Tennis Court Oath

The Tennis Court Oath was taken by members of the Third Estate in France on June 20, 1789. It's very nature presents us with one of their greivences, too much power given to the monarch and corrupt rule. This oath was taken under strange circumstances. The Third Estate was formed to represent the common class in France as opposed to the clergy or nobility. On the day that they gave this oath they had been locked out of the room that they normally met in, sending them into a panic. They believed that the lock-out was intentional and caused by the King to try to make them stop meeting and representing the commoners of France. They took this as a threat to their governmental power. Instead of giving up, they held their meeting in a nearby tennis court and took this oath to ensure that they would continue to represent their class, despite any setbacks that the nobles or the clergy gave them. The tennis court oath was the first time that any major political group really stood up to the King and disputed what he said. By doing this, they publicly protest the King's exessive power and their own lack of power, despite their clear majority. They were trying to take power away from the King because they wanted to keep their government as pure and uncorrupted as possible, and to put decisions made for the common people into their own hands and away from the King. It was unfair for the upper classes to hold so much political power while they represented only a tiny fraction of France's population.