John Stevens Cabot Abbott - The History of French Revolution

"A month is passed. 107It is time to take a decisive step. A deputy of Paris has an important motion to make. Let us hear him."

The Abbé Sièyes 108then rose and proposed to send a last invitation to the other orders to join them; and, if they refused, to proceed to business, not as a branch of the convention, but as the whole body. The proposition was received with enthusiasm. This was on Wednesday. As the next day, Thursday, was appropriated to religious solemnities, Friday, the 12th, was fixed upon as the day in which this important summons was to be sent. 109

This last appeal was sent in the following words, which the committee from the Commons were charged to read to the clergy and the nobles, and a copy of which they were to leave with them:

"Gentlemen, we are commissioned by the deputies of the Commons of France to apprise you that they can no longer delay the fulfillment of the obligation imposed on all the representatives of the nation. It is assuredly time that those who claim this quality should make themselves known by a common verification of their powers, and begin at length to attend to the national interest, which alone, and to the exclusion of all private interests, presents itself as the grand aim to which all the deputies ought to tend by one general effort. In consequence, and from the necessity which the representatives of the nation are under to proceed to business, the deputies of the Commons entreat you anew, gentlemen, and their duty enjoins them to address to you, as well individually as collectively, a last summons to come to the hall of the States, to attend, concur in, and submit like themselves to the common verification of powers. We are, at the same time, directed to inform you that the general call of all the bailliages convoked will take place in an hour; that the Assembly will immediately proceed to the verification, and that such as do not appear will be declared defaulters."

This summons, so bold and decisive, excited not a little consternation in both of the privileged bodies. The curates among the clergy received the message with applause, and were in favor of immediate compliance. But their ecclesiastical superiors held them in check, and succeeded in obtaining an adjournment.

The Commons waited the hour, and then proceeded to the examination of the credentials of the deputies. This occupied three days. On the first day three of the curates came from the clergy and united with them. They were received with enthusiasm. On the second day six came, on the third ten, and then it was announced that one hundred and forty were coming in a body. This excited thorough alarm with all the high dignitaries of Church and State. "The aristocracy," says Thiers, "immediately threw itself at the feet of the king. The Duke of Luxembourg, the Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, the Archbishop of Paris, implored him to repress the audacity of the Tiers Etat and to support their rights which were attacked. The Parliament proposed to him to do without the States, promising to assent to all the taxes . The king was surrounded by the princes and the queen. This was more than was requisite for his weakness. They hurried him off to Marly in order to extort from him a vigorous measure."

This state of things had secured perfect reconciliation between the court and the aristocracy. The lines were now distinctly drawn; the king, nobles, and clergy on one side, the people on the other. The excitement in Paris during this protracted conflict was very great. A large wooden tent was erected in the garden of the Palais Royal, where a crowd was almost constantly gathered to receive the news brought by couriers from Versailles. At every street corner, in every café, the subject was discussed. Almost every hour produced a pamphlet. "There were thirteen issued to-day," writes Arthur Young, "sixteen yesterday, ninety-two last week." In the mean time the court was concentrating the troops from all parts of the kingdom around Paris and Versailles, and a hundred pieces of field artillery menaced the two cities.

It was now necessary to give the Assembly a name, a name which should define its functions. The assumption that they were the nation would be bold and defiant. The admission that they were but a branch of the national representation would be paralyzing. The Assembly was impelled to prompt and decisive action by the apprehension, universally entertained, that the court might employ the army, now assembled in such force, to arrest the principal deputies, dissolve the States, and, if the people of Paris manifested any opposition, to surround the city and starve them into subjection. Sièyes, in a celebrated pamphlet which he had issued to prepare the public mind for this movement, had said, "The Third Estate alone, they affirm, can not form the States-General. Well! so much the better; it shall compose a National Assembly." A body which, by universal admission represented ninety-six hundredths of the nation, might with propriety take the name of National. 110

Upon the morning of the 17th of June, after a long and animated discussion of the preceding day, the Commons met to decide this all-important question. The king, the court, and the aristocracy were greatly alarmed. If this bold, resolute body were the nation , what were they? Nothing. The people were intensely excited and animated. Thousands in every conceivable vehicle flocked out from Paris to Versailles. The galleries of the vast hall, rising like an amphitheatre, were crowded to their utmost capacity. The building was surrounded and the broad avenues of Versailles thronged with the excited yet orderly multitude.

The members had but just assembled when the president, Bailly, was summoned to the chancellor's office to receive a message from the king. It was well understood that this message would be a regal prohibition for them to do any thing without the concurrence of the three orders. The Assembly immediately, with firmness, postponed the reception of the message until the vote then before them was taken. Again they were interrupted by a communication from the nobles, who in their alarm made a desperate endeavor to thwart the proceedings. But the Assembly calmly and firmly proceeded, and by a vote of four hundred and one against ninety declared themselves the National Assembly.

In the presence of four thousand spectators the deputies then arose, and with uplifted hands took the oath of fidelity. As with simultaneous voice they pronounced the words " We swear ," a burst of acclamation rose from the galleries, which was caught by those outside the door and rolled along the streets like reverberating thunder. "Vive le Roi! Vive l'Assemblée Nationale!" was the cry which came from gushing hearts, and thousands in intensity of emotion bowed their heads and wept.

A more heroic deed than this history has not recorded. It was a decisive movement. It gave the people an organization and arrayed them face to face against royalty and aristocracy. The king, the court, the nobles, and the higher clergy were all against them. They were surrounded with armies. They were unarmed and helpless, save in the righteousness of their cause. They were menaced with all the terrors of exile, the dungeon, and the scaffold; but, regardless of all these perils, faithful to the sacred cause of popular liberty, they pledged in its support their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Even Alison, the unrelenting foe of popular rights, the untiring advocate of aristocratic assumption, is constrained to say,

"It is impossible to refuse a tribute of admiration to those intrepid men, who, transported by a zeal for liberty and the love of their country, ventured to take a step fraught with so many dangers, and which, to all appearance, might have brought many to prison or the scaffold. Few situations can be imagined more dignified than that of Bailly, crowning a life of scientific labor with patriotic exertion, surrounded by an admiring assembly, the idol of the people, the admiration of Europe."