What was an old problem the National Assembly still faced?

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• French king; was forced to accept August Decrees and Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen when angry mob of women stormed Versailles in 1789

• Director general of finance sacked by Louis XVI in 1789; public outrage prompted his reinstatement

• Nobleman who sided with National Assembly and created French National Guard

Three days after splitting from the Estates-General, the delegates from the Third Estate (now the National Assembly) found themselves locked out of the usual meeting hall and convened on a nearby tennis court instead. There, all but one of the members took the Tennis Court Oath, which stated simply that the group would remain indissoluble until it had succeeded in creating a new national constitution.

Upon hearing of the National Assembly’s formation, King Louis XVI held a general gathering in which the government attempted to intimidate the Third Estate into submission. The assembly, however, had grown too strong, and the king was forced to recognize the group. Parisians had received word of the upheaval, and revolutionary energy coursed through the city. Inspired by the National Assembly, commoners rioted in protest of rising prices. Fearing violence, the king had troops surround his palace at Versailles.

The Bastille

Blaming him for the failure of the Estates-General, Louis XVI once again dismissed Director General of Finance Jacques Necker. Necker was a very popular figure, and when word of the dismissal reached the public, hostilities spiked yet again. In light of the rising tension, a scramble for arms broke out, and on July 13, 1789, revolutionaries raided the Paris town hall in pursuit of arms. There they found few weapons but plenty of gunpowder. The next day, upon realizing that it contained a large armory, citizens on the side of the National Assembly stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress and prison in Paris.

Although the weapons were useful, the storming of the Bastille was more symbolic than it was necessary for the revolutionary cause. The revolutionaries faced little immediate threat and had such intimidating numbers that they were capable of nonviolent coercion. By storming one of Paris’s most notorious state prisons and hoarding weapons, however, the revolutionaries gained a symbolic victory over the Old Regime and conveyed the message that they were not to be trifled with.

Lafayette and the National Guard

As the assembly secured control over the capital, it seemed as if peace might still prevail: the previous governmental council was exiled, and Necker was reinstated. Assembly members assumed top government positions in Paris, and even the king himself traveled to Paris in revolutionary garb to voice his support. To bolster the defense of the assembly, the Marquis de Lafayette, a noble, assembled a collection of citizens into the French National Guard. Although some blood had already been shed, the Revolution seemed to be subsiding and safely in the hands of the people.

The Great Fear

For all the developments that were taking place in Paris, the majority of the conflicts erupted in the struggling countryside. Peasants and farmers alike, who had been suffering under high prices and unfair feudal contracts, began to wreak havoc in rural France. After hearing word of the Third Estate’s mistreatment by the Estates-General, and feeding off of the infectious revolutionary spirit that permeated France, the peasants amplified their attacks in the countryside over the span of a few weeks, sparking a hysteria dubbed the Great Fear. Starting around July 20, 1789, and continuing through the first days of August, the Great Fear spread through sporadic pockets of the French countryside. Peasants attacked country manors and estates, in some cases burning them down in an attempt to escape their feudal obligations.

National Assembly

How was it first formed?

Different Names

Over the course of the French Revolution, the powers and the name of the revolutionary assembly changed. Here is a timeline of the name changes:

• National Assembly (June 13, 1789 - July 9, 1789)
• National Constituent Assembly (July 9, 1789 - September 30, 1791)
• Legislative Assembly (October 1, 1791 - September 20, 1792)
• National Convention (September 20, 1792 - November 2, 1795)
• Council of Ancients/Council of Five Hundred (November 2, 1795 - November 10, 1799)

Left and Right Politics

Interesting Facts about the National Assembly during the French Revolution

• The members of the assembly were called deputies. They didn't really represent all the people. They were generally wealthy commoners elected by other wealthy commoners.
• The assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August of 1789. Thomas Jefferson and Lafayette both influenced the document.
• There were 745 members of the Legislative Assembly.
• When the king ordered the National Assembly to disperse, they met at a tennis court where they swore an oath (called the Tennis Court Oath) to keep meeting until the king met their demands.

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Works Cited

History >> French Revolution

Revolutionary assembly in France from June to July 1789

Not to be confused with the National Assembly of France, the lower house of the Parliament of the French Fifth Republic.

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National Assembly

Assemblée nationale

Mirabeau's defiance in front of the marquis de Dreux-Brézé on 23 June 1789

Unicameral

During the French Revolution, the National Assembly (French: Assemblée nationale), which existed from 17 June 1789 to 29 September 1791,[1] was a revolutionary assembly formed by the representatives of the Third Estate (commoners) of the Estates-General. Thereafter (until replaced by the Legislative Assembly on 30 Sept 1791), it was known as the National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée nationale constituante), although the shorter form was favored.

