Locked Out, France’s Deputies Swear the Tennis Court Oath

On the morning of June 20, 1789, deputies representing the French Third Estate arrived at their usual meeting place, the Salle des Menus-Plaisirs in Versailles, only to discover that the hall had been closed. King Louis XVI had convened the Estates-General the previous month to confront a severe fiscal and agricultural crisis, bringing together representatives of the clergy as the First Estate, the nobility as the Second Estate, and the remainder of the population as the Third Estate. Deliberations had quickly paralyzed over procedures of voting. Rather than balloting by social order, which allowed the privileged classes to combine and veto changes, the Third Estate demanded voting by head to reflect its numerical superiority. On June 17, under leaders such as Jean Sylvain Bailly and the Comte de Mirabeau, these commoner representatives had unilaterally declared themselves the National Assembly.

Interpreting the sudden closure of their hall as the prelude to a royal crackdown, the locked-out deputies sought an immediate alternative location where they could gather safely. According to some accounts at the suggestion of deputy Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the assembly moved through the streets of Versailles to an indoor real tennis court nearby. Inside this stark sporting hall, the deputies asserted that national authority resided in their collective body rather than in the absolute discretion of the monarch. On a proposal by deputy Jean-Joseph Mounier, a formal resolution declared that the National Assembly existed wherever its members gathered, regardless of physical impediments.