The Estates-General meets and the Bastille falls, opening the French Revolution
Bankruptcy forces Louis XVI's hand and Paris rises up
Quick facts
- Location
- Versailles and Paris, France
- Key people
- Louis XVI, Jacques Necker
- Date
- Estates-General 5 May 1789; Bastille 14 July 1789
What happened
Decades of war debt, including the cost of France's support for the American Revolution, pushed the French treasury into crisis, and finance minister Jacques Necker convinced Louis XVI to summon the Estates-General, the clergy, nobility, and commons, for the first time since 1614. The assembly opened at Versailles on 5 May 1789, but disputes over voting procedure between the three estates paralyzed it and pushed the kingdom into open political crisis. On 14 July, Parisians stormed the Bastille, a fortress and political prison that symbolized royal authority, in a search for weapons and gunpowder, and the event became the spark that turned constitutional dispute into revolution.
Why it matters
The storming of the Bastille marked the point where the crisis stopped being an argument among elites and became a popular uprising the crown could not contain, launching the French Revolution that would abolish the monarchy within three years. The Revolution's full course, from the Estates-General through the Terror to Napoleon's rise, has its own dedicated timeline.
How we know
Contemporary newspaper accounts, the memoirs of participants, and official records of the Estates-General's proceedings all survive and corroborate the sequence of the financial crisis, the assembly's opening, and the Bastille's fall.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Estates-General of 1789 · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Storming of the Bastille · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The French Revolution → · Follow the full French Revolution, from the Estates-General through the Terror, on its own timeline