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      4 May 1789. The streets of Versailles were hung with tapestries for the magnificent opening procession to mark the historic gathering of the Estates-General. With great ceremony to mark this ‘rebirth’ of France – as some believed – the parade of two thousand people filed though the crowded streets for a service at the church of Saint Louis. The king walked behind the archbishop of Paris, followed by the royal family, then representatives of the three estates, each with lighted candles.

      Marie-Antoinette, sumptuously bejewelled in a silver dress, ‘looked sad’ as she passed. Unable to take part, but watching the proceedings from a balcony, was her seven-year-old son, his twisted little body stretched on a day bed. She now knew he was dying and could scarcely hold back her tears as he smiled valiantly at her. At that moment some ‘low women’, according to Madame Campan, ‘yelled out “Vive le Duc d’Orléans!” in such a rebellious manner that the queen nearly fainted’. Many of the representatives, she wrote, arrived in Versailles with the ‘strongest prejudices’ against the queen, certain she ‘was draining the treasury of the state in order to satisfy the most unreasonable luxury’. Some demanded to see the Trianon, convinced that there was at least one room ‘totally decorated with diamonds, and columns studded with sapphires and rubies’. Disbelieving representatives searched the pavilion in vain for the diamond chamber.

      The first session of the Estates-General met the next day in the opulent surroundings of the Salle des Menus Plaisirs in the palace. The clergy, in imposing scarlet and black ecclesiastical robes, were seated on benches on the right. The nobles, richly dressed in white-feathered hats and gold-trimmed suits, took the benches on the left. The commoners sat furthest from the king at the far end, dressed simply in black. One of those among them taking in the scene – the large ornate chamber, the symbolic ranking of the representatives with the Third Estate in plain clothes at the back – was a young lawyer called Maximilien Robespierre.

      At the age of eleven Robespierre had won a scholarship to one of the most prestigious schools in France, Louis-le-Grand, in Paris. He had graduated in law in 1780 and returned to practise in his home town, Arras, in the northern province of Artois. When the Estates-General were summoned, he seized his chance to further his career and successfully secured a position as one of eight Third Estate deputies for Artois. Like many commoners, he arrived in Versailles determined to challenge the structures of privilege at the heart of French society and create social equality.

      As the speeches and debates began, the great expectations that had preceded the opening of the Estates-General soon disintegrated. Far from even attempting to resolve the all-important financial crisis, which Necker outlined at great length, there were increasingly bitter arguments about voting procedures, with each estate continually plotting for positions of power over the others. As the weeks of May passed, rather than resolving the issue of tax reform, the meeting served as a catalyst, crystallising grievances at the very heart of the constitution of France.

      At this time the queen was almost completely preoccupied with the Dauphin. The young prince suffered as his illness slowly destroyed every trace of childish vitality. When Princesse de Lamballe visited him at Meudon with her lady-in-waiting, they could hardly bear to look at his ‘beautiful eyes, the eyes of a dying child’. The queen watched helplessly as his emaciated body became covered in sores. ‘The things that the poor little one says are incredible; they pierce his mother’s heart; his tenderness towards her knows no bounds,’ observed a friend. On 2 June services were held for him across France and prayers were said. It was to no avail. Two days later he died in his mother’s arms.

      The significance of these events was lost on the four-year-old Louis-Charles playing in the nursery at Versailles. He wept to hear of the death of his older brother, now lying in state at Meudon in a silver and white room, his coffin covered with a silver cloth, his crown and sword. All around him, the chambers of Versailles resounded to the acrimonious debates of the deputies. Louis-Charles had now become the symbol of the royal future of France, ‘Monsieur le Dauphin’, next in line to a throne increasingly devoid of authority as well as funds.

      The king, somewhere during these events, private and public, missed his opportunity to rally the deputies and inspire their support. Overwhelmed with grief, he and the queen left Versailles to mourn their oldest son. In his absence, the deputies of the Third Estate seized the initiative. At a pivotal meeting on 17 June 1789, they passed a motion that since they represented ninety-five per cent of the people, the Third Estate should be renamed as a new body, called the ‘National Assembly’, which had the right to control taxation. With flagrant disregard for the king they planned to proceed, with or without royal approval.

      While the king vacillated, hopelessly torn between the advice of ministers such as Necker who counselled compromise, and that of his wife and brothers who argued for a tougher line, the Third Estate went even further. When the deputies of the new National Assembly found themselves locked out of their usual meeting room, they adjourned to an indoor tennis court. Here each member solemnly swore not to separate until France had a new constitution. This became known as the ‘Tennis Court Oath’.

      The king’s power was collapsing. His specially appointed Assembly of Notables had defied him, the Parlement had defied him, now the Third Estate was defying him. With each successive swipe at the monarchy, the king was racked with indecision. ‘All goes worse than ever,’ Madame Elisabeth reported frankly to her friend, the Marquise de Bombelles, as she confided her despair at her brother’s lack of the ‘necessary sternness’. Foreseeing disaster, she wrote, ‘the deputies, victims of their passions … are rushing to ruin, and that of the throne and the whole kingdom’. As for herself, she told the marquise ominously, ‘I have sworn not to leave my brother and I shall keep my oath.’

      As support grew rapidly for the new National Assembly, the king was obliged to recognise it. He ordered the other two estates to join the Third. As a result, the commoners, who had had their representation doubled, now held a majority. Many took the Third’s victory and the king’s acquiescence as a sign that his authority had completely broken down. There was rioting on the streets; civil war seemed imminent. The king summoned extra regiments to Paris. He told the deputies of the National Assembly that the troops were stationed as a precaution, to protect the people. The deputies, however, saw the presence of twenty-five thousand troops in and around the capital differently and feared that they themselves were under direct threat from the king. One of them spoke out: ‘these preparations for war are obvious to everyone and fill every heart with indignation.’

      On 12 July, following the dismissal of the popular finance minister, Necker, crowds gathered to hear rousing revolutionary speeches against the ‘tyranny’ of the monarchy, who it was feared was seeking to destroy the new National Assembly that represented the people. ‘Citizens, they will stop at nothing,’ urged one speaker, the journalist Camille Desmoulins, a schoolfriend of Robespierre. ‘They are plotting a massacre of patriots.’ People rushed to arm themselves. As a wave of panic swept the Paris streets, armourers and gunsmiths were raided – one later reported that he was looted no less than thirty times. The monastery of Saint Lazare, a depot for grain and flour, was sacked. The next day, at the Hôtel de Ville, Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American war, set out to enrol a new ‘National Guard’ with himself as colonel, creating a new citizens’ army. Early the next morning, on 14 July, around eighty thousand people gathered at the Invalides, the army’s barracks, where they overwhelmed the troops and managed to obtain thirty thousand muskets and some cannon. Faced with rumours that royal troops were on the move, the citizens’ army needed gunpowder and this was in the Bastille. The crowd swept forward, to rousing cries of ‘To the Bastille!’

      The grey stone walls and menacing towers of this fourteenth-century fortress rose as a great, dark edifice on the Rue Saint Antoine in the eastern side of Paris. For years any enemies of the crown could be detained in this prison without a judicial process, merely by a royal warrant: the notorious lettres de cachet. Consequently, the almost windowless walls, five feet thick, rising sheer from the moat, had come to represent a mighty symbol of royal tyranny and oppression. The cry went up to seize the Bastille, take the gunpowder and release the prisoners. Revolt was fast turning into revolution.

      As nine hundred men gathered around the Bastille, the

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