hall, and at the suggestion of Dr Joseph Ignace Guillotin, one of the Paris deputies, most of the members of the National Assembly hurried off to an indoor tennis-court nearby. It was a large building with bare walls and a blue ceiling picked out with golden fleurs-de-lis. There were no seats other than a bench which was used as a desk, and an armchair which was offered to Bailly who refused it. Outside a huge crowd of people, who had followed the deputies from their locked hall, shouted ‘Vive l’Assemblée!’ by way of encouragement. Some of them demanded admittance, but two deputies were posted at the door to prevent them. The Commons’ deliberations, they were told, must be continued without interruption or distraction. Soon the tennis-court keeper arrived to take over the duties of doorkeeper, and the two deputies returned inside the building. Here Jean-Joseph Mounier, a handsome young barrister from Grenoble whose weak voice had obliged him to give up his practice, silenced talk of withdrawing to Paris to seek the protection of the people by declaring that they must all take an oath ‘never to separate’ until an acceptable constitution was established ‘on solid foundations’. With only a single exception the delegates came forward, their arms raised in dramatic salute, to take the oath before the tall figure of Jean-Sylvain Bailly who stood on a table made from a door wrenched off its hinges. They then took it in turns to sign a document on which the words of the oath had been inscribed. The one dissentient deputy, Martin d’Auch, insisted on signing his name with the word ‘opposant’ next to it. Cries of protest were raised against him, and Bailly tried to persuade him that, while he was perfectly entitled to refuse to sign the declaration, he could not register his opposition to it. But d’Auch refused to give way and was eventually allowed to register his dissent ‘out of respect for the liberty which all members of the Assembly enjoyed’.

The Court was now thoroughly alarmed, and the King, for the moment rejecting the idea of forceful coercion though still convinced that the acts of the Third Estate must be declared null and void, was ready to make some concessions at the séance royale. But this meeting, announced for 22 June, had to be postponed to allow time for the removal of the public galleries in which demonstrations by unruly spectators might have taken place. The Third Estate were able to take advantage of the delay by welcoming the majority of the clergy into their new meeting-place, the Church of Saint Louis, whose doors had been opened for them by the parish priest when the Comte d’Artois thought he would deny them a place of meeting by booking the tennis-court for a game. Two nobles from Dauphiné also joined them and were greeted with enthusiastic applause. These were soon followed by a group of nobles from Guyenne.

Three days after the oaths had been taken in the tennis-court, on 23 June, the Commons walked down the Rue des Chantiers for the séance royale. They found the door of the hall locked against them. Bailly knocked for a long time in vain. At length it was opened. He was told that they had arrived too early, and the door was shut again in his face. It was now pouring with rain and the deputies were about to go away when Bailly knocked yet again. At last they were admitted and hurried into the hall. One of them, who had noticed the ranks of soldiers on guard duty outside, recalled how oppressive was the atmosphere, how bedraggled and dispirited his colleagues looked.

The King arrived to a fanfare of trumpets and the rolling of drums, escorted by cavalry and a company of Household Guards. He ‘affected to smile,’ wrote one observer, ‘but it was with an ill grace. The ironical gaiety of the Comte d’Artois seemed much more natural. He had the air of one riding in triumph and leading the King bound as his captive.’ The King was welcomed with cheers by the people outside the hall and by most of the nobility and clergy as he entered it. The Commons, though, were silent.

Barentin stood up, after a short introductory speech by the King, to define the rules by which the three orders’ future sessions should be governed. Then the concessions which the monarchy was prepared to make were enumerated: there were to be various fiscal reforms; consideration was to be given to the abolition of the hated lettres de cachet–letters signed by the King, countersigned by a minister and stamped with the royal seal, by which men could be subjected to imprisonment without trial or the opportunity of defence; steps were to be taken towards the establishment of a free press; there were to be no taxes ‘without the consent of the nation’s representatives’. Yet, despite this apparent abandonment of Bourbon absolutism, there were so many reservations in the royal declaration that it was clear that the ancien règime was not to be dismantled. And, as though to emphasize this, the wording of the King’s speech had been more threatening than conciliatory. Still grieving for the loss of his son, he ‘had appeared sad and gloomy’, and had sounded flat and unconvincing, yet he made it clear all the same that the separateness of the orders and the existing social hierarchy were to be maintained, that any reforms which were to come would be granted by himself and not won by demand. ‘If you abandon me in this great enterprise,’ he concluded, ‘then I will work alone for the welfare of my peoples – I will consider myself alone their true representative…None of your plans or proceedings can become law without my express approval…I command you to disperse at once and to proceed tomorrow morning to the separate rooms set aside for your orders so that you may resume your deliberations.’

