his
ministers. He then resolved on convoking the whole States-General of the
kingdom, which had never met since the reign of Louis XIII.

2. The States-General.--No one exactly knew the limits of the powers
of the States-General when it met in 1789. Nobles, clergy, and the
deputies who represented the commonalty, all formed the assembly at
Versailles; and though the king would have kept apart these last, who
were called the _Tiers Etat_, or third estate, they refused to withdraw
from the great hall of Versailles. The Count of Mirabeau, the younger
son of a noble family, who sat as a deputy, declared that nothing short
of bayonets should drive out those who sat by the will of the people,
and Louis yielded. Thenceforth the votes of a noble, a bishop, or a
deputy all counted alike. The party names of democrat for those who
wanted to exalt the power of the people, and of aristocrat for those who
maintained the privileges of the nobles, came into use, and the most
extreme democrats were called Jacobins, from an old convent of Jacobin
friars, where they used to meet. The mob of Paris, always eager, fickle,
and often blood-thirsty, were excited to the last degree by the debates;
and, full of the remembrance of the insolence and cruelty of the nobles,
sometimes rose and hunted down persons whom they deemed aristocrats,
hanging them to the iron rods by which lamps were suspended over the
streets. The king in alarm drew the army nearer, and it was supposed
that he was going to prevent all change by force of arms. Thereupon the
citizens enrolled themselves as a National Guard, wearing cockades of
red, blue, and white, and commanded by La Fayette, a noble of democratic
opinions, who had run away at seventeen to serve in the American War. On
a report that the cannon of the Bastille had been pointed upon Paris,
the mob rose in a frenzy, rushed upon it, hanged the guard, and
absolutely tore down the old castle to its foundations, though they did
not find a single prisoner in it. "This is a revolt," said Louis, when
he heard of it. "Sire, it is a revolution," was the answer.

3. The New Constitution.--The mob had found out its power. The
fishwomen of the markets, always a peculiar and privileged class, were
frantically excited, and were sure to be foremost in all the
demonstrations stirred up by Jacobins. There was a great scarcity of
provisions in Paris, and this, together with the continual dread that
reforms would be checked by