Step 7 of 20 · Act 2 · What changed
1789: the old order breaks
From assembly to uprising
In 1789 authority began shifting from the king to a National Assembly speaking for the nation — and to ordinary people, who became political actors.
The Estates-General met at Versailles in May 1789. Almost at once it deadlocked over a simple but explosive question: should the three estates vote separately, letting the privileged orders outvote the Third Estate two to one — or should they vote together, as one nation?
When the deadlock held, the Third Estate took a daring step. In June it declared itself the National AssemblyThe body the Third Estate formed in June 1789, claiming to represent the whole nation and to have the right to make a constitution.: a body that spoke for the whole nation, not one order. Locked out of their hall, its members gathered on a nearby tennis court and swore not to separate until they had given France a constitution — the Tennis Court OathThe vow (20 June 1789) by members of the new Assembly not to disband until they had given France a written constitution..
The king wavered, then began massing troops around Paris. The city was already tense with hunger and rumour. On 14 July 1789 crowds seized the BastilleA royal fortress and prison in Paris, stormed on 14 July 1789 — mainly for its gunpowder, but remembered as a symbol of royal tyranny., a royal fortress, mainly to capture the gunpowder stored inside. The old prison meant little in itself, but as a symbol of royal power its fall was electric.
In a single summer, authority had begun to move — away from the king, toward an assembly that claimed to speak for the nation, and toward ordinary people who had shown they could act on the political stage.
What matters here
The Third Estate reinvented itself as the National Assembly and vowed to write a constitution; the fall of the Bastille showed that the crowd, too, now held power.
Historical source
Painted the same year: the assault on the Bastille that turned a fortress into a symbol of the old order's fall.
The Storming of the Bastille, 14 July 1789 — Jean-Pierre Houël, 1789.
Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Misconception check
“The storming of the Bastille freed thousands of suffering prisoners.”