The Debate on the Role of Orders in France, 1787–1789^*

Abstract

Of the various phases of the French Revolution, one of the least examined is its earliest stage, from the opening of the Estates General on 5 May 1789 until the nominal coalescence of the National Assembly on 27 June, after Louis XVI asked the recalcitrant members of the clergy and nobility to enter it. A particularly overlooked aspect is the role and standing of the three estates or orders of the kingdom (the clergy, the nobility and the commoners), which were at the heart of the stalemate that immediately developed at the opening of the Estates General and persisted even after the consolidation of the Assembly on 27 June.¹ Orders did not disappear suddenly and definitively in June 1789, as historians have widely assumed, but through a sequence of awkward stages. Ultimately, they were suppressed by inference from an electoral statute rather than by any direct legislative act. The statutory abolition of orders in October 1789 was an extraordinary revolutionary dynamic, overturning a social and political structure of many centuries and heavily influencing the future of the Revolution, but it has generally been overlooked.²

The reasons for this inattention are both contemporaneous and historiographical. The weeks from early May to mid-to-late June were characterised by conflict and animosity and the issues at stake—deliberation and vote by order or by head—were strongly held and did not lend themselves to compromise. Vote by head would have involved all deputies meeting in a common combined chamber, and issues would be decided by majority vote among all deputies; this was the Third Estate’s preferred solution. Deliberation and vote by order, favoured by the nobility, entailed each order meeting in a separate chamber, with each order accorded a single vote. The Third Estate regarded that protocol as unacceptable because it potentially enabled the clergy and nobility to block needed reforms, especially in taxation, by a two-to-one vote. The entry of the recalcitrant clerical and noble deputies on 27 June appeared to resolve the issue in favour of deliberation and vote by head. The deadlock had been bitter and deputies and observers alike seemed to wish merely to move forward. Furthermore, for a brief, exhilarating period a few weeks later, in August 1789, there was a sense that orders had, in fact, simply disappeared, subsumed into the single quality of being French.³

Historiographical currents have also contributed to neglect of the topic. The Marxist interpretation used an analytical framework based on class rather than the juridical social structure of orders that had been in place for many centuries.⁴ The revisionist critique of the Marxist interpretation played down social tensions before the Revolution. An influential article by Colin Lucas, for example, dismissed the distinction of orders as a meaningless anachronism, at least until September 1788.⁵ George Taylor demonstrated that the investments and wealth of nobles and non-nobles were similar and argued that the Revolution was a political revolution with social consequences rather than a social revolution with political consequences.⁶ The concept of the creation of a ‘political culture’ or a ‘Revolutionary culture’ that generally succeeded the revisionist critique gave little incentive to study the sterile opening weeks of the Estates General. Its proponents abridged treatment of the stalemate and dated the beginnings of ‘political culture’ to the declaration, or consolidation, of the National Assembly on 17 or 27 June.⁷ The lack of attention to the question of orders is regrettable because an examination of it not only provides insights into the limited goals of the early Revolution but also because their abolition facilitated two subsequent acts that became defining aspects of the Revolution and ultimately weakened support for it.

I

Orders had emerged as a contentious issue well before the Estates General opened, but their continued existence was not in question. Rather, it was the use of orders in the voting procedure for the Estates General that animated the debate about them. As the fiscal state of the Crown deteriorated in the aftermath of French intervention in the War of American Independence, the Controller-General, Charles Alexandre Calonne, had convened an Assembly of Notables in February 1787 to approve a reform programme in advance of its submission to the parlement of Paris for registration. Its key component was a land tax to be levied without exemptions, which meant that the lands of clergy and nobility would be included, breaching their fiscal privilege.

The Notables did not reject the proposals outright, but instead formulated demands that they believed would not be met—particularly access to the royal accounts to verify the existence of a deficit—giving them a pretext not to act. Frustrated by their conduct, Calonne wrote a pamphlet denouncing the inaction of the Notables and ordered it to be widely disseminated.⁸ His action made public what had heretofore been closed proceedings and led to his dismissal by the king, but Louis, in an attempt to put the reforms in place even after the dismissal of Calonne, named a leading member of the opposition in the Notables, Etienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, to enact them. Brienne was no more successful than Calonne and the Assembly ended in May.⁹

One component of the reform programme to which the Notables did agree was the creation of provincial assemblies for provinces that did not have provincial estates.¹⁰ Although the number of representatives of the Third Estate in them would be equal to those of the First and Second Estates combined, as a condition of their agreement the Notables insisted on modifications. In what John Hardman has noted was a radical departure, Calonne jettisoned the traditional structure of orders and proposed instead that membership in the provincial assemblies be determined by landed income, irrespective of order.¹¹ The proposed structure for provincial assemblies would thus have done away with division into orders.¹² The Notables, however, insisted on a system based on orders, with fixed proportions of membership for each of the three orders. In addition, the Notables mandated that the president of each assembly be drawn from the First or Second Estate.¹³ The provisions underscored the importance the clergy and nobility attached to orders, as well as their primacy in them, and reinforced the sense of entrenched privilege of the First and Second Estates.¹⁴

The revelations made at the Assembly of Notables shocked contemporaries and became the catalyst for a national debate on privilege.¹⁵ In the pamphlet that provoked his dismissal, Calonne had highlighted the issue and criticised fiscal privileges by asking if the privileged wished to overburden the non-privileged—the people. His pejorative reference to privilege legitimised criticism of it and the initial focus of the debate that followed was on the fiscal privileges of the clergy and nobility, propelled by the revelations made at the Assembly of Notables and the failure of that body to resolve the fiscal crisis.

The Notables had called for the Estates General to approve any new tax and the demonstrable failure of the Crown and the political elite of the kingdom to address the issue gave added strength to the demand that the Estates General should meet. In keeping with its ideal of monarchical-centred government, the Crown resisted the idea but, as its fiscal situation continued to deteriorate, its position weakened. In early July 1788, the Crown issued a call for ideas on how the Estates General should be constituted. The solicitation suggested that all possibilities were open and expanded the debate beyond fiscal privileges to encompass political privilege, in which the question of orders became central.

The debate on political privilege centred on the number of deputies for each order and whether voting would be by order or by head. A major argument against vote by order was that it vested the First and Second Estates with the ability to outvote the Third Estate when it was the fiscal privileges of the former that were arguably the cause of the crisis that the Estates General would be called upon to resolve.¹⁶ The following month, in August 1788, just over a week before defaulting on its loan obligations, the Crown announced that the Estates General would meet. The clear intent of the announcement was to soften the impact of bankruptcy, but the announcement and bankruptcy intensified and accelerated the discussion about the forms to be followed at the Estates General.

