5 Steps to a 5TM AP European History

The French Revolution and Empire (^) ‹ 123
Demand for a New Constitution
While Louis considered his options, the representatives of the Third Estate grew bolder.
Arguing that they were the voice of the nation, on June 17, 1789, they declared themselves
to be the National Assembly of France. When they were locked out of their meeting hall
three days later, they pushed their way into Louis’s indoor tennis court and vowed that they
would not disband until a new constitution had been written for France. This proclamation
became known as the Tennis Court Oath. On June 27, Louis decided in favor of the Third
Estate, decreeing that all members should join the National Assembly.
Fear Causes Parisians to Storm the Bastille
While the bourgeois leaders of the new National Assembly worked on writing a constitu-
tion for France, the uncertainty of the situation created an atmosphere of fear and mistrust.
Nervous nobles began to demand that Louis break up the new Assembly, which in turn
demanded an explanation for the arrival of new regiments of mercenary troops in Versailles.
By July 1789, much of the urban population of Paris, which now looked to the Assembly
as its champion, believed that the nobility and, perhaps, the king intended to remove the
Assembly by force. Their fears focused on the infamous Bastille, a prison fortress in Paris,
which they wrongly believed housed the guns and ammunition that would be needed for
the job.
On July 14, an angry crowd marched on the Bastille. The nervous governor of
the Bastille ordered the crowd to disperse; when they refused, he had his guard fire
into the crowd. The crowd responded by storming the Bastille. By the time it was over,
98 people had been killed and 73 wounded. The governor and his guard were killed, and
their heads were paraded on pikes through the city. In the aftermath, Louis’s advisors
urged him to flee Versailles and raise an army to crush the Assembly and restore order to
Paris. Louis decided to try to soothe the city instead, and he promised to withdraw the
mercenary troops.
Rural Unrest Emboldens the Assembly
While order was restored in Paris, it was disintegrating in the countryside, where peas-
ants, aware that the nobility had been weakened and fearful that they would soon reassert
their power with a vengeance, seized the opportunity to act. They raided granaries to
ensure that they would be able to have affordable bread and attacked the chateaux of the
local nobility in order to burn debt records. In the context of that rural unrest, sometimes
known as the Great Fear, the Assembly passed the August Decrees, in which most of the
traditional privileges of the nobility and the clergy were renounced and abolished. In an
attempt to assure all citizens of France of their intention to bring about a new, more just
society, on August 27, 1789, the Assembly adopted “The Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen,” a document that espoused individual rights and liberties for
all citizens.
By the end of the summer of 1789, severe economic stress, in the form of high bread
prices and unemployment, again prompted the people of Paris to take action. Prompted
by rumors that the nobility in Louis’s court were plotting a coup, and spurred on by an
active tabloid press, the people of Paris rioted on October 5, 1789. This event came to be
known as the October Riot. The next day, a contingent of Parisian women organized an
11-mile march from Paris to the king’s palace at Versailles. Along the way, they were joined
by the Paris Guards, a citizen militia, and together they forced their way into the palace
and insisted that Louis accompany them back to Paris. He did, and within two weeks the
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