The National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath

On 17 June 1789 the Third Estate, joined by a few parish priests, took a revolutionary step: it declared itself the National Assembly, claiming to represent the whole nation. Two days later a majority of the clergy's deputies voted to join it. On 20 June the deputies found their meeting hall locked and guarded, officially for preparations for a royal session.

Fearing dissolution, they gathered in a nearby indoor tennis court and swore not to separate until they had given France a constitution. Only one deputy refused to sign. The oath transformed the meeting from a body summoned to advise the king into one claiming the power to rewrite the rules of government. In effect, it asserted that sovereignty lay with the nation's representatives rather than the monarch, a principle that later revolutions would echo.