Several weeks later, in late September, the debate became even sharper when the parlement of Paris declared that the Estates General should employ the procedures used during its last meeting in 1614, which meant vote by order. As William Doyle has noted, invoking precedent seemed to represent an effort to establish permanent dominance by the clergy and nobility in national affairs, even if it was not necessarily directed to that end.¹⁷ The pronouncement led to the immediate discredit of the parlement, which had gained considerable popularity with the public during the preceding months by calling for the convening of the Estates General to approve the new tax, and further elevated the question of orders and political privilege.¹⁸ Colin Lucas has argued that the ruling of the parlement was a critical development because ‘the frontier between noble and non-noble … was suddenly and artificially reimposed’ and that the opinion ‘rent asunder what was essentially by now a homogeneous unit’.¹⁹ This, however, is to overlook the importance that distinction of orders had attained during the Assembly of Notables and afterward.²⁰

In their consideration of provincial assemblies, which applied to those provinces without provincial estates, the Notables rejected landed income as the basis of membership and insisted that they should be structured by order. Indeed, they objected that the confusion of ranks was humiliating to the first two orders.²¹ There had been vague plans underway by the Crown to establish a ‘national assembly’ derived from the provincial assemblies, but the demand by the parlement that the Estates General be constituted in the traditional manner ended the undertaking.²² The criterion of landed income as the basis for membership in the provincial assemblies was a close approximation of the social reality posited by Lucas of a ‘homogeneous unit’ of noble and non-noble that, he contended, was shattered by the ruling of the parlement of Paris in September 1788. Rather than artificially reimposing the traditional form and structure of orders, however, the parlement was reaffirming the decisive rejection nearly eighteen months earlier of any blurring of the distinction between noble and non-noble for the Estates General as well. Calonne’s pamphlet had drawn attention to the distinction between the privileged and the non-privileged, which was synonymous with distinction of orders. The pamphlet had extended deeply into the reaches of the kingdom—Calonne had ordered it to be read from pulpits—and the differentiation he made continued to be influential after his dismissal.

The significance of the September pronouncement was not that it might provoke a form of inquiry into nobility in preparation for the Estates General.²³ Rather, its significance was that, if the Crown followed the recommendation, it would potentially lead to the failure of the Estates General in the manner of the Assembly of Notables, because under vote by order the clergy and nobility could again refuse to yield their fiscal privileges. The calling of the Estates General was historic and its failure would be catastrophic. The nobility did begin to fragment after the declaration, less over inquiries into nobility than over whether or not to co-operate with the Third Estate.

A reaction against the opinion and in favour of working with the Third Estate came with the formation of the Society of Thirty, which had many prominent nobles of long lineage in its membership.²⁴ There were two distinct groups within the Society of Thirty. One consisted of men who were out of favour at the royal Court. Aside from the fact that they had little to lose in allying with the Third Estate, their opposition to the Court was almost certainly rooted in their recognition that the sterility of Court politics had brought the kingdom to the brink of ruin. The second group was comprised of veterans of the American War of Independence. They appear to have picked up liberal ideas during their service and the crisis of 1788–9 offered the opportunity to implement them. Court animosities were also a factor with members of this group.²⁵ Daniel Wick has concluded that the Court nobility in the Society of Thirty were loyal or sympathetic to Louis XVI but not to the Ancien Régime.²⁶ Their disillusionment, however, focused on Court politics and privilege rather than orders.

In an effort to tamp down the anger precipitated by the statement of the parlement, the Crown summoned the Assembly of Notables once again to consider the issue.²⁷ After more than a month of deliberations, the Notables issued an opinion that the three orders should each have the same number of deputies and vote should be by order. The bitterness provoked by this decision and the centrality of privilege in the debate is apparent in an anonymous pamphlet, generally attributed to Joseph Antoine Joachim Cérutti, which appeared afterwards. The author noted that the monarch had called the Notables twice to consult them on the interests of the throne and the nation. In 1787, he wrote, they had defended their privileges against the throne and in 1788 they had defended their privileges against the nation.²⁸ Similarly, in November 1788, Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès wrote an impassioned pamphlet entitled Essay on Privileges.²⁹

In late 1788, as the Assembly of Notables was meeting, a new model for orders, one based on parity rather than primacy, emerged in the province of Dauphiné. Meeting at Romans, outside of Grenoble, the three orders of the province wrote a long letter to the monarch that gained attention. It called for the representation of the Third Estate to be equal in number to that of the combined First and Second Estate delegations. It also asked that deliberation be in common and that voting be by head rather than order. In an illustration of the divisive effect that the issues were having on the kingdom, the Dauphinois concluded their letter by expressing the hope that the Estates General would one day be established on stable principles and formed in a manner satisfactory to the entire kingdom. Comprised of a large number of freely elected deputies, the Estates General would enable provinces to yield some of their particular privileges to achieve national rights and Dauphiné offered itself as an example.³⁰ Dauphiné had revived its provincial Estates in the autumn of 1788 with the number of Third Estate deputies in the body equal to the combined number of deputies of the First and Second Estates and with all votes by head.³¹ The Estates opened in December 1788, and created a committee to address its delegation to the Estates General, which determined that the Third Estate delegation from the province would be equal in size to those of the First and Second Estates combined. It proposed the same arrangement for the Estates General as a whole as well as voting by head.³²

The severity of the reaction against the decision of the Notables led the princes of the blood, with the exception of the duc d’Orléans, who refused to sign, to respond in a mémoire to the monarch that they also published. It decried the responses to the second meeting of the Assembly of Notables and demanded that the Third Estate cease its attacks on the rights of the first two orders and limit itself to seeking a reduction of its tax burden. At that juncture, the first two orders, recognising in the Third Estate fellow citizens dear to them, would renounce their pecuniary privileges and agree to equal taxation. They denounced the possible adverse results of impinging on the rights of the clergy and nobility and the blending of orders.³³

The pamphlet had a catastrophic effect. Its tone was so petulant and haughty that it intensified rather than lessened the anger that had ensued from the opinion of the Notables.³⁴ A number of responses appeared, but the one that is best known, What is the Third Estate? by Abbé Sieyès, was published the following month, in January 1789, and should be viewed against the backdrop of the patronising dismissal of the Third Estate in the Mémoire des princes. Sieyès alluded to it in his pamphlet and referred to his work as his ‘Mémoire sur le tiers-état’. There can be little doubt that his striking opening, in which he stated that the Third Estate is everything, had until this time been nothing in the political order and wanted to be something, was an angry riposte to the outlook expressed by the princes.³⁵

In yet another attempt to assuage anger, the Crown in late December decreed that the Third Estate deputation would have as many deputies as the First and Second Estates combined. The decree, however, made no mention of voting procedures, which left the question of orders at the forefront. The anger that was generated by the ambiguity of the decision, however, was not directed at orders themselves.³⁶ Rather, it was focused on the use of orders as the system for deliberation and voting at the Estates General, as a message from the Third Estate of Dijon to the monarch in January 1789, in the atmosphere of disappointment and dismay following the decision of the second Assembly of Notables, makes clear. After arguing for equality of representation and denouncing vote by order, the message culminated with the observation that it was time for the Third Estate to take the rank that nature and political right had given it. Following an impassioned denunciation of vote by order, it concluded by stating:

We will always respect distinctions founded on social order, and necessary to the glory and security of the state. The ministers of the altars will have our respect, the heads of armies will always have our gratitude and our consideration; the Clergy and the Nobility will not cease to be distinct and separate orders. Honorific privileges, more worthy of them than pecuniary privileges, will forever class them in a rank properly superior to that of the Third Estate.³⁷

Sieyès’s What is the Third Estate?, with its strident opening words, is in large measure responsible for the perception of antipathy toward the existence of orders prior to the opening of the Estates General. He stated that a representative body should be devoid of distinction of orders and contrasted the numerical disparity of 200,000 privileged individuals against 25 or 26 million inhabitants of the kingdom. Its simple, catechismal style of questions and answers made Sieyès’s pamphlet more accessible than many other tracts, but its outlook and demands went far beyond what most of the Third Estate sought for the Estates General. For all the clarion qualities of the pamphlet, it reveals both the deeply ingrained nature of orders in French society and, as William Sewell has shown, Sieyès’s inconsistencies with respect to them. He asserted that the Third Estate was everything, although he was himself a member of the First Estate.³⁸ More notably, he argued that the Third Estate should only be represented by those who belonged to the order, but he would sit as a deputy for the Third.³⁹ The contradictions in his thought reveal how complex and fraught the question of orders was and how fundamental a part of French society they were. The popularity of What is the Third Estate? has distorted contemporary underlying attitudes about orders, which were, in fact, more accurately captured by the words of the Third Estate of Dijon.

