The walkout from the Assembly of the Estates General by the Third Estate on June 17, 1789 (not May 5th; the Estates General opened on May 5, 1789, but the pivotal walkout occurred on June 17) was a foundational event of the French Revolution. The primary reason was a fundamental disagreement over voting procedures.
The Estates General was an assembly with three separate groups, or "Estates": the First Estate (clergy), the Second Estate (nobility), and the Third Estate (commoners). Traditionally, each Estate met and voted separately, and each had one collective vote. This meant the privileged First and Second Estates could always outvote the Third Estate, which represented over 95% of the population.
The Third Estate demanded that the assembly instead meet and vote as a single body ("by head"), where each delegate would have one vote. This would give the much larger Third Estate a fair chance to enact change. When the King and the privileged orders refused this demand, the Third Estate saw it as a denial of fair representation and a defense of the old, unequal feudal system. Their walkout was a revolutionary act of defiance against this injustice.
Step 1: On June 17, 1789, the deputies of the Third Estate, joined by some sympathetic clergy from the First Estate, declared themselves the National Assembly (Assemblée Nationale). They claimed that they, as the true representatives of the French people, now held sovereign power and the authority to make laws for the nation.
Step 2: Three days later, on June 20, 1789, they found themselves locked out of their regular meeting hall. Believing this to be a royal attempt to dissolve them, they moved to a nearby indoor tennis court. There, they took the Tennis Court Oath (Serment du Jeu de Paume), vowing "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated on solid foundations." They pledged to give France a written constitution, a radical idea that would limit the power of the king.
The Estates-General: A legislative and consultative assembly of the different classes (or estates) of French subjects. It had not been summoned since 1614, and its convocation in 1789 by King Louis XVI to address France's financial crisis inadvertently set the revolution in motion.
The Ancien Régime: This term refers to the old order of society and government in France before the Revolution. It was characterized by a rigid, hierarchical social structure based on feudal privileges for the aristocracy and clergy, and absolute monarchy.
The Tennis Court Oath: This event is considered a pivotal moment that demonstrated the unity and determination of the commoners. It marked the first time that citizens formally asserted their sovereignty and authority over the monarchy, directly challenging the principle of the divine right of kings.
While this is a historical event not described by mathematical formulae, its cause can be framed by a conceptual equation of injustice:
The refusal to move from voting "by order" to voting "by head" was the final catalyst (