88. Above: Detail of Jacques-Louis David, The Garb of the Horatii, 1785 89. below: Anonymous print, Tennis Court Oath (detail)
was "an assumption of all authority in the Kingdom. They have at one stroke converted themselves into the Long Parliament of Charles I."
On the following day, the augmented council met at Versailles, postponing by one day—till the twenty-third—the seance royale to allow more time tor discussion (and, some feared, for military reinforcement). The effect of the Tennis Court Oath had been to aggravate even further the hostility to Necker on the part of the King's brothers. Artois in particular shouted abuse at him and made no secret of his determination to be rid of him. The following day was worse. Despite support from Necker's minister-colleagues, the princes were determined to reject any encroachment on the separate jurisdiction of the orders for any business whatever. In that view, it followed that there could be no business that could be declared "national" and so considered by the assembly as a whole. Any concessions on the part of the privileged orders as to their tax exemptions and the like would be purely for them to volunteer, not for general legislation. All this was to be upheld in the name of the inviolability of the "French constitution."
In its repudiation of the common purposes of the Nation, it was a breathtaking reaction that traveled backwards beyond the reform programs of the 1780s, beyond Turgot to some sort of fantastic France based on classical order and hierarchical obedience. It was a France that had never really existed save in the absolutist idyll of the Hall of Mirrors, where it was lit by the Sun King's five-foot silver candlesticks.
Would Louis XVI try to turn himself into Louis XIV? Before the last meeting on June 22 he asked Montmorin and Saint-Priest, the two ministers who supported Necker, for their views. Both were under no illusions that such a confrontational position would ever receive assent. It would have to be enforced. But there was no money in the Treasury to pay for the enforcers and, said Montmorin, a policy of reaction guaranteed that the Estates-General would never vote any further revenues. What was the alternative? Saint-Priest tried to make the King see that, however
unfortunate unauthorized changes had been, it was "the weight of present circumstances" that had to govern his decision. "Shipwreck threatens the vessel of state," he wrote, hardly overstating the situation. And quite correctly he pointed out that, historically, there had been nothing immutable about the French constitution anyway. It was necessary to accept change when circumstances required it, for "nothing stays the same under the sun"—an unfortunate choice of cliche, since Louis' reign, after all, had begun with the emblem of a new sun rising over France.
All this was to no avail. Three councillors—Barentin, de La Galaiziere and Videaud de La Tour, who wrote an alternative speech for the King supported the hard line of Artois and Provence. The King then replaced
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Necker's plan with theirs and braced himself for the inevitable collision of wills the following day.
Though it was a seance royale, not a lit de justice, the occasion had all the atmosphere of a traditional assertion of royal will. Soldiers surrounded the assembly hall. For the last time the Third Estate was gratuitously humiliated by being made to enter from a side door while the other two orders were seated. It was also forcibly separated from the deputies of the clergy, including now the liberal archbishops of Bordeaux and Vienne, who had rallied to its assembly. Necker was not present to listen to the formal defeat of all his attempts at conciliation. When the King spoke, it was with a perceptible nervousness that had not been apparent at the opening session on May 5. He was, he said, "the common father of all my subjects" and he owed it to them to end the unhappy divisions that had impeded the work of the Estates-General. Fifteen articles were then read for him, one
after the other, making only too plain his intention to preserve the three orders and annul the "illegal" proceedings of the seventeenth and the "anticonstitutional" limits placed on deputies by the mandates of their constituents. There followed another set of personal remarks by the King, including the self-congratulatory comment "I can say, without illusion, that never has any King done so much for any nation."
It was a bitter pill to swallow. The thirty-five reform proposals that followed were intended to sweeten it, but they were covered with only the lightest powdering of sugar. The first item stated axiomatically that no taxes would be raised except by the assent of the representatives of the people—at the same time that that representation was itself being made moot. Similar reservations were scattered through the text. Liberty of press was granted provided it did not harm religion, morals or the "honor of citizens": virtually the status quo. Lettres de cachet were abolished except in cases of sedition or family delinquency. (Mirabeau must have had good cause for a sardonic smile at that point.) Tax exemptions could be ended, but only if the privileged agreed, and all seigneurial dues and rights were to be preserved and protected as an inviolable form of property.
At the end, the King issued an admonition. Should the assembly "abandon him" in his efforts, he would be forced "to proceed alone for the good of my people, and I will consider myself alone to be their true representative." If necessary, then, and with the utmost reluctance, he would turn himself into an Enlightened Despot. For now, "I command you, Messieurs, to adjourn directly and tomorrow assemble in your separate chambers to resume your sessions."
Nothing of the sort happened. On the twenty-second, while Necker's plan was being sabotaged in the royal council, the National Assembly had
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continued to meet, fortified now by over 150 of the clergy and a group of 47 nobles who had signified their clear intention to join their fellow citizens. In a display of childish petulance, Artois had actually rented the tennis court to prevent their meeting but, in the spirit of Mounier's motion, the Church of Saint-Louis did just as well. There they had determined to meet immediately following the seance royale.
