National Assembly (French Revolution)

During the French Revolution, the National Assembly (), which existed from June 17 to July 9, 1789, was a transitional body between the Estates-General and the National Constituent Assembly.

Background

The Estates-General had been called May 5th 1789 to deal with France's financial crisis, but promptly fell to squabbling over its own structure. Its members had been elected to represent the estates of the realm: the First Estate (the clergy), the Second Estate (the nobility) and the Third Estate (which, in theory, represented all of the commoners and, in practice, represented the bourgeoisie).<!-- all of which is pretty obvious, but could use an explicit citation.--> The Third Estate had been granted "double representation"—that is, twice as many delegates as each of the other estates—but at the opening session on May 5, 1789 they were informed that all voting would be "by estates" not "by head", so their double representation was to be meaningless in terms of power. They refused this and proceeded to meet separately.

Shuttle diplomacy among the estates continued without success until May 27; on May 28, the representatives of the Third Estate began to meet on their own,<ref...
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