Background

Main article: Estates-General of 1789

The Estates-General had been called on 5 May 1789 to manage France's financial crisis, but promptly fell to squabbling over its own structure. Its members had been elected to represent the estates of the realm: the 1st Estate (the clergy), the 2nd Estate (the nobility) and the 3rd Estate (which, in theory, represented all of the commoners and, in practice, represented the bourgeoisie). The Third Estate had been granted "double representation"—that is, twice as many delegates as each of the other feudal estates—but at the opening session on 5 May 1789 was informed that all voting would be "by power" not "by head", so the double representation would be meaningless in terms of power. They refused this and proceeded to meet separately.[2][3]

Shuttle diplomacy among the estates continued without success until 27 May; on 28 May, the representatives of the 3rd Estate began to meet on their own,[3] calling themselves the Communes ("Commons") and proceeding with their "verification of powers" independently of the other bodies; from 13 June to 17 June they were gradually joined by some of the nobles and the majority of the clergy as well as other people such as the peasants. On 17 June this group began to call itself the National Assembly.[citation needed]

The King resists

Jacques Necker, finance minister of Louis XVI, had earlier proposed that the king hold a Séance Royale (Royal Session) in an attempt to reconcile the divided Estates. The king agreed; but none of the three orders were formally notified of the decision to hold a Royal Session. All debates were to be put on hold until the séance royale took place.[4]

Events soon overtook Necker's complex scheme of giving in to the Communes on some points while holding firm on others. No longer interested in Necker's advice, Louis XVI, under the influence of the courtiers of his privy council, resolved to go in state to the Assembly, annul its decrees, command the separation of the orders, and dictate the reforms to be effected by the restored Estates-General. On 19 June he ordered the Salle des États, the hall where the National Assembly met, closed, and remained at Marly for several days while he prepared his address.[5]

Confrontation and recognition

Two days later, also deprived of use of the tennis court that they had been using as an improvised meeting place, the National Assembly met in the Church of Saint Louis, where the majority of the representatives of the clergy joined them: efforts to restore the old order had served only to accelerate events. When, on 23 June in accord with his plan, the king finally addressed the representatives of all three estates, he encountered a stony silence. He concluded by ordering all to disperse. The nobles and clergy obeyed; the deputies of the common people remained seated in a silence finally broken by Mirabeau, whose speech culminated, "A military force surrounds the assembly! Where are the enemies of the nation? Is Catiline at our gates? I demand, investing yourselves with your dignity, with your legislative power, you inclose yourselves within the religion of your oath. It does not permit you to separate till you have formed a constitution." The deputies stood firm.[3]

Necker, conspicuous by his absence from the royal party on that day, found himself in disgrace with Louis, but back in the good graces of the National Assembly. Those of the clergy who had joined the Assembly at the church of Saint Louis remained in the Assembly; forty-seven members of the nobility, including the Duke of Orléans, soon joined them; by 27 June the royal party had overtly given in, although the likelihood of a military counter-coup remained in the air. The French military began to arrive in large numbers around Paris and Versailles.[citation needed]

Royal session of 23 June 1789

In the séance royale of 23 June the King granted a Charte octroyée, a constitution granted of the royal favour, which affirmed, subject to the traditional limitations, the right of separate deliberation for the three orders, which constitutionally formed three chambers. This move failed; soon 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 had ceased to exist, having become the National Assembly (and after 9 July 1789, the National Constituent Assembly), though these bodies consisted of the same deputies elected by the separate orders.[citation needed]

Reconstitution

Messages of support poured into the Assembly from Paris and other French cities. On 9 July 1789, the Assembly, reconstituting itself as the National Constituent Assembly, addressed the king in polite but firm terms, requesting the removal of the troops (which now included foreign regiments, who showed far greater obedience to the king than did his French troops), but Louis declared that he alone could judge the need for troops, and assured them that the troops had deployed strictly as a precautionary measure. Louis "offered" to move the assembly to Noyon or Soissons: that is to say, to place it between two armies and deprive it of the support of the Parisian people. Public outrage over this troop presence precipitated the Storming of the Bastille, beginning the next phase of the Revolution.

See also

• List of members of the National Constituent Assembly of 1789

References

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

1. ^ "1789-1791: The Revolution | Archives & Special Collections". asc.library.carleton.ca. Retrieved 14 July 2021.
2. ^ The First Revolution Archived 2007-04-27 at the Wayback Machine, Revolution and After: Tragedies and Forces, World Civilizations: An Internet Classroom and Anthology, Washington State University. Accessed online 14 March 2007.
3. ^ a b c Mignet, Chapter 1
4. ^ von Guttner, Darius (2015). The French Revolution. Nelson Cengage. p. 70.
5. ^ SparkNotes: the French Revolution (1789–1799): The National Assembly: 1789–1791

Further reading

• Jon Elster. 2020. France before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime. Princeton University Press
• Montague, Francis Charles (1911). "French Revolution, The" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 11 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 154–177.
• This article incorporates text from the public domain History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.

External links

• History of the National Assembly
• National Assembly (French Revolution)

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