One Vote per Estate or One per Deputy? Versailles, 1789

Who Speaks for France? Versailles, 1789

1For 175 years, from 1614 to 1789, no French king called the Estates-General, an assembly of representatives from the three estates, or orders, of French society. Louis XIV and the kings after him ruled as absolute monarchs. They made laws, raised taxes and named judges without asking any assembly, and royal censors decided which books could be printed.

2During those years, Enlightenment writers questioned this kind of rule. John Locke had argued that people have natural rights and that a government's power comes from the consent of the governed. Montesquieu warned that liberty is lost when the same person makes the laws, carries them out and judges cases. Rousseau wrote that the highest power belongs to the people as a whole. Many educated French readers discussed these ideas.

3By 1788 the French government was nearly bankrupt, partly from the cost of wars, including its help to the Americans in their war for independence. Louis XVI agreed to call the Estates-General to meet at Versailles in May 1789. The First Estate was the clergy, the Second Estate the nobles, and the Third Estate everyone else, from rich lawyers and merchants to peasants and city workers. Each estate elected its own deputies. The king allowed the Third Estate twice as many deputies as each of the others, but by old custom each estate would meet apart and cast one vote as a group.

4In January 1789 a priest named Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès published a pamphlet called What Is the Third Estate? It was reprinted many times and widely read. Although he was a member of the clergy, Sieyès was later elected as a deputy of the Third Estate.

5At Versailles the Third Estate's deputies refused to meet as a separate order. They asked all the deputies to meet together and vote as individuals, one vote per deputy. On June 17, 1789, they declared themselves the National Assembly, saying that they represented the nation. Three days later, finding their meeting hall locked, they gathered on an indoor tennis court nearby and swore not to separate until they had written a constitution for France. Some clergy and a few nobles joined them, and on June 27 the king ordered the rest of the clergy and nobles to join the Assembly.