With these words he walked out of the hall, followed by the Comte d’Artois, looking ‘full of pride’, by the contented nobles, who had been assured of their continuing privileges, and by some of the clergy, leaving it free for further debate by the Commons unrestrained by his presence. Mirabeau seized his opportunity. ‘Gentlemen,’ he called, rising to his feet, his powerful voice echoing round the walls while trumpets sounded outside as the royal coach rattled away. ‘We are being dictated to in an insulting manner…I demand that you assume your legislative powers and adhere to the faith of your oath. It allows us to disband only after we have made the Constitution.’

The twenty-seven-year-old Grand Master of the Ceremonies, Henri-Éverard de Dreux Brézé, interrupted him to remind him of the King’s order to disperse. But Mirabeau stood his ground. ‘Yes, Sir,’ he replied. ‘We have heard the orders that the King has been advised to give. But you have no right to speak here. Go tell your master that we are here by the will of the people and that we shall not stir from our seats unless forced to do by bayonets.’ Sieyès and Bailly both supported him. ‘The assembled nation,’ Bailly asserted, ‘cannot be given orders.’ The question of their inviolability was then put to the vote and carried by 493 votes to 34.

According to the Duc d’Orléans, Brézé then rushed off to report to the King what had happened; and ‘the King went pale with anger and uttered strong oaths. “Well then, clear them out by force,” he ordered…Brézé returned to carry out this order but found that the Deputies had by then dispersed.’ Other witnesses, however, reported that the King responded to the Third Estate’s revolt with weary resignation, saying ‘Eh bien, foutre! Qu’ils restent. Well, damn it, let them stay.’ Certainly, on 27 June, when most of the clergy and forty-seven of the nobility led by the Duc d’Orlèans had joined the National Assembly, he decided that he would have to give his approval to a measure which he felt no longer able to prevent. After news had been received from Paris that unless he authorized joint meetings of all three orders, a mob thirty thousand strong would besiege the palace, he asked the remaining clergy and the rest of the nobility to follow the example of their colleagues.

The first stage of the Revolution was over and had been achieved without bloodshed. ‘History,’ Mirabeau proudly declared, ‘has too often recounted the actions of nothing more than wild animals, among which at long intervals we can pick out some heroes. Now we are given hope that we are beginning the history of man.’

But while the National Assembly, under the Presidency of the Archbishop of Vienne, turned to the business of framing a constitution, the King turned to the army to save him from forces over which he was losing all control. He ordered six regiments up from the eastern frontier, then, following riots in Paris, another ten. As these troops converged upon Paris and Versailles the atmosphere in the capital and in the country at large grew ever more tense. There were increasingly frequent outbreaks of violence, a military prison was invaded by the mob, passers-by who declined to declare their support of the Third Estate were attacked in the streets. As the price of bread rose, there were riots in protest against the landowners, tithe-owners and merchants who were held responsible. In many towns the liberal-minded upper bourgeoisie encouraged the petite bourgeoisie to voice their protests against the reactionary attitudes of the aristocracy. They urged them to provide a lead for the journeymen and workers, to ensure that the hopes of a fairer society aroused by the calling of the Estates General would not be shattered so soon.

‘Oh my fellow-citizens,’ ran one of the numerous pamphlets published at this time and written by a member of the upper bourgeoisie, a doctor, ‘keep close watch on the conduct of the King’s Ministers…Their aim is to dissolve our National Assembly, and the only means whereby they can do so is civil war. In private, Ministers are talking of…sending against you a formidable force of soldiers and bayonets!’

‘A large number of troops already surround us,’ Mirabeau declared in a violent speech on 8 July. ‘More are arriving each day. Artillery are being brought up…These preparations for war are obvious to anyone and fill every heart with indignation.’

Already the troops, mostly foreign mercenaries, had reached the high ground around Paris and were dispatched to protect strategic points such as the bridges of Sèvres and St Cloud and the Royal Treasury. The National Assembly protested at these movements, asking why a King, who was loved by twenty-five million Frenchmen, should surround the throne ‘at such great expense with several thousand foreigners’. The King replied that the troops were in Paris to protect it from disorder, not to overawe it, but his words were rendered suspect by his dismissal of Necker whose place was filled by the sternly conservative Baron de Breteuil. To supervise the military actions, the experienced Maréchal de Broglie, a confirmed royalist, had already been summoned from Alsace to take over the Ministry of War.

