The Tennis Court Oath

The grievances that spurred the French commoners of the third estate into action with the Tennis Court Oath were both financial and mental. The problem that set all other thoughts of revolution into motion was that of taxes. At the beginning of the French Revolution, there were, as we know, three estates. The clergy was the first, the nobility the second, and the remainder of the population constituted the third. Of these estates only the last was required to pay taxes; even worse, the commoners, with the least amount of money, were required to pay the highest percentage of their income to the King. This absence of financial equity allowed the people's mental state of mind to decline - they were unhappy and restricted. To resolve the issue, the third estate attempted to join with both the others to make decisions on a national scale, leading to another grievance: they were rebutted. In turn they refused to compromise until both the clergy and the Louis XVI gave in to their numerous demands. They required an assembly with all three estates to represent the French nation, which they were granted a date for alongside the presence of the king at the meeting. In the period of time between the third estate's original meetings (where it declared its intent to create a "National Assembly") and the congregation of the assembly with the King, Louis XVI closed the third estate's assembly room to be prepared for this large scale gathering. The revolutionaries took this as a decisive act from the King against them, preventing them from coming together. In defiance they gathered in a nearby tennis court where they took an oath not to leave until they had defined a new constitution for France. This action was in direct opposition to the King and so began the revolution. The picture above is a painting of the tennis court oath by Jacques-Louis David, a politically important artist of the time.

The first grievance was, of course, the issue with taxes. This was purely an issue of financial fairness - why should those who worked the hardest and earned the least have to give the greatest percentage of their earnings? The importance of this grievance sowed doubt and belief in other areas. Unhappy financially, the commoners began to see and think about their position and power over their society. This ultimately led them to seek justice in the government, which they found wanting. As James said, their political grievance was that not each person was given a vote in the assemblage of the three estates. The estates voted amongst themselves and gave an overall vote which was then tallied alongside the cumulative vote for the other two estates. So it was that even if one estate had many more people and represented a greater amount of France (the third estate) it could still be voted into submission if the smaller nobility and clergy chose to back each other. The third estate, being the largest, felt itself unfairly represented and so sought to create a national assembly where all persons in the voting party (no matter which estate they belonged to) had the same amount of representation. This was not received at all kindly by the nobility, while the clergy were strangely sympathetic to the commoners' cause. In any case, they were all forced to listen when the revolution began and the people forcibly took the power that they had been refused before.