Indeed, Kenneth Margerison has analysed the attitude toward orders in late 1788 and early 1789, and Dijon figures in his account. Inspired by developments in Dauphiné, a movement known as the ‘union of orders’ began. One of its core beliefs was that royal despotism could be overcome by national unity—a union of orders. The movement appeared to suffer a major setback after the opinion of the second Assembly of Notables, during which the Notables had also refused to give up fiscal privileges, and the demeaning of the Third Estate in the Mémoire des princes. At this critical juncture, in late December 1788, the nobility of Burgundy, meeting in Dijon, revived the effort when it agreed to yield its fiscal privileges and endorsed equality of taxation for all taxes approved by the Estates General. It was almost certainly this action that led to the statement by the Third Estate of Dijon.⁴⁰

Sieyès, of course, opposed the union of orders because, as he made clear in his pamphlet, it gave the privileged too much power. His view, however, was at odds with most of the Third Estate, which continued to seek a doubled Third Estate and vote by head. Although the nobility was largely unwilling to give up deliberation and vote by order, its stance did not produce hostility to the concept of orders. The movement for the union of orders gained momentum with the formation of the Society of Thirty. Its members recognised that privileges would have to be reformed but not eradicated. In this manner, unity among the orders could be strengthened and move forward against a despotic ministry. The group was active well into 1789 and many of its members were elected to the Estates General.⁴¹

Conversely, the degree to which Sieyès’s outlook was at variance with the prevailing view of most contemporaries is evident in the fact that he was the last man elected to the original membership of the Estates General, suggesting that the degree of influence often attributed to him by historians on the basis of his pamphlet may be misplaced.⁴² Moreover, once he arrived, he was regarded with wariness and did not have nearly as much influence as the Dauphinois deputies, who had, of course, been the inspiration for the union of orders.⁴³ One close observer noted that Sieyès’s initial suggestion that the commons take the name ‘Assembly of known and verified representatives of the nation’ sought to achieve the abolition of orders. The commons instead adopted the simpler term National Assembly, which could encompass orders.⁴⁴ Similarly, after proposing that the Assembly ‘summon’ the recalcitrant clergy and nobility, he agreed to soften the language to ‘invite’ the other two orders to join. He had to acquiesce to the continuation of orders just as the union of orders group envisioned it—voting was to be by head, with orders continuing to exist.⁴⁵

II

The Crown issued the regulations for the election of deputies to the Estates General in January 1789, and nearly all of the cahiers (lists of issues drawn up in the electoral assemblies of each order that electors wished to see addressed at the Estates General) were written and elections held in March and April.⁴⁶ In yet another indication of the lack of antipathy toward orders themselves, at most electoral sites relations among the three orders were generally courteous and respectful. In Amiens, for example, the three orders gathered in common before withdrawing to separate locations for the election of deputies. The first action of the nobility in its electoral assembly was to renounce its pecuniary privileges, after which it sent a deputation to the assemblies of each of the other two orders announcing the renunciation. The Third Estate responded to the act with great enthusiasm.⁴⁷ The example of Amiens was not unique—there was general comity at the bailliage level.

The nobility, however, expected to take the leading role at the Estates General.⁴⁸ To this end, many noble electoral assemblies vested their deputy or deputies with an imperative mandate—which prevented any such deputy from deviating from the stated position without receiving authorisation from his electoral assembly—that precluded voting by head. At the same time, there was a recognition that the issue of voting procedure could only be decided at the Estates General itself, which was apparent in the flexibility given to some noble deputies. In Nemours, the nobility charged its representative to pursue vote by order. If that became futile, he could participate in vote by head, but with the provision that vote by head be conducted separately by order rather than in a general assembly. The nobility of Angoumois specified vote by order but stated that if a plurality of the nobility chose to vote by head its deputies were to protest but not break away from the Estates General. The nobility of Troyes authorised its deputies to vote by head if two-thirds of the nobility agreed.⁴⁹

A careful analysis of 130 noble cahiers by Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret reveals forward-looking views which were compatible with the demands of the Third Estate but also the sense that the nobility had of itself as an order, although Chaussinand-Nogaret argues otherwise on the latter issue. Nearly 89 per cent of noble cahiers endorsed fiscal equality and half sought a constitution or a charter of the rights of the nation, positions that were entirely in alignment with the Third Estate. With respect to their order, however, the most frequent noble demand, found in nearly 40 per cent of cahiers, was the preservation of honorific rights and prerogatives. The second most frequent request was to bar non-nobles from carrying arms. Perhaps most telling, fewer than 3 per cent of noble cahiers favoured opening military careers as officers to the Third Estate—military service was a critical component in the self-definition of nobility and the theoretical basis for the Second Estate. Only 6.6 per cent of noble cahiers called for equality between nobility and Third Estate.⁵⁰ In her earlier study of 545 cahiers, Beatrice Hyslop concluded that the nobility was ‘overwhelmingly’ in favour of vote by order at the Estates-General.⁵¹

Chaussinand-Nogaret interpreted the willingness of the nobility to submit to fiscal equality as representing an abandonment of the society of orders in favour of a society of individuals.⁵² Although exemption from the taille, the direct land tax, was a widely recognised criterion for recognition of nobility, pecuniary privileges were more a benefit of nobility than a critical element of its self-definition. The Second Estate saw itself as a distinct entity, dedicated to service and sacrifice. Its relinquishment of fiscal privileges affirmed its sense of itself as willing to sacrifice for the good of the kingdom rather than signifying a movement away from a society of orders. The communication of the Third Estate of Dijon to the monarch recognised the desire of the nobility to retain its distinct identity and the union of orders was designed to accommodate it.

A more critical factor in the strength of belief among the nobility of its distinctiveness as an order was the composition of its delegation at the Estates General. At least 80 per cent of those elected had a military background, albeit with varying degrees of service. To the degree that the primary definition of the Second Estate was that it defended society, these men exemplified it and almost certainly held close the identity of their order. Moreover, many among them had only a rudimentary education and their training in military skills, as well as the values of honour and dedication to the monarch instilled in them, reinforced the defining ethos of their order and their belief in the validity of its rights and privileges.⁵³ Lever characterised the noble deputies elected to the Estates General as being hostile to despotism and above all seeking to defend their privileges.⁵⁴ However, the overwhelming majority of noble deputies to the Estates General were drawn from a narrow but important swath of the nobility and the delegation was not broadly representative of the nobility as a whole.