Following the exit, in deathly silence, of the King and the court, carpenters entered to dismantle the dais and platforms used for the ceremony. The Third remained defiantly seated amidst the clatter and hammering and metamorphosed once again into the National Assembly. Under Bailly's presidency they stubbornly affirmed all their earlier decisions. Mirabeau, whose knowledge of summary arrest was unrivaled by anyone in the Assembly, in particular exhorted his colleagues to declare the personal inviolability of the deputies. Whatever good might have been contained in the reforms, he said, they had been imposed in the most offensive manner. It was not for "your mandatory" to impose laws but for the "mandatory" to receive laws from the "inviolable priesthood of the Nation." Any assault on that inviolability was to be, in a neologism he coined, lese-nation.
At that point the young Marquis de Dreux-Breze, the master of ceremonies, whom the King had specifically instructed to prepare the hall for the Third Estate, mustered up enough courage to reiterate the royal order to leave the hall forthwith. His remarks were addressed to Bailly, but it was Mirabeau whose shaggy head bore down on the preciously dressed boy, hat on head, condescending to give orders to the "unprivileged." Mirabeau was sick and enfeebled with hepatitis, and his voice may not have carried with its usual booming amplitude. Accounts differed as to whether the words that followed were actually as Mirabeau himself claimed: "Go tell those who have sent you that we are here by the will of the people and that we will not be dispersed except at the point of bayonets."
Accuracy of report is not the issue though. The French Revolution was to be made up of such tableaux vivants, crystallizing in theatrical form the intensity of emotion experienced by its participants. Only with this dramatic license could its message be communicated to the many millions who could thus share its euphoria, become engaged in its outcome and so bond themselves to its allegiance. It was, already, a new kind of religion.
Mirabeau's intervention was actually resented by Bailly as a gratuitous call to arms, but he repeated the Assembly's decisions to continue their proceedings. Dreux-Breze withdrew, walking slowly backwards, hat on he
ad, precisely as official etiquette prescribed: a suitable
valediction for the ritual of absolutist Versailles. His was merely a retreat, Louis XVI's re-
spouse, however, was surrender, no less complete for being so casually
expressed. Told of the resolution of the Assembly, he shrugged his shoulders and remarked, "Oh well, let them stay."
As in the summer and autumn of 1787, the King did the worst possible-thing by parading a show of royal authority but then shrinking from enforcing it. He was increasingly incapable of deciding whether he could indeed become some sort of King of the People as Mirabeau wanted or the anointed of Rheims, armed with the oriflamme. The question suddenly became urgent, since a popular riot seemed in the making in the center of Versailles in response to Necker's eloquent absence from the seance royale. In the late afternoon several hundred deputies were seen going to the Controle-General in a gesture of solidarity, and they were rapidly joined by a crowd of five thousand, shouting "Vive Necker." Marie-
Antoinette, who had been boldest in her defiance of the People, now was the first to be frightened by them as they poured into the courtyard of the chateau and then into its interior, unobstructed by the gardes francaises militia. Asking to see Necker, she implored him not to resign and in a separate interview the King followed suit.
program designed to reunite the three orders. Leaving the King he walked among deputies and rejoicing townspeople, characteristically attempting to sober their jubilation. "You are very strong now," he told the deputies, "but do not abuse your power." In contrast to this popular triumph, the King departed for Marly, his coachmen cutting through a surly and ominous crowd.
There were still fitful attempts to impose royal authority. On the day after the seance royale Bailly arrived at the hall to find it invested with troops who, as on the day before, had orders not to allow into the hall any deputies from the noble and clerical orders, nor any members of the public. But his indignation vanished when it became apparent that the officer charged with this duty had in effect gone over to the National Assembly and that his men were eagerly fraternizing with the deputies, insisting that "we, too, are citizens." The "patriotic clergy" was then taken through a back entrance into the Salle des Menus Plaisirs, where, led by the Archbishop of Vienne, they once again became part of the National Assembly. Later that day, the Archbishop of Paris, who had been mistakenly singled out as a prime enemy of the people, barely escaped stoning in his carriage.
The following day, June 25, brought another tableau vivant into the annals of the National Assembly when forty-seven of the liberal nobility finally joined the Assembly. They had been preceded by two nobles of the eight deputies from the Dauphine, the remainder joining them en
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90. "Better late than never"—the reunion of the three orders within a sacred triangle inscribed with the legend Omnes Gives: All Are Citizens
bonne compagnie, as they put it the next day. They were led by Stanislas Clermont-Tonnerre and included many of the members of Duport's club of the previous autumn: Lally-Tollendal the father-vindicator, the Duc d'Aiguillon, the Duc de Luynes, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Alexandre de Lameth, Montmorency de Luxembourg and, not least, the King's own cousin Philippe, Duc d'Orleans. These were not parvenus, but the very highest cadre of the peerage: men whose forebears had died on the fields of the Hundred Years' War; who had surrounded the young Sun King on his military promenade through Franche-Comte and Flanders; who had been marshals, constables, grand almoners of France. Now they were citizens.
Missing was Lafayette. His absence was all the more remarkable since he had been one of the party of liberal nobles who with their persons had haired the way of a detachment of troops sent to intimidate the Third following the seance royale. Lafayette belonged to a group of another seventy or so noble deputies that had previously voted for reunion but felt hound by the wishes of their constituents to remain separate unless in-Structed otherwise by the King. There was a possibility of bringing over a decisive number if the National Assembly was prepared to respect the