The news of the dismissal of Necker caused the utmost consternation amongst the 600,000 people of Paris: treasury notes slumped in value, stockbrokers held an emergency meeting and closed the Stock Exchange, financiers and investors spoke gloomily of bankruptcy, artisans, journeymen and workers feared that the price of bread which had already almost doubled within the past two months would become more expensive still. They had long suspected that the aristocrats and land-owners had advocated the hoarding of grain so as to destroy the Third Estate. Now their suspicions seemed fully justified.

Concerned to defend property against the mobs that were rampaging about the town, breaking into gunsmiths’ and sword-cutlers’ shops and threatening the houses of the richer citizens, the Electors who had made the final selection of the Parisian deputies in the Estates General met at the Hôtel de Ville. Here they established themselves as an unofficial municipal authority and decided to organize a militia. Mostly well-to-do themselves – of the 379 men who attended the meeting the majority were lawyers, doctors and merchants – they agreed that the militia, soon to be called the National Guard, should be a bourgeois body composed only of respectable citizens prepared to serve one day in four, more than most wage-earners could afford to do.

As one Elector observed ‘the situation in Paris [was] becoming highly ominous’. In the Place Vendôme a band of demonstrators hurled stones at the troops of the Royal Allemand Regiment; near the Tuileries a regiment of dragoons, commanded by the Prince de Lambesc, were also stoned and bombarded with garden chairs. Two companies of Gardes-françaises, confined to barracks for insubordination, broke out and rushed off shouting, ‘We are the soldiers of the nation! Long live the Third Estate!’ They were arrested and incarcerated in the Abbaye prison but were released by the mob. Other mobs marched through the streets pillaging bakers’ shops and threatening to burn down the theatres if they did not close immediately, since people had no right to enjoy themselves in the midst of public misfortunes. Wax busts of Necker and the Duc d’Orléans, borrowed from Curtius’s waxworks, were paraded about accompanied by black and white standards, symbols of ‘mourning for the disgrace of an idolized Minister’. And in the gardens of the Palais Royal huge crowds collected. These gardens, which were surrounded by some of the most expensive shops and brothels in Europe and which had been thrown open to the public by the Duc d’Orléans, had long been the haunt not only of men-about-town and ladies of fashion but also of political agitators and public orators, and so it was here that people anxious for news, eager to spread rumours, or hungry for excitement naturally gathered. Most of them were delighted now to learn that the detested customs barriers which encircled Paris in order to exact heavy tolls upon all meat, wines, vegetables and other commodities entering the city, had been destroyed.

Among the crowd, standing on a table outside one of the cafes, was a tall young lawyer with a yellowish complexion and long, curly hair, Camille Desmoulins. The son of an official from Guise, Desmoulins had been admitted to the bar four years before, but a painful stammer as well as an unattractive manner and appearance had prevented his obtaining many briefs. He was then living in Paris in a poverty which his copying of legal documents and his authorship of several radical pamphlets had not done much to alleviate. There was, however, little trace of any impediment in his speech now as he excitedly harangued the people around him, referring to the dismissal of Necker as ‘the tocsin for the St Bartholomew of the patriots’, and calling them to arms and to the barricades. He had recently had a good deal of practice at this kind of demagogy.

It’s simpler to go to the Palais Royal [he told his father, having failed to get elected to the Assembly], because you don’t have to ask the President’s permission to speak or to wait your turn for a couple of hours. One proposes one’s own motion. It is supported and the audience gets the speaker to stand on a chair. If he is applauded he calls the crowd to order; if he is booed or whistled at, he steps down. The Romans ran their forum this way…At the Palais Royal the patriots form a great chain with cavalry men, dragoons, chasseurs, Swiss guards, artillerymen, putting their arms round them, pouring out money in making them drunk or toasting the health of the Nation.

On this occasion Desmoulins, reckless, immature and uncontrollably passionate, drew two pistols from beneath his coat, declaring that he would never fall alive into the hands of the police who were closely watching his movements. He climbed down from the table into the arms of the crowd who loudly repeated his call ‘To arms!’ on every side. He had fastened a green ribbon to his hat as an emblem of spring and hope and liberty. And he urged everyone else to wear some sort of green cockade in token of their support for the ‘common cause’. Hundreds did so, some of them pulling off the leaves of the horse chestnut trees for the purpose, until, as Gouverneur Morris discovered, it became dangerous to be seen out of doors without a hat garnished with foliage. Then they all marched off into the city to search for arms. The crowd was becoming an irresistible force.