III

The Estates General opened in May 1789, but, although Louis apparently personally supported verification in common and vote by order, the king did not specify the forms to be used for deliberation and voting.⁵⁵ It was a critical error because the power and prestige of the Crown was at its zenith at the opening and establishing procedures at the outset would have given the Crown greater influence over the body.⁵⁶ In the vacuum created by the failure of the Crown to provide direction, the nobility and the Third Estate each sought to impose its position on the forms to be followed for deliberation and voting. In an effort to assert vote by order, the nobility withdrew to its chamber, verified the credentials of its members and declared itself legally constituted as an order.⁵⁷ The Third Estate, as a means to undermine vote by order, insisted on verification in common. It also began, early and apparently spontaneously, to refer to itself as ‘the commons’. Although it is sometimes assumed that the assumption of the term was influenced by the British example of a two-chamber legislature, this does not appear to be the case. It was being used as early as 8 May, when Third Estate deputies were still thinking in terms of a traditional Estates General with vote by head rather than any kind of legislature.⁵⁸ Moreover, the Assembly (Sieyès in particular) overcame efforts to create a bicameral legislature based on the British model.⁵⁹ The word was undoubtedly appropriated from Britain, but the concept associated with it was not. The term ‘commons’ did away with Third Estate, which implied vote by order, but preserved the social distinctiveness of the clergy and nobility despite vote by head. The nobility recognised the pitfall that the change in terminology represented and opposed it from the outset, calling it ‘very unconstitutional’.⁶⁰ Munro Price asserted that the clergy and nobility reacted to the confrontational stance of the Third Estate by hardening their position, driven by fear that the Third Estate was seeking to undermine the social order.⁶¹ With the nobility irrevocably committed to vote by order and the commons equally determined to overturn it, the Estates General immediately fell into a stalemate.

The Dauphinois delegation worked unsuccessfully to reconcile the orders.⁶² The clergy, which had equivocated by meeting separately but not formally declaring itself constituted as an order, initiated conciliatory conferences but they soon failed. The Crown sponsored a second round of negotiations, which also collapsed.⁶³ The stalemate confirmed the fears of many because the issue of vote by order or head had been recognised long before the Estates General opened. It also highlighted the perceived problem with orders—even if the nobility was willing to yield its fiscal privileges, it was unwilling to give up the privileged political position that vote by order provided. The inflexible stance of the nobility conveyed an image of corporate self-interest taking priority over the well-being of the kingdom. In addition, the perception of the insularity and self-interested nature of orders was strengthened by the fact that the chambers of the clergy and nobility were closed to all outsiders, whereas that of the commons was open to the public. Those in attendance included clergy and nobility who, according to one contemporary, ‘came to take lessons in concord and patriotism even as the two other chambers are closed to everyone’.⁶⁴

The collapse of the two sets of conciliatory conferences left the Estates General at a complete impasse and the Crown provided no direction. On 13 June, seeking to break the deadlock, three curés left the chamber of the clergy and entered that of the commons to have their credentials verified.⁶⁵ During the next few days, small groups of curés continued to cross over to the commons, which led the latter to rethink its status because its membership was now broader than what had formerly been only the Third Estate. It began to consider a new name for itself and this search for a new designation forced it to re-evaluate what its role would be. After days of debate, the commons adopted the name ‘National Assembly’, a compromise intended in part to allow distinction of orders to continue.⁶⁶ Although Sieyès put forward the motion suggesting it, he was yielding to the sentiments of the body rather than directing it.⁶⁷ The new name signified that the body represented the nation, a responsibility that the commons had increasingly assumed during the stalemate,⁶⁸ and its first act, authorising the collection of taxes, was a symbol that it was transforming itself from a passive consultative body into an active policy-making one. The assumption of the title of National Assembly led the Crown to call for a royal session—one in which the monarch would address all three orders combined.

The stalemate had also served to clarify the purpose of the commons, which was to give France a constitution. After being barred by armed guards from entering its chamber on 20 June, ostensibly to allow it to be prepared for the royal session, deputies moved to a nearby tennis court and pledged to establish a constitution. Reflecting the fear of dissolution and its strength of resolve, the Assembly also pledged to meet elsewhere if necessary to achieve it. The proclamation of the National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath represented a challenge to royal authority, forcing Louis to respond so as not to relinquish power to the Third Estate.⁶⁹

At the royal session on 23 June the monarch sought to overawe the deputies.⁷⁰ There was a heavy presence of armed guards both inside and outside the meeting room and there were troops positioned throughout Versailles, through which deputies had to pass to attend the session. Louis entered the chamber accompanied by the princes of the blood, dukes and other peers, as well as the royal bodyguard. He began the session with a short speech in which he professed his goodwill and, clearly seeking to justify royal inaction during the stalemate, mentioned the freedom that he had given to the Estates General. After he finished, the Garde des sceaux read a declaration nullifying all that had transpired, a reference particularly to the assumption of the title of National Assembly and mandating the preservation of the distinction of the three orders. To that end, the monarch annulled restraints on the power of the Estates General, a reference to imperative mandates, contending that they restricted the freedom of deputies and impeded vote by order. Louis returned to the podium and stated that in the future there would be no tax assessed or loan issued without the consent of the nation. To secure such consent there would be future meetings of the Estates General without fixed intervals. Its meetings would be held in closed session with voting by head on questions of taxation but all other issues to be decided through vote by order. After sternly gazing at the Assembly, he decreed that, beginning the next day, the three orders would meet separately and brusquely ordered deputies to separate immediately, after which he left.⁷¹ Most bishops, a number of curés and all of the nobility left the room. The members of the Assembly, however, refused to leave, leading the monarch to send his master of ceremonies to tell Jean Sylvain Bailly, the president of the Third Estate, that they must depart, an order they refused. Moreover, in direct defiance of the monarch, the Assembly decided that it would continue with all of the deliberations that it had taken to that point.⁷² Town criers in Versailles refused to proclaim the monarch’s declarations on the streets, ostensibly because they all had colds.⁷³

The royal session on 23 June was the first time since the opening of the Estates General that Louis had provided any leadership, but its failure became evident the next day when a majority of the clergy defied the monarch’s order and crossed over to the Assembly to have their credentials verified.⁷⁴ The defeat became complete the following day (25 June) when dozens of members of the nobility left their chamber and also entered the Assembly.⁷⁵

The Assembly respected the distinction of orders in its seating arrangements. Before sending its first delegation to the Third Estate in early May, the clergy had discussed for two hours how its members should describe themselves upon entry so as not to offend the Third Estate. They decided that, rather than identifying themselves as the order of the clergy, the deputation would state that they were members of the clergy. They were surprised that in response the Third Estate declared that it was pleased with the words of the members of the ‘order of the clergy’.⁷⁶ Moreover, beginning in late May, the commons had designated benches for the clergy and nobility and prohibited them from being occupied by members of the commons or the public.⁷⁷

In an attempt to dissuade curés from entering the Assembly, the Bishop of Saintes had told them that the ‘order of the commons’ was going to blend everyone indistinctly in an effort to abolish orders. As a result, when the first curés entered on 13 June, they explicitly characterised themselves as ‘members of the order of the clergy from the province of Poitou’—the primary identifier being their order—and stated that they were seeking to bring about good relations ‘among the orders’. The commons seated the curés in the section of the chamber that had been reserved for the clergy.⁷⁸ The clergy were deeply loyal to their order.⁷⁹ The commons sought to accommodate clergy members by preserving the distinctiveness of their order.⁸⁰ As other curés continued to arrive during following days, they were placed with their colleagues in the section reserved for the clergy.⁸¹ Likewise, when the members of the nobility entered the Assembly on 25 June, they were seated in the section reserved for the nobility.⁸²

With the failure of the royal session evident, Louis appeared to yield. He wrote a brief letter to the members of the clergy and nobility who remained in their respective chambers and asked them to join ‘the other two orders’. He was infuriated that the orders meeting together had been forced upon him.⁸³ His letter pointedly never used the term ‘National Assembly’: in his sole mention of the body, he referred to it as the Estates General. He did not ask them to accept vote by head and, in a reversal of his position at the royal session, in which he had declared imperative mandates invalid, he tacitly reinstated them by authorising deputies not to participate in the Assembly until they had received new authorisation from their constituents.⁸⁴

After an emotional meeting with the monarch, the presidents of the clergy and the nobility led their members into the Assembly late in the afternoon of 27 June.⁸⁵ Their entry seemed to represent the fulfilment of the union of orders and raised the spirits of those who were already a part of the Assembly, which chose to adjourn for two days to celebrate the event. There were spontaneous festivities in Versailles and Paris, cheering the apparent consolidation of the Assembly.

