In my previous lecture, I was exploring the ways in which the calling of the Estates General, the formulation of the [FOREIGN] and the elections of deputies electrified the countryside. In this lecture I want to focus on other groups within the Third Estate, particularly the bourgeoisie, the middle classes and the menu peuple, the working people of cities like Paris. At the same time that the king had required members of the three estates to formulate their list of grievances for him, he also lifted constraints on freedom of the press, on freedom of publication, in order that the debates before the meeting of the Estates General might be free and open and fertile. One of the people who takes advantage of this most dramatically is this man. A clergyman, the Abbe Emmanuel Sieyes. A man of common birth. His family is by no means wealthy. He's a brilliant young man, who goes into the church but experiences frustration. Because the fact of his common birth meant that he was devoid of the aristocratic connections, the networks that might have facilitated his rise up the ecclesiastical hierarchy. By the age of 40, he has become a reasonably senior and very respected cleric. But he knows that he's never going to get a chance to be a bishop or an archbishop. He smoulders with resentment, and takes the opportunity, late in 1788, to write one of the most explosive documents of this period, a pamphlet called What is the Third Estate? Who then, he writes, would dare to say that the Third Estate does not contain everything needed to form a complete nation? It is like a strong, robust man. One of whose arms is still enchained. If the privileged order were removed, the nation would not be something less, but something more. So what is the Third Estate? Everything, but an everything shackled and oppressed. What would it be without the privileged order? Everything, but an everything free and flourishing. Now as we know, the Third Estate represented 99% of the French population. And what Sieyes is effectively saying is it can govern itself, it can be the nation. But it's interesting also that he refers to the privileged order, to just one order. Because what he's doing there is saying, there may be two privileged orders, the clergy and the nobility. But in fact, there is only one, and that is the nobility. Because the senior clergy in my own estate, the clergy of the clergy, are all nobles. So that effectively the division that he sees in French society is between a privileged nobility on the one hand and the mass of the commons on the other, including parish clergy like himself. Sieyes, as a member of the First Estate, would have been eligible to stand for election to the Estates General, and to appear at the Estates General in his ecclesiastical finery. In fact, he opts to stand as a Third Estate or commoner deputy in Paris. And he just gets there. He's the last elected of the 20 deputies. And like his fellow Third Estate deputies, he's expected to attend the opening of the Estates General in May, 1789 dressed in sober black costume. The members of the third state, the deputies who are overwhelmingly professional men, lawyers, doctors, officials and so on, are made to wait outside the meeting hall in Versailles while the members of the nobility and the clergy file in in their finery. It's raining, and certainly the reports that we have of what the Third Estate deputies are saying to themselves, and we can see them here at the back of the meeting of the opening of the Estates General, is that they are fired with resentment at this social condescension that has already been heaped upon them. When they listened to the king's opening speech in May, 1789, the political issues are accentuated. It's plain that Louis XVI is keen for sweeping reform. He makes that plain that he needs, in particular, a very fundamental reform to taxation regimes and exemptions if the state is to find its way out of bankruptcy. But at the same time he's a man who is wedded to tradition, and decides that the three orders should go to their separate meeting places and start discussing affairs of states. It provokes a standoff, because the members of the Third Estate, the 700 or so deputies of the Third Estate refuse to meet separately. Refuse to go through the process of verifying their elections, because they insist that the members of all three estates should meet in one common assembly. It's a stand off which lasts about six weeks, when on the 28th of June, 1789, the Third Estate deputies find that the meeting place that they normally discuss in has been locked. Apparently, it's an accident. But they believe it might have been done deliberately. They adjourn to a nearby indoor tennis court, a building that's still standing today in Versailles. And inside that royal tennis court they take an oath, which is immortalized in this drawing this wash drawing of Jacques-Louis David, one of the great painters of the age. He never completes the painting. But they take an oath. You can see a man a name Bailly administering it in the center. They take an oath not to disperse until they have given France a constitution. And they say, we henceforth will be known as the National Assembly. We will conduct ourselves as if we are the National Assembly and we call on members of the other two orders to join with us in their endeavors. They're actually strengthened in their resolve because some of the parish priests who have been elected to the First Estate do start coming across to join them. One of the people who's depicted is this preliminary drawing by David