The First Crisis of the Revolution

Abstract

When the deputies who had been elected to the Estates General met at Versailles in May 1789 they brought with them their preconceptions about politics and society and the ways in which both might be improved. The royal government saw them as a collection of people assembled in accordance with ancient tradition to offer their advice. Louis XVI, resolved to act as a beneficent and paternal ruler, was prepared to accept such restraints on the practices of Bourbon absolutism as he himself felt to be appropriate to the changing times. This view of the situation was shared by some of the deputies, such as Malouet, who wrote many years later, ‘We were authorized to make proposals, to discuss means, but not principles and basic questions.’¹ Such pragmatic and piecemeal reforms would have struck a familiar note across the Channel and reshaped French history along British lines. Most of Malouet’s colleagues, stimulated by an explosion of enthusiasm and pamphleteering in Paris, saw things rather differently. They were the representatives of the nation who, in partnership with the king, would follow the example of the American colonists and provide France with its first constitution. Necker, the Chief Minister, without any specific policy in mind, hoped vaguely to bestride both horses.