IV

This joy, rooted in the perception that the entry of the clerical and noble deputies marked the end of the long impasse, was palpable but misplaced: the situation was not as it seemed. Both Louis and many of the deputies who entered on the 27 June were not acting in good faith. The monarch was stalling for time, appearing to accept the Assembly while bringing in troops from outlying garrisons to provide security when he dissolved it. To this end, his authorisation for deputies not to participate and to ask for new powers had the potential to hinder the body for weeks and give him time to continue to bring in additional forces.

Price has argued that the policy of the Crown toward the Assembly was more conciliatory and less directed toward force than has been recognised. Citing papers of Louis Auguste Le Tonnelier de Breteuil dealing with the creation of the Maupeou conseils supérieurs, he suggested that Breteuil viewed the Assembly in the same manner as he had the parlements, with the ‘ambiguous nature of threat and negotiation that had always characterized them’.⁸⁶ The use of this focus, however, overlooks the Crown’s more recent experience with a parlement, that of Grenoble only a year earlier. Unlike the parlement of Paris, it had resisted its disbandment under the Lamoignon edicts. Two regiments of royal troops were sent to banish the magistrates and bloodshed resulted.⁸⁷ The events in Grenoble had represented the first breakdown of royal authority under Louis XVI and this was answered with strong military force. Price may be correct that there was no organised Court conspiracy to crush the Assembly, but it is also clear that that the contemplation of the use of military force was always close at hand, as he acknowledges.⁸⁸ Price argued that the Court was ‘inclined to political rather than military solutions’ and in many respects this may be true.⁸⁹ The political goal that Price identified, however, which was to persuade the Assembly ‘to accept some version of the declaration of 23 June’,⁹⁰ was unattainable. As its response in Grenoble a year earlier demonstrated, the Crown was willing to use force to achieve its objectives.⁹¹

Indeed, beginning the day after dozens of nobles entered the Assembly, the nature of military deployments changed.⁹² From 26 June to 1 July, the number of royal troops called to Paris and its surrounding area increased fivefold, with 11,500 moved on 1 July alone.⁹³ The rapidity of the build-up of troops—by mid-July there were tens of thousands—created conditions that called their reliability into question; this doubt may have led to hesitation by the Crown to use military solutions, rather than a disinclination to do so.⁹⁴

The clerical and noble deputies who arrived on 27 June were also duplicitous in their entry, although they did make it clear that they were not entering the Assembly out of conviction. The president of each order stated that its members were present because of their desire for peace, love of the fatherland and devotion to the monarch.⁹⁵ The members of the Assembly could reasonably have assumed that their entry signified an implicit, if unenthusiastic, acceptance of the Assembly, but this was not the case. Many among those who entered on 27 June soon began to act in bad faith. As William Doyle has observed, the two-month effort to merge the orders exacerbated the bitterness on all sides.⁹⁶

The day after their entry (the first day of the two-day hiatus to celebrate the event), many noble deputies met at the residence of the duc de Luxembourg, the president of the nobility, arousing suspicion.⁹⁷ The Crown sought to discourage a plan conceived by noble deputies under which they would return to their bailliages ostensibly to receive new powers but then remain there rather than return to the Assembly.⁹⁸ A plan by the nobility to cripple the Assembly became evident when it reconvened on 30 June. The meeting was scheduled to open at 9 a.m. but the recalcitrant deputies were not present. Bailly postponed the meeting until 10 a.m., which may have been the time when the nobility believed it to be scheduled, but they arrived only at 11 a.m.⁹⁹ Upon their arrival, the noble deputies immediately began what was presumed to be a prearranged strategy. As they submitted their credentials for verification, many of them declared that they could not participate in the Assembly until they received new authorisation from their constituents. After listening to dozens of such protests over several hours, and with dozens of additional noble deputies awaiting their turn, the Assembly cut off the readings after a member observed that men whose credentials were not yet verified could not be considered members and therefore had no right to make protests.¹⁰⁰ The readings revealed that the Assembly was far from a fully functioning body. After the 30 June meeting, a deflated deputy of the commons, Adrien Duquesnoy, whose hopes had been raised on 27 June, wrote in his diary that the initial burst of enthusiasm that the entry of the clergy and nobility had inspired was past. He lamented that two empty days had got away from the Assembly.¹⁰¹

One aspect in which the Assembly did not respect orders was when it divided itself into subcommittees on 1 July. Deputies were assigned by proceeding through an alphabetical list of bailliages without distinction of orders, which caught the attention of one noble deputy.¹⁰² Furthermore, the subcommittees were to be reconstituted monthly, which would lead to greater intermingling. At the meeting in which the assignments to the subcommittees were announced, the situation deteriorated quickly when the president of the clergy, Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld, speaking for its minority, announced that its members were claiming specific reservations before entering the Assembly, among which was that of deliberating separately on certain issues, even during the current session. His statements provoked an uproar in the Assembly.¹⁰³

The action of the minority of the clergy was more threatening than that of the majority of the nobility. To be sure, the nobility were seeking to impede the Assembly, but their request for new authorisation was at least directed, however insincerely, at the goal of entering the Assembly. The clergy’s claim of a right to meet separately undermined the Assembly. Indeed, when the commons had declared itself the National Assembly on 17 June, it had explicitly stated that no deputy had the right to fulfil his duties outside of the Assembly itself. Yet this was precisely what the minority of the clergy was asserting, threatening the authority of the Assembly and the policy-making role that its members envisaged. The claim by the minority of the clergy to meet separately resurrected the issue of orders and the crisis became even more acute on 3 July, when the majority of the nobility, contending that it had not renounced the right of assembling itself as an order, returned to its original chamber to discuss the course its members ought to follow according to their mandates.¹⁰⁴ The nobility also resumed keeping official minutes of its separate meetings.¹⁰⁵ Prior to resuming its separate meetings, many members of the nobility had written to their respective bailliages to ask for new powers, even if they wished to retain their original imperative mandate. To convene separately to discuss imperative mandates, most of which specified vote by order, suggested a reversion to separate orders, which threatened to undo and destroy the Assembly. Indeed, the first act of the majority of the nobility was to issue a statement declaring that each order was independent and that vote should be by order.¹⁰⁶

The attempted reversion to separate orders made deputies aware that the question of imperative mandates needed to be resolved. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand devised and introduced a motion that seemed to promise a definitive resolution. Stating that a bailliage could only concur with the forging of the general will and had no right to prevent its formation, it prohibited any measure that would prevent a deputy from voting in the Assembly. His proposal further disallowed any protest that could suspend or impede a legally constituted assembly. After extended debate and refinement of the motion, the Assembly voted by an overwhelming margin that there was nothing to debate, with the one-sided vote a result of divergent interpretations of the meaning of the motion. The commons, a majority of the clergy and some among the minority of the nobility believed that because the first decree of the National Assembly had been to declare itself constituted, Talleyrand’s motion appeared repetitious. The minority of the clergy and the majority of the nobility understood imperative mandates to be valid on their own terms, and viewed the vote not to deliberate as an affirmation of them. They were momentarily elated by the vote but were quickly disabused of their notion when they realised that imperative mandates had been voided.¹⁰⁷

