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briefly entertained the possibility of permitting the first two orders to join
the National Assembly, since they would constitute only a powerless
minority, he determined that it was pointless to incorporate a permanent
obstructionist minority party that would constantly vote against the
majority. He approved, however, of the idea of the two first estates'
renouncing their privileges and joining the res t of the nation as equals)3ut
as separate, privileged orders, they were like malignant tumors that had to
be removed from the body.
When the Es tates General convened that spring, Sieyes, by then an
elected representative of the Third Estate, not of the clergy, as well as a
celebrity in Paris, audaciously proposed that the Third Estate declare itself
the N ational Assembly. Not only did his profoundly revolutionary motion
pass by a vote of four hundred ninety-one to ninety, but two days later, the
clergy agreed with the representatives of the "Third," and voted to join
them. The next morning, Louis XVI locked them all out of their meeting
room, insisting that the traditional three separate orders of France be
respected. Refusing to disperse, the representatives went
en masse
to an ath–
letic court, the Jeu de Paume, where they took an oath not to leave until a
new constitution for France was written and enacted.
"I order you, Gentlemen, to disband," commanded the king. But after
some nobles defected to the Third Estate, the king, realizing that he had .
little choice but to accept the legitimacy of the new National Assembly,
invited his "faithful clergy and faithful nobility" to join the Third Estate.
In August, all privileges and feudal rights were abolished. "The
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Ci tizen," composed that month,
decreed that the nation was sovereign. Just eight months after the publica–
tion of his ideas, Sieyes's theoretical blueprint for France had become the
new reality. His printed words and radical ideas had metamorphosed into
the revolutionary acts of a nation, proving that ideas and theories can shape
events and institutions.
The key to Sieyes's vision of a new France-and the concept that
shaped the Revolution's politics and became its mantra-was
unity.
The
refrain-repeated in every possible context over the course of the
Revolution-always remained the same: "the Republic, one and indivis–
ible." People swore oaths to it, agreed to die for it, and denounced
traitors to it. The salvation of France and the success of the Revolution
appeared to hinge on the indivisibility of the nation. " It is through union
and concord," one representative asserted, "that prosperity occurs.. .if
you are united, the nation is invincible. If you are divided, the nation
becomes a slave."
Underlying this doctrine of "oneness" lay Sieyes's radical new defin–
ition of the nation as consisting solely of the Third Estate, the new
