Problems with Religion and Politics 341of finance and secretary general. But the financial crisis did not signifi¬
cantly improve. People were starving. As a last resort, Louis XVI called
the Estates-General, in the hope it would pass the badly needed fiscal re¬
forms. It convened at Versailles in May of 1789. From the beginning, the
deputies of the Third Estate, supported by many members of the lower
clergy and by a few nobles, were pushing for thoroughgoing political and
social reforms. Resisting the king, they proclaimed themselves the Na¬
tional Assembly on June 17. They also took an oath not to separate until a
constitution had been drawn up. On July 11, the king dismissed Necker.
This led to a rebellion of the citizenry of Paris. The soldiers of the Garde
Frarifaise joined the mob, and on July 14 they stormed the Bastille. The
regime of Louis XVI was overturned, though he nominally remained king.
On July 16, he reappointed Necker and dismissed the troops. Two days
after that, he "acknowledged the new authorities born of the insurrec¬
tion."^35 The results of the Revolution were soon felt in all of France. On
August 4, 1789, the Assembly abolished all feudal privileges. In a swift
current of events, the old order had vanished more quickly than anyone had
thought possible. The spirit of the new order was expressed in a preamble
to a constitution still to be written. As one historian puts it,
It was a noble and well written text, often close to the American model. The essence was
expressed in a very few sentences. ... Firstly, what had been done on 4 August: "Men
are born free and live free and with equal rights." What rights? Liberty, property, safety
and resistance to oppression, with all that derives therefrom: civil and fiscal equality,
individual liberty, the admissibility of everyone for all employment, habeas corpus, non¬
retroactive laws, guarantee of property.^36
All of intellectual Germany watched the events with great interest. There
were some outbreaks of violence in the Rhineland. But there was no mass
movement toward revolution.
Some major intellectual figures in Germany, such as Goethe and Moser,
were opposed to the Revolution from the beginning. Still, most — at least
at the beginning — supported it enthusiastically. Older writers such as Klop-
stock and Wieland endorsed its goals. Younger authors -such as Herder,
Schiller, and Fichte (all three of whom were influenced by Kant) wrote
enthusiastically for the cause of the Revolution. Kant himself was just as
inspired by it as were his students. As one of his acquaintances said, trying
to correct Fichte's mistaken view that Kant took no notice of the French
Revolution, "He lived and moved in it; and, in spite of all the terror, he
held on to his hopes so much that when he heard of the declaration of the