Despite the decision, the nobility continued to meet separately. To have boycotted the Assembly while gathering separately would have provoked a strong backlash, so they attended its sessions, but did not participate in debates or voting. In the evening, rather than meeting with the subcommittees to which they had been assigned, many nobles instead convened with their order. On the evening of 8 July, after the voiding of imperative mandates, the nobility again met separately. The minutes are circumspect but note that those in attendance listened to ‘reflections and considerations’ put forward by many nobles on the current situation of the different orders. The session was clearly an airing of grievances and it appears that they were angry at those members who had committed themselves to the Assembly. The nobility decided that, beginning with its next meeting, attendance would be by invitation only.¹⁰⁸ The following evening (9 July), the nobility heard a complaint from a noble delegation that was aggrieved because the Assembly had disallowed its mandate that did not permit its members to take part in any assembly other than one in which the three orders met separately. The delegation asked the chamber to accept its protest, after which the chamber drafted a statement condemning any infringement upon the rights and independence of the nobility and sent it to the monarch. The nobility also asked Louis to adjudicate the dispute between the delegation and the Assembly.¹⁰⁹ As they would have surely known, the request could only have antagonised the Assembly: allowing the monarch to resolve the dispute would have compromised its authority by making the Assembly appear subordinate to the monarch. It is little wonder, then, that a British observer wrote at this time that, despite the surface comity of the Assembly, he believed that the nobility and the commons held a ‘rooted animosity’ for each other.¹¹⁰

On 9 July the Assembly affirmed its central task of producing a constitution and later decided to form a committee to present it to the Assembly, rather than have each of the thirty subcommittees produce a proposed constitution that would be collated into a single document. The continuing adherence to orders by the Assembly is evident in the structure of the Committee on the Constitution that it elected. Reflecting the balance of the original Estates General, the committee was comprised of two members of the clergy, two members of the nobility and four from the commons.¹¹¹ The Assembly elected its committee on 14 July, the day of the culmination of the popular rising in Paris. The insurrection appears to have led to the cessation of separate meetings. The nobility never held another recorded separate meeting after 9 July, but apparently met on 11 July without keeping minutes.¹¹² Its final meeting as an order was at 8 a.m. on 16 July, prior to the opening of the Assembly, after which it announced that its separate meetings would end, as did those of the clergy.¹¹³ Neither offered a reason for the cessation, but there can be little doubt that they were apprehensive of being perceived to be in opposition to the Assembly that Paris had just risen to defend.

It is illustrative of how limited the task of preparing a constitution was thought to be that on 24 July, only ten days after its formation, the Assembly instructed the Committee on the Constitution to present an account of its work.¹¹⁴ The presentation, on 27 July, also conformed to the protocol of orders. The first speaker was Jérome Marie Champion de Cicé, archbishop of Bordeaux, the second was Stanislas Marie Adélaïde, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre and the last was Jean Joseph Mounier, of the commons. Champion de Cicé told the Assembly that the committee had believed itself duty-bound to use the cahiers to ascertain the desires of the kingdom. Clermont-Tonnerre followed with a summary of the cahiers on the question of a constitution, divided into two sections. The first was those in which the cahiers were in general agreement and the second those issues on which they were not, which the Assembly would have to settle. In the latter category, in presenting whether there should be one chamber or two in future legislatures, Clermont-Tonnerre declared that if the decision was for two, they should not be divided by orders. This was not an effort to end orders—rather, it sought to maintain the union of orders instead of segregating them in separate chambers.¹¹⁵

The adherence to orders was further evident in the vocabulary of the presentation. The Committee on the Constitution was charged with the defining task of the Assembly. Yet, in the questions put forward in its report, it never used the term National Assembly. Instead, it consistently employed the term Estates General, suggesting that the Assembly may have been viewed as sui generis to achieve the union of orders and that deputies were possibly seeking a return to the status quo ante with a union of orders in an Estates General in which vote was by head. It may also be that because the Assembly sought to base the constitution on the cahiers, which had of course used the term Estates General, they were faithfully reflecting the language of the cahiers. Whatever the case, deputies certainly projected a future in which orders remained a central component of society and politics.

V

Just over a week later, however, the Assembly abjured the ideal of orders for itself in the aftermath of the meeting of the night of 4 August. In that session, a planned attempt to quell rural unrest went awry when the emotional reaction to a proposal to redeem seigneurial dues generated an entirely unanticipated comprehensive renunciation of privilege by deputies of all three orders.¹¹⁶ The Assembly believed that in eradicating privilege it had ended divisions in France and that it had created a new identity for inhabitants of the kingdom, which was to be French. One deputy wrote that ‘one hastened to be French, to be completely French and one no longer wanted any other title’ and another declared that ‘one wants to be French and nothing more’.¹¹⁷

This new identity of being French transcended the three orders, as became apparent in the aftermath of the meeting. After 4 August, the Assembly abandoned the practice of seating members by orders.¹¹⁸ One deputy wrote to his constituents in Provence that the meeting had led to the establishment of ‘a single order’ and that it had abolished the distinction of orders.¹¹⁹ His reference to a single order was, of course, a metaphor for the creation of the ideal of being French and his statement about the abolition of the distinction of orders was true only within the Assembly itself. Even if it internally disregarded any distinctions after the meeting, the Assembly had not abolished orders. On 1 September, a noble deputy wrote that the orders were still distinct despite the haphazard seating arrangements in the Assembly.¹²⁰ No one had renounced distinction of orders during the meeting of 4 August, almost certainly because distinction of orders was not considered a privilege but a foundation of the social and political structure.

As a result, the distinction of orders continued to exist in society, with the evidence suggesting that deputies intended for them to continue—indeed, the night of 4 August seemed to validate the ideal of the union of orders. One deputy, writing to his constituents on 10 August, praised the clergy and nobility and stated that he hoped for continuing harmony among the three orders into the future.¹²¹ Another wrote after the completion of the August decrees that there was no longer any matter of division among the orders and there would be only a general interest. Moreover, in an illustration of the degree to which orders remained the dominant social construct, he declared that henceforth there would be only two orders in France—one comprised of people of goodwill and the other of those who were malevolent; he expected that the former would win out.¹²²

The renunciations of the meeting, which had been emotional and frenetic, had to be codified into a formal decree. The Assembly completed the codification into a proclamation on 11 August and one of its final articles proclaimed Louis XVI ‘the restorer of French liberties’. On 13 August the Assembly presented the decrees to the monarch. Rather than sending a delegation to offer them, the entire Assembly presented them, indicating that deputies viewed the decrees as a collective achievement. In addition, reflecting the new ideal the Assembly had forged, they did not follow any distinction of orders during the presentation.¹²³

Louis declared that he gratefully accepted the title of ‘Restorer of French liberties’. He said nothing about the other articles, however, nor did he indicate any similar acceptance of them. Deputies had expected the monarch to accept the decrees when they were presented and were disappointed when he failed to give his assent to them. It was a deliberate omission. According to Evelyne Lever, as early as 5 August, Louis had written to the Archbishop of Arles that he would never allow the spoliation of the clergy and nobility and would not give his sanction to the decrees.¹²⁴ In a strategy of delay, Louis continued to withhold his approval for weeks afterwards, which increasingly disconcerted the Assembly.¹²⁵ His hesitation played a role in the Assembly conferring a suspensive rather than an absolute veto, which meant that he could only delay legislation rather than veto it, and stipulating that the veto would come into force only with the subsequent legislature, meaning he could not veto the August decrees or the constitution the Assembly would bring into existence. After its decision on the royal veto, which came four weeks after the presentation of the decrees, the Assembly began to put pressure on Louis to approve them. In September it sent its president to ask for his sanction of them.¹²⁶

