[5] In three cases only, in Langres, Péronne, and Montfort l'Amaury, the three orders sat and voted together in the electoral assembly.
The Early Days of the Revolution.
On the 5th May, 1789, the States-General were opened by Louis at Versailles. From the first the Government betrayed its helplessness, and its total inability to appreciate the situation. The Commons' deputies had come to Versailles for the most part with the largest expectations. They were fully alive to existing evils. They were full of schemes and ideals of reform. They foresaw, and were willing to foresee, no obstacles. They were prepared to transform the country; and they confidently expected, under the guidance of a benevolent King and of a liberal and experienced Minister, to begin without delay the work of national regeneration. But from the outset they encountered a series of checks and disillusionments, which increased in gravity as time went on. They found that the Government, instead of taking the lead with vigour, met them with no definite proposals for reform, and with little but vague philanthropic intentions over and above its desire to restore the finances. They found that the King and his advisers had not even made up their minds as to the constitution of the new Parliament, and could not bring themselves to decide whether the three orders were to sit and vote together or apart. They found themselves in an atmosphere new to most of them, set to do work new to all, conscious in their own minds that a new era had begun and that they must assert themselves to mark it, but yet accustomed from immemorial habit to regard the nobles as their superiors, the King as their master, and the Government as irresistibly strong.
Accordingly, at first, the attitude of the Commons was one of great embarrassment. They had as yet no recognised leaders of their own, and the Ministers, to whom they looked for leadership, were silent and appeared to be as much perplexed as themselves. On one point only they were clearly resolved and determined to yield to no pressure. They insisted that the deputies of the nobles and clergy should join them, and should form one chamber with themselves. On their side, the nobles and clergy refused to listen to this innovation. The Commons steadily rejected a compromise, and on that point the deadlock arose. Instead of the States-General setting to work to repair the finances and to carry reforms, six weeks went by, occupied only with this preliminary quarrel, while all the time the excitement in Paris and in the country deepened, the conflict of class interests became more apparent and acute, and the reactionary courtiers rejoiced at the fiasco and used their influence to widen the breach. The Commons, growing more confident as they felt their strength, and as they realised the power of the forces behind them, held their ground, disregarded the pressure and the innumerable, little, social slights, to which they were daily exposed at Versailles, and became more and more pronounced in their policy of self-assertion; and the Government revealed more strikingly than ever, alike to the States-General and to the public, its entire lack of purpose and resolve.
At last, after six weeks of waiting, the Commons took matters into their own hands, and from that moment events moved fast. On the 17th June, the deputies of the Tiers-État resolved on a momentous step, and on the motion of Sieyès, constituted themselves alone the National Assembly of France. The Government, alarmed at this usurpation of power, determined to reassert its authority and, while offering a large programme of reform, to insist on the separation of the three orders. On the 20th, the Commons found themselves excluded from their hall, and their sittings consequently interrupted; but they persevered in the policy which they had adopted, and adjourning simultaneously to the Tennis Court, swore solemnly never to separate till they had given a constitution to France. On the 23rd, the King came down in state to the Assembly Hall, and while offering large concessions, annulled the resolutions of the Commons. But the Commons, inspired by the courageous words of Mirabeau, rejected the programme which Louis had laid before them, adhered to their resolutions, and defied the Crown. Within a few days, the nobles and the clergy were requested by Louis to abandon the struggle, and the union of the three orders was complete.
But the Court party bitterly resented the usurpation of the Commons. The disorder in Paris was increasing fast. Necker held ostentatiously aloof from his colleagues. The King, distressed and embarrassed, suffered himself to be persuaded by the haughtier spirits at Court, helped by the direct influence of the Queen, to make an attempt to recover the authority which he had allowed to slip from his grasp. The old Maréchal de Broglie, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, was summoned to the royal counsels. Great masses of troops, composed chiefly of Swiss and German regiments in the service of France, were concentrated, in spite of the protests of the Assembly, around Paris and Versailles. On the 11th July, Necker and three other Ministers were dismissed, and their places in the Government filled by decided adherents of the reactionary party. On the 12th, the news reached Paris, and the people, scared, famished and indignant, burst into revolt. On the 14th, that revolt culminated in the decisive movement which destroyed the Bastille, which shattered the plans of the Court party, and which completed the triumph of the Revolution and the humiliation of the Crown.
'With the 14th July,' said a wise and enlightened witness of the time, 'the terror began.' The rising in Paris was the signal for the first general outbreak of violent disorder in France, which proved that the distressed classes had taken the law into their own hands, and that the Government was utterly unable to cope with or control them. The strongest motive for disorder was unquestionably material want. For many years past, the condition of the poorer peasants and labourers, both in the towns and in the country side, had been almost intolerable, and in 1789, the chronic distress of this large class reached an acute stage. In 1788, a severe drought had been followed, on the eve of the harvest, by a hail-storm of extraordinary violence and extent, which had destroyed the crops for sixty leagues round Paris. That, in turn, had been followed by the severest winter known for eighty years, which had completed the ruin which the drought and the storm had begun. The consequence was that, in the spring and summer of 1789, the price of bread rose as in a siege, and on all sides the cry of famine spread. From all parts of France, in the spring of 1789, came the same alarming rumours of scarcity and distress. From all parts of France, in the months preceding the capture of the Bastille, came the same reports of disturbances and riots occasioned by the want of food. Discontented peasants, unemployed labourers, rapidly reduced to criminals by hunger, passed from patient misery to despair, and broke out into resistance. Compromised or defeated in the country, they took refuge in the towns; and thus, in April and May, observers noticed that 'frightful numbers of ill-clad men of sinister appearance,' many of them foreigners, all more or less destitute and dangerous, were pouring into Paris, where already bread was exorbitantly dear, and where already the number of unemployed and paupers bore a dangerous proportion to the population of the city.