self the National Assembly. This display of defiance of the royal government, which had given its support to the clergy and nobility, was followed by the passage of a measure vesting the National Assembly with sole power to legislate taxation. In swift retaliation, Louis deprived the National Assembly of its meeting hall. The National Assembly responded, on June 20, by gathering at a Versailles tennis court and swearing, in what is known in history as the Tennis Court Oath, that it would not dissolve until it had drafted a constitution for France. At this juncture, serious divisions split the ranks of the upper two estates, and numerous representatives of the lower clergy and a number of liberal nobles broke off to join forces with the National Assembly.Open Rebellion Continued defiance of royal decrees and the mutinous mood of the royal army forced the king to capitulate. On June 27 he ordered the refractory nobility and clergy to join the unicameral legislature, which then designated itself the National Constituent Assembly. Yielding to pressure from the queen and the comte d'Artois, later Charles X, Louis issued orders for the concentration of several loyal foreign regiments in Paris and Versailles. At the same time, Necker, the popular apostle of a regenerated France, was again dismissed from the government. The people of Paris reacted to these provocative acts with open insurrection. Rioting began on July 12, and on July 14 the Bastille, a royal prison that symbolized the despotism of the Bourbons, was stormed and captured.Even before the Parisian outburst, violence, sporadic local disturbances, and peasant uprisings against oppressive nobles occurred in many parts of France, alarming the propertied bourgeoisie no less than the Royalists. Panic-stricken over these ominous events, the comte d'Artois and other prominent reactionaries, the first of the so-called migrs, fled the country. The Parisian bourgeoisie, fearful that the lower...