Louis responded in writing but prevaricated, stating that he approved of most of the articles but had reservations about others.¹²⁷ Hardman contends that the monarch’s observations were germane and that he was objecting to ‘instant legislation’ and to being excluded from the legislative process.¹²⁸ The August decrees, however, were not legislation. They were a declaration of principles and intent to which the Assembly was irrevocably committed. The final article stated that the Assembly would begin the drafting of legislation necessary for the principles in the decrees to be established but, in the meantime, the decrees were to be printed and sent to the provinces for dissemination. Louis’s refusal to approve the decrees meant that the ideals of the Assembly were not being officially proclaimed. Whatever his intentions may have been, the monarch’s response angered deputies, some of whom believed that Louis was trying to enter into a negotiation with the Assembly rather than promulgate the decrees.¹²⁹

Many in the Assembly believed that the clergy and nobility were prevailing upon the king to withhold any sanction of the August decrees, again putting into focus the problem of orders.¹³⁰ The perception was correct. Marie Antoinette, whose political influence was growing in 1788 and 1789, had initially favoured the Third Estate and supported the doubling of the Third Estate in December 1788. By the summer of 1789, however, she had been strongly pressed by her favourite, Madame de Polignac, to turn away from the Third Estate and defend the interests of the clergy and nobility, which she did.¹³¹

The evolution from acceptance of orders through the model of the union of orders to ill will towards them as Louis withheld promulgation of the August decrees is personified by the deputy François Antoine de Boissy d’Anglas, a member of the commons. As the weeks went on, Boissy, who had, shortly after the codification of the August decrees, envisioned the three orders working together in the general interest, was, by September, attributing Louis’s inaction to the selfish motives of the clergy and nobility.¹³² The social ideal that increasingly took hold during August and September and would soon supersede orders was that of an undifferentiated citizenry, united by the bond of being French. It had been present since the meeting of the night of 4 August but, as the perception of the clergy and nobility working to prevent the promulgation of the August decrees grew, it increasingly came to the fore.¹³³

On 21 September, Louis informed the Assembly that he would consent to the publication, but not the promulgation, of the decrees, which even one conservative noble deputy described as ‘a little Jesuitical’.¹³⁴ Ultimately, however, nearly two months after their formulation, and clearly under duress—the royal family was about to be removed from Versailles to Paris—in early October, Louis gave his unqualified sanction to the August decrees.¹³⁵ The length of time it took to gain his approval as well as the perception that the clergy and nobility had played a role in the delay made the problem of orders apparent. As one deputy observed, the two key pillars of privilege had been provinces and orders.¹³⁶ Although there were minor exceptions, the provinces had for the most part willingly given up their privileges and accepted the national ideal. The lengthy impasse that had ensued over the August decrees, however, revealed that orders were more resistant to the new ideal of the Assembly.

The removal of the royal family from Versailles to Paris in October unnerved deputies of all orders and led many to request a leave of absence or to quit the Assembly altogether.¹³⁷ In those instances in which no alternative deputy was readily available as a replacement, it was necessary to hold an election. A declaration from the town of Château-Thierry denouncing deputies who returned to their province as derelict in their duties became a catalyst for the Assembly to examine its policies on the matter.¹³⁸ On 15 October, deputies voted that the Assembly would grant a leave of absence only for urgent matters and for a specified period of time. Following a motion from Alexandre François Marie, vicomte de Beauharnais, who noted that the division of the Assembly into three orders was an ‘irregularity’, the Assembly further mandated that replacement deputies had to be chosen by an electoral assembly of all citizens, without distinction of orders.¹³⁹ In a nation of citizens equal in rights, the ‘politics of orders’ had no place.¹⁴⁰

One deputy wrote that the decree of 15 October represented the consecration and realisation of the principle upon which the constitution of the Assembly rested, a principle from which all rights of the citizen derived, an allusion to the ideal of legal equality formulated on 4 August.¹⁴¹ The decree also did away with all distinctions of seating and dress among members of the Assembly, leading one observer to note that distinctions of dress signified an outdated inequality no longer appropriate for representatives of a nation that was one and equal in rights.¹⁴²

The legislation was fraught with symbolism and it is difficult to believe that deputies were not aware of this. 15 October was the final meeting of the National Assembly in Versailles and it was as if deputies, as a last act before they left, sought to sweep aside all that Versailles represented. Versailles was synonymous with social codes, hierarchies and distinctions and, by abolishing orders and distinctions of dress, the Assembly was consigning the values of Versailles to the past. With its suppression of orders, the Assembly definitively asserted its ideal of uniting all French under the sole identity of citizens equal in rights.

Although it was achieved in a rather indirect fashion, through the electoral regulations for replacing deputies, it was this decree of 15 October which effected the abolition of orders in France. It was so inferential, in fact, that in conveying the decree to their constituents, deputies from Anjou felt the need to clarify to their constituents that orders had been abolished.¹⁴³ A pair of Breton deputies likewise wrote to their constituents that the decree ‘consecrated the principle of perfect equality’ and affirmed one of the great principles advanced by the Assembly.¹⁴⁴ Having been a foundational element of French society for many centuries, orders thus ceased to exist in October 1789.¹⁴⁵

In however tangential a fashion it may have been done, the Assembly believed strongly in the abolition of orders as a critical component of its new vision of France.¹⁴⁶ When Evreux was preparing to hold an election to replace a noble deputy who had resigned, François Buzot, a deputy of the town, told his constituents that the replacement election could not be held by orders meeting in common but must be by all citizens indistinctly.¹⁴⁷ The concept was so novel that the procedures for holding the election left local officials confused and uncertain.¹⁴⁸ Even more strongly, six weeks after the abolition of orders, deputies from Arles chided a town for putting at the head of its deliberations an ‘assembly of eight commissioners of the three orders’. They pointedly noted that orders no longer existed—there was a single and unique designation of French citizen.¹⁴⁹ Until the suppression of orders by the Assembly, the most advanced position imaginable had been ignoring distinction of orders to achieve the three orders working together—there had not been any call to abolish them; these communications demonstrate just how novel, even unexpected, the abolition of orders was.¹⁵⁰

Just over two weeks after the abolition of orders, the Assembly exhibited its adherence to its decision by voting to replace the noble deputy Denis Michel Philibert Dubuisson, comte de Douzon, with a deputy of the commons elected from the same province, Gaspard Regnard.¹⁵¹ The action had been suggested by another noble deputy from the province, Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, comte de Tracy, and it led one contemporary to write that with this action the Assembly had confirmed the principles established on 4 August.¹⁵²

VI

The system of orders was a critical part of what William Doyle has called ‘ideologies of inequality’ and therefore entirely antithetical to the new ideals conceived by the Assembly.¹⁵³ Had orders been suppressed during the meeting of the night of 4 August, the action would undoubtedly have received greater attention than it did in October. Although the abolition was understated, it had enormous implications for the scope of the Revolution, as well as for support for it. What then, were the consequences of abolition for the former orders?

The suppression of orders destroyed the juridical basis for the existence of the clergy and the nobility.¹⁵⁴ Uniquely among the three orders, the First Estate had a tangible existence accompanying its status as an order. It had a governing body—the Assembly of the Clergy—and an administrative apparatus charged with collecting from the clergy the necessary sum to pay the don gratuit (the voluntary contribution made by the First Estate to Crown finances).

