The day the deputies swore not to go home without a constitution
On 20 June 1789, finding their hall at Versailles shut against them, the deputies of the newly proclaimed National Assembly gathered in a nearby indoor tennis court and swore never to separate until France had a constitution. All but one of them swore it; the one dissenter signed as “opposed”. The oath turned the Third Estate’s claim to speak for the nation into a shared commitment, and three days later, when the king ordered them to disperse, they refused.
178920Jun
Date
20 June 1789
A Saturday; the hall found shut in the morning, the oath sworn the same day
In the glossary's timeline: marker
Ring: a step along the way
In the glossary's timeline: tone
Accent: the main story
Place
The Jeu de Paume, Versailles
an indoor court for real tennis, in the town near the palace
Hall shut
Salle des Menus-Plaisirs
closed and guarded, to be prepared for a royal session
Read out by
Jean-Sylvain Bailly
president of the Assembly, standing on a table
The promise
Never to separate until the constitution is established
and to meet wherever circumstances require
Refused
1deputy
Martin-Dauch, who signed as “opposed”
Outcome
The three orders sit together
ordered by the king himself on 27 June
Timeline
17 Jun
The Third Estate declares itself the National Assembly
19 Jun
The clergy votes narrowly to join them; at Marly, the king’s council decides on a royal session
20 Jun · morning
Locked out — Soldiers bar the doors of the deputies’ hall
20 Jun
The oath — In the tennis court, Bailly reads the oath and the deputies swear it
20 Jun
Martin-Dauch alone signs as opposed
22 Jun
In the church of Saint-Louis, most of the clergy deputies join the Assembly
23 Jun
The royal session — The king orders the three estates to sit apart; the Assembly stays put
27 Jun
Louis XVI asks the nobility and clergy to join the Assembly
The oath itself was proposed by Jean-Joseph Mounier, a deputy from the Dauphiné; the tennis court was reportedly suggested by the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.
A hall shut
Six weeks of deadlock, and a Saturday morning
The Estates-General had opened at Versailles on 5 May 1789, and for six weeks it had done nothing. The deputies of the Third EstateIdea: Third Estate. Everyone who was neither priest nor noble, and who in 1789 claimed to be the nation, who represented the great majority of the French, wanted the three orders to verify their credentials together and to vote by head; the nobility and most of the clergy wanted to sit and vote apart, as tradition required, which would let the two privileged orders outvote the third.
On 17 June, on a motion by the abbé SieyèsFigure: Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès. The abbé whose pamphlet opened the Revolution and whose coup closed it, the Third Estate cut the knot. Declaring that it represented almost the whole nation, it took the name of National Assembly and, in the same session, declared the existing taxes illegal while allowing them to be collected for as long as it sat. On 19 June the clergy voted by a narrow margin to join it. The court, still grieving the king’s elder son, who had died on 4 June, was at Marly; there the king’s council decided to answer with a royal session, at which Louis XVIFigure: Louis XVI. The king who called a meeting and lost a monarchy would tell the Estates what he expected of them.
On the morning of Saturday 20 June the deputies came to their meeting place, the Salle des Menus-Plaisirs, and found the doors shut and guarded by soldiers. Posted notices announced a royal session and said that the hall was being prepared for it. The president of the Assembly, the astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly, protested, but was not allowed in.
The oath
Wherever its members are gathered, there is the National Assembly
The deputies went looking for another room and found one close by: the town’s jeu de paume, a covered court for real tennis, the ancestor of the modern game. The idea is usually credited to the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. There, among bare walls and a crowd of onlookers, Jean-Joseph Mounier, a deputy from the Dauphiné, proposed that they bind themselves by oath. The decree they adopted declared that nothing could stop the Assembly from continuing its work, wherever it was forced to meet.
“All the members of this Assembly shall immediately take a solemn oath never to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated upon firm foundations.”
— Decree of the National Assembly, 20 June 1789
Bailly, standing on a table, read out the oath, and the deputies swore it with raised arms. Then, one by one, they signed. A single deputy, Joseph Martin-Dauch of Castelnaudary, wrote “opposed” beside his name: he would not swear, he said, to carry out decisions the king had not approved. The uproar was such that Bailly had him taken out by another door for his own safety.
The royal session
23 June: the king speaks, the deputies stay
The royal session, first announced for 22 June, was put off by a day. On the 22nd the Assembly met in the church of Saint-Louis in Versailles, where most of the clergy deputies came to join it. On 23 June, in the Salle des Menus-Plaisirs, surrounded by troops, Louis XVI addressed the three orders. His finance minister, Necker, was conspicuously absent. The king offered real reforms, among them that no new tax would be raised without the consent of the nation’s representatives, but he declared the decisions of 17 June null and void, kept the three orders apart and left their privileges standing. Then he ordered the deputies to disperse and to meet the next day in their separate chambers.
The nobles and part of the clergy followed him out. The deputies of the Third Estate stayed in their seats. When the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, the grand master of ceremonies, reminded them of the king’s order, Bailly reportedly answered that the assembled nation could not receive orders, and MirabeauFigure: Comte de Mirabeau. The Revolution's great orator, and the court's secret adviser stood up.
“Go and tell those who sent you that we are here by the will of the people, and that we shall leave only by the force of bayonets.”
— Mirabeau to the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, 23 June 1789, as reported
Sieyès, it is said, added simply: “You are today what you were yesterday. Let us deliberate.” The Assembly confirmed its earlier decrees and, on Mirabeau’s motion, declared its members inviolable. The king did not use force. Over the following days more clergy and a group of liberal nobles joined the Assembly, and on 27 June Louis XVI himself asked the rest of the nobility and clergy to sit with it.
David’s unfinished picture
A picture overtaken by the Revolution
The oath was the first time the deputies set the authority of the nation, speaking through them, above the will of the king, and it became one of the founding images of the Revolution. In 1790 the Jacobin ClubGroup: Jacobin Club. The Paris club at the heart of the radical Revolution asked the painter Jacques-Louis David to commemorate it in a huge canvas, to be paid for by public subscription. David showed a large drawing of the composition at the Salon of 1791: Bailly stands on a table at the centre, a sea of arms is raised towards him, a Carthusian monk, a priest and a Protestant pastor embrace in the foreground, and Martin-Dauch sits apart on the right, his arms crossed. The young RobespierreFigure: Maximilien Robespierre. The Incorruptible who defended the Terror and died by it, then an obscure deputy for Artois, presses his hands to his chest.
The painting was never finished. The subscription fell short, and within a few years many of the men David had meant to glorify had become suspects, émigrés or victims of the Revolution: Mirabeau was disgraced after his death, when his secret dealings with the court came to light, and Bailly was guillotined in 1793. Only a handful of figures were ever sketched out on the vast canvas, and only a few heads painted in. The drawing and the unfinished canvas are now at Versailles, not far from the tennis court itself, which has been kept as a memorial.
