Before the
Revolution, French society—aside from royalty—was divided into three
estates. The First Estate comprised the clergy; the Second Estate was the nobility. The rest of France—some 97 per cent of the population—was the Third Estate, which ranged from very wealthy city merchants to impoverished rural farmers. The three estates had historically met in the
Estates General, a legislative assembly, but this had not happened since 1614, under the reign of
Louis XIII. It was the last of the Estates General of the
Kingdom of France. Summoned by King
Louis XVI, the
Estates General of 1789 ended when the Third Estate formed the
National Assembly and, against the wishes of the king, invited the other two estates to join. This signaled the outbreak of the French Revolution. The Third Estate comprised the overwhelming majority of the French population, but the structure of the Estates-General was such that the Third Estate comprised a bare majority of the delegates. A simple majority was sufficient—as long as delegate votes were cast together. The First and Second Estates preferred to divide the vote; a proposal might need to receive approval from each Estate or there might be two "houses" of the Estates-General (one for the first two Estates, and one for the Third) and a bill would need to be passed by both houses. Either way, the First and Second Estates could exercise a veto over proposals enjoying widespread support among the Third Estate, such as reforms that threatened the
privileges of the nobility and
clergy. The Tennis Court Oath built on France’s financial crisis of France’s involvement in the 7 Years War, the American Revolution, and King Louis XVI’s inefficient taxation system. The Third Estate consisting of commoners did not have the political power that the first and second estates had consisting of clergy and nobility. The third estate had to carry the tax burden of the first and second estate which made them outraged. This unfair taxation and representation led them to a political standoff where King Louis XVI locked them out to stop them from meeting, where they gathered to meet for the Tennis Court Oath. According to British historian William Doyle quotes in his novel,
The Oxford Dictionary of the French Revolution, “The vast majority of French people who were not destitute lived under constant threat of becoming so, and were prepared to use violence to avoid such a fate. When they did, they terrified the narrow, secure social élites who in normal times dominated urban life and who never had to worry about the price of a four-pound loaf.” This places an emphasis on the difference in social class between the first and second Estate compared to the third Estate, where no social elites want to face the same fate as the lowly Third Estate. ==Oath==