With the abolition of orders and the blending of the clergy into the rank of citizens, the Assembly of the Clergy, which also oversaw Church lands, lost its purpose. The entity that it represented, the Church and clergy as a definable corporate body politic, had ceased to exist.¹⁵⁵ In this respect, the abolition of orders cleared the way for the decision a few weeks later to place Church lands at the disposal of the nation.¹⁵⁶ Because the clergy had become citizens, so, too, its lands were to be placed at the service of the nation.

The First Estate may have been abolished, but the clergy and its sacred functions were not. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy addressed the need for the Church to be reorganised, financed and brought under the control of the French government. To many deputies, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a routine reform designed to harmonise the Church with the Assembly’s new ideal of a polity devoid of privilege and corporate bodies.¹⁵⁷ The Assembly made the administrative structure of the Church (its dioceses) congruent with that of the provincial departments, which had been put in place almost seamlessly. Deputies expected the same ease of transition for the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, viewing it as an administrative measure. This was a blind spot for the Assembly, which considered its actions solely in terms of its new vision of the kingdom, with no regard for any wider ramifications.

To give but one example, the 1516 Concordat of Bologna, which governed Church–state relations in France, gave the monarch the right to nominate bishops in France. Having transferred sovereignty from the monarch to the people, the Assembly inferred that selection of bishops could therefore be transferred to the people, through elections. Whereas the Concordat of Bologna had reserved the installation of bishops to the pope, however, ostensibly providing a papal veto over unqualified nominees, the election of bishops offered no such check to the papacy. The Ecclesiastical Committee of the Assembly generally sought to treat the Church fairly and never intervened in matters of doctrine, but the Assembly failed to anticipate the effects of a comprehensive reorganisation of the Church without consulting the pope. To the Assembly, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was a question of national sovereignty and its reforms could not be made conditional upon approval, nor subject to veto, by an external entity.

In 1791, the pope condemned the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This forced the vast majority of French citizens—and the clergy themselves—to make a stark choice between a primary loyalty to the state or the Church. It manifested itself in the choice each citizen made in attending Mass, either to follow a priest who accepted the Civil Constitution of the Clergy or to attend the church of one of the non-juring clergy, who did not. The schism created by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy enlarged the counter-revolution by extending it into every parish in France. Deep division ensued for more than a decade until a nominal settlement was reached with the Concordat of 1801, but tensions between Church and state continued into the twentieth century.

The effect of the abolition of orders on the nobility was also significant and divisive. The nobility had agreed to yield its fiscal privileges before the Estates General opened and it was nobles who had initiated the renunciations of the night of 4 August, to which even some formerly recalcitrant nobles had rallied.¹⁵⁸ Much of the nobility had accepted fiscal equality, legal equality and, left only with the honorific status of nobility itself, had accepted their new identity as French citizens.

In June 1790, the Assembly abolished the trappings of nobility, including titles.¹⁵⁹ To many deputies, the suppression of nobility was a logical and non-controversial step, because the Second Estate no longer existed, thus eliminating a recognised basis for nobility.¹⁶⁰ The abolition of orders had gone unlamented by the nobility—indeed, nobles had participated in crafting the legislation that suppressed them. Orders were broad and impersonal social/political categories and all orders had been abolished. The suppression of nobility, however, was much more personal, involving honour and individual and family identity. Furthermore, the extension of the proscription to include family coats of arms made the measure even more oppressive.

The suppression of nobility alienated a large number of nobles from the Revolution.¹⁶¹ Many among them believed that the nobility had led the way in renouncing fiscal privileges and had fully acquiesced to fiscal and legal equality. They viewed the abolition of nobility itself as both excessive and gratuitous and it led to a considerable erosion of support for the Revolution from a small but influential group that might otherwise have remained favourably disposed toward it.¹⁶²

The political cross-currents and swirling emotions experienced by noble deputies are well illustrated in the letters of Charles-Élie, marquis de Ferrières, a moderate conservative deputy from Saumur, to his wife. After the opening of the Estates General, he viewed the efforts of the Third Estate with disdain and noted that what sustained the nobility was adhering to traditional usages with prudence and discretion. After the commons took the title of National Assembly, Ferrières hoped that the monarch would dissolve the body and call for a new Estates General to be convened. Although his cahier authorised him to join the commons and he personally professed indifference to the question of vote by order, he remained in the chamber of the nobility because he did not want to abandon his order. Ferrières joined the Assembly only on 27 June and, unlike many of his compatriots, sought to work in good faith in the Assembly, including attending the meetings of his subcommittee in the evening. He believed that the three orders were working together relatively harmoniously on the constitution, but he was disconcerted by the hatred some in the commons felt for the nobility. After the meeting of the night of 4 August, which he called the most memorable meeting ever held in any nation, Ferrières enthusiastically rallied to the new ideals of the Assembly. He wrote to a friend that the meeting had produced something that twelve centuries of the same religion, the same language and common habits had not been able to achieve—the reconciliation of interests and the unity of France with the sole objective of the common good of all. In June 1790, however, the abolition of nobility alienated him. He wrote to his wife that it was ‘absurd’, but also told her that resisting it would be futile. Noting that the motion to abolish nobility had been put forward by noble deputies, Ferrières told her that the greatest enemies of the nobility came from within.¹⁶³

Ferrières was by no means alone in his reaction. Even noble deputies from Dauphiné, who pointedly observed that from the opening of the Estates General they had been mandated to meet in common with the other orders, vehemently protested the abolition. Many liberal noble deputies who had entered the Assembly on 25 June also protested.¹⁶⁴ Years later, Alexandre de Lameth, a supporter of the motion to suppress nobility, expressed his misgivings in his memoirs, writing that the abolition of nobility (which he claimed was a spontaneous act), more than any other measure, united the nobility in opposition to the Revolution.¹⁶⁵

***

Orders did not fall into desuetude after the consolidation of the National Assembly on 27 June, but continued within the body in terms of seating for weeks afterward. Nor were they renounced during the night of 4 August because they were viewed as an intrinsic part of the social structure rather than as a privilege, even if in the aftermath of the meeting deputies no longer observed distinction of orders in their seating. The question of orders ultimately arose in the context of elections of replacement deputies during the fluid period when the Assembly was relocating from Versailles to Paris. The timing—during an uncertain period for the Assembly—as well as the seemingly incidental manner in which it was achieved has served to obscure the abolition of orders, but its significance should not be overlooked. The abolition of orders helped to make possible the placing of Church lands at the disposal of the nation in the following month of November 1789. It also made necessary the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which would ultimately be one of the greatest solvents of the new ideals of the Assembly.¹⁶⁶ The suppression of orders also laid the foundation for the abolition of nobility, which alienated from the Revolution many members of an important constituency.

The passage of time has obscured the intense loyalty that the issue of orders could engender, as a possibly apocryphal anecdote from a young page at the royal court attests. François Félix, comte de Hézecques, was 14 years old when the Estates General opened, and he wrote down his recollections fifteen years later, wanting to preserve them while they were still relatively fresh and before they faded. He wrote that in June 1789, after the king asked the majority of the nobility to enter the Assembly, all of them did—except one. Jean Phinée Suzanne, baron de Luppé, from Auch, refused. During the weeks after the Assembly reconvened on 30 June, he continued to go to the former chamber of the nobility and seat himself for hours on one of its benches. When the Crown closed the room, he paced the corridor outside of the former chamber of the nobility, never setting foot in the Assembly. He continued to do this until the Assembly moved to Paris in October, at which time he returned to Auch.¹⁶⁷ In the final analysis, the abolition of orders, a measure designed to break down social and political separation and unify the kingdom, did as much as any single act of the Assembly to divide it.

Footnotes