The decision was taken: 5,000,000 Frenchmen, of whom 100,000were ecclesiastics and 150,000 nobles, sent their representatives.There were in all 1,200 deputies, of whom 578were of the Third Estate, consisting chiefly of magistrates, advocates, and physicians.Of the 300 deputies of the clergy, 200, of plebeian origin, threw in their lot with the Third Estate against the nobility and clergy.
From the first sessions a psychological conflict broke out between the deputies of different social conditions and (therefore) different mentalities.The magnificent costumes of the privileged deputies contrasted in a humiliating fashion with the sombre fashions of the Third Estate.
At the first session the members of the nobility and the clergy were covered, according to the prerogatives of their class, before the king.Those of the Third Estate wished to imitate them, but the privileged members protested.On the following day more protests of wounded self-love were heard.The deputies of the Third Estate invited those of the nobility and the clergy who were sitting in separate halls to join them for the verification of their powers.The nobles refused.The negotiations lasted more than a month.Finally, the deputies of the Third Estate, on the proposition of the Abbe Sieyes, considering that they represented 95 per cent.of the nation, declared themselves constituted as a National Assembly.From that moment the Revolution pursued its course.
3.The Constituent Assembly.
The power of a political assembly resides, above all, in the weakness of its adversaries.Astonished by the slight resistance encountered, and carried away by the ascendancy of a handful of orators, the Constituent Assembly, from its earliest sessions, spoke and acted as a sovereign body.Notably it arrogated to itself the power of decreeing imposts, a serious encroachment upon the prerogatives of the royal power.
The resistance of Louis XVI.was feeble enough.He simply had the hall in which the States assembled closed.The deputies then met in the hall of the tennis-court, and took the oath that they would not separate until the Constitution of the kingdom was an established fact.
The majority of the deputies of the clergy went with them.The king revoked the decision of the Assembly, and ordered the deputies to retire.The Marquis de Dreux-Breze, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, having invited them to obey the order of the sovereign, the President of the Assembly declared ``that the nation assembled cannot receive orders,'' and Mirabeau replied to the envoy of the sovereign that, being united by the will of the people, the Assembly would only withdraw at the point of the bayonet.Again the king gave way.
On the 9th of June the meeting of deputies took the title of the Constituent Assembly.For the first time in centuries the king was forced to recognise the existence of a new power, formerly ignored--that of the people, represented by its elected representatives.The absolute monarchy was no more.
Feeling himself more and more seriously threatened, Louis XVI.
summoned to Versailles a number of regiments composed of foreign mercenaries.The Assembly demanded the withdrawal of the troops.
The king refused, and dismissed Necker, replacing him by the Marshal de Broglie, reputed to be an extremely authoritative person.
But the Assembly had able supporters.Camille Desmoulins and others harangued the crowd in all directions, calling it to the defence of liberty.They sounded the tocsin, organised a militia of 12,000 men, took muskets and cannon from the Invalides, and on the 14th of July the armed bands marched upon the Bastille.The fortress, barely defended, capitulated in a few hours.Seven prisoners were found within it, of whom one was an idiot and four were accused of forgery.
The Bastille, the prison of many victims of arbitrary power, symbolised the royal power to many minds; but the people who demolished it had not suffered by it.Scarcely any but members of the nobility were imprisoned there.
The influence exercised by the taking of this fortress has continued to our days.Serious historians like M.Rambaud assure us that ``the taking of the Bastille is a culminating fact in the history, not of France only but of all Europe, and inaugurates a new epoch in the history of the world.''
Such credulity is a little excessive.The importance of the event lay simply in the psychological fact that for the first time the people received an obvious proof of the weakness of an authority which had lately been formidable.
When the principle of authority is injured in the public mind it dissolves very rapidly.What might not one demand of a king who could not defend his principal fortress against popular attacks?
The master regarded as all-powerful had ceased to be so.
The taking of the Bastille was the beginning of one of those phenomena of mental contagion which abound in the history of the Revolution.The foreign mercenary troops, although they could scarcely be interested in the movement, began to show symptoms of mutiny.Louis XVI.was reduced to accepting their disbandment.
He recalled Necker, went to the Hotel de Ville, sanctioned by his presence the accomplished facts, and accepted from La Fayette, commandant of the National Guard, the new cockade of red, white, and blue which allied the colours of Paris to those of the king.
Although the riot which ended in the taking of the Bastille can by no means be regarded as ``a culminating fact in history,'' it does mark the precise moment of the commencement of popular government.The armed people thenceforth intervened daily in the deliberations of the revolutionary Assemblies, and seriously influenced their conduct.