is Maximilien Robespierre, who's been elected from his province of Artois. Again, very narrowly, like Sieyes. But Robespierre reports back home how elated he is to arrive in Versailles and to find people from all over the kingdom, whatever language they speak, whatever regional accent they might have, who have so much in common. Who are so fired with enthusiasm at the opportunity to actually make a significant difference to the way France is run. And in particular, to be part of that process as members of the National Assembly. The standoff continues. Louis XVI hesitates, finally agrees that members of the privileged orders should join with the Third Estate as the National Assembly. At the same time however, 20 kilometers away in Paris, there are ominous signs, people are nervous. Because there are troop movements through the largest city of the realm. Rumors spread through Paris and spread through Versailles that hostile members of the court, of the great aristocracy, are preparing some form of military action to simply expel this trumped up National Assembly. Who gave it the right, after all, to call itself the National Assembly? To simply close it down, and send its representative back to the provinces. The National Assembly, as it calls itself, is effectively saved by a new active revolution. And this time it's the work of the sort of people we have here in the foreground, the menu peuple, the working people of Paris. People who are fired up with enthusiasm about the possibilities of change, who are anxious about the troops in their city and who are also hungry. The harvest of 1788 had been very poor. Bread prices in particular are very high. Louis XVI makes a fatal decision, because he decides to dismiss the Finance Minister Necker and that is the trigger that convinces people in Paris that something sinister is afoot. Why would the king and his court expel the one non-noble who's a minister in the government? This man, Camille Desmoulins who'd actually been at high school with Robespierre in Paris before the revolution. This man is one of a number of street orators who aroused the ire of the working people in Paris by street oratory in the public places. Insisting that they take some form of action to protect themselves and protect what the Third Estate deputies are doing 20 kilometers away at Versailles. In the days after the dismissal of Necker, on the 11th of July, they turned their anger, first of all, against the royal customs houses. In 1786 a new customs wall is built around the city of Paris with 48 customs houses, through which any provisions for the city must pass and on which taxes are levied. They're terribly unpopular. And in the days after the 11th of July, most of them are destroyed. This is one of the very few, this very beautiful building, which is left standing. But they turn their attention in particular to the search for weapons. They break into the Invalides, the great military hospital still standing in Paris, and seize weaponry. The cry goes up to take the fortress of the Bastille in the popular neighborhoods of Eastern Paris. And on the 14th of July, thousands of Parisians who've seized weapons, who've armed themselves, lay siege to that great fortress in the heart of the popular neighborhoods of Paris. It's a standoff that endures for hours. The governor of the fortress who has only a small force at his disposal finally orders them to open fire to disperse the crowd and scores of Parisians lie dead and wounded. They're furious, and when the governor finally surrenders, he's put to death in a particularly cruel way. Effectively hacked to pieces by a furious crowd. It's not the only act of popular vengeance in the days of July. Just a week later Bertier de Sauvigny, who's the royal governor or mayor of Paris, and his father in-law Foulon who had been appointed to replace Necker in the ministry, are seized as they are believed to be trying to flee from Paris, flee to safety. They too are killed in a particularly cruel way and their bodies are displayed in the city. Like all revolutions, this act of revolution in July 1789 confronts revolutionary leaders in the National Assembly with an awful situation. On the one hand, popular insurrection like this have saved the National Assembly. It has tipped the balance of political power in its favor against the Royal Court and the army. On the other hand, there have been some acts of horror that have been committed as part of that revolutionary upheaval. And the question of revolutionary violence, of punitive violence, of punishment is one that will not easily go away. One of the measure that the National Assembly takes in response to those acts of violence is to appoint the Marquis de Lafayette, who'd been the head of the French forces helping the Americans in their War of Independence. They appoint the Marquis de Lafayette to head up a citizen's militia of people who are well enough off to be able to supply their own uniform and if necessary, a horse. Lafayette is an immensely powerful and wealthy noble, but a man of very high repute because of his role in the American War of Independence. The man who had administered the tennis court oath in June 1789 is also chosen as the first elected mayor of Paris. In that sense, the Parisian Revolution of 1789 seems to have been successful. But it's an extraordinary confrontation that the people of Paris have unleashed against the regime, against the old power holders. What we need to do next is to look at what sort of repercussions the news from Paris might have in the rest of the country.
