French Revolution, the terror, and the rise and fall of Napoleon Essay

French Revolution, the terror, and the rise and fall of Napoleon - Essay Example The Tennis Court Oath was signed on 20th June, 1789 which was in the early days of the French Revolution. The Third Estate singed the oath with the fears that the king was holding onto his rule of absolute government. The importance of this oath was twofold in that it showed that sovereignty was embedded in people and their representatives and it forced the king to convene a meeting to discuss the writing of a constitution (Perry 42). The storming of the Bastille was important because it showed the capacity of the people to prevail over the attempts of King Louise XVI to exercise his absolutism. A parliamentary Assembly had recently been appointed and the king was dissatisfied with it. He dismissed his minister of Finances and the people caught word that the king was intending to fight back at the appointed parliamentarians. They stormed the Bastille in search of gun powder to use on the guns they had stolen from the Invalides. The storming was all the more important because Louis XVI’s soldiers that were sent to rescue the Bastille refused to fight the revolutionaries hence leading to further defeat of the king (Pavlac 24). When requested to become a constitutional monarch, King Louis XVI started by resisting. The king thought that this and other proposed reforms would reduce his authority. After a while though, risk of bankruptcy was imminent and the King consented to the election of the Estates-General. However, the king refused to recognize the Third Estate as the self-proclaimed legitimate National Assembly. As a constitutional monarch, he was going to rule in consultation with the people (Perry 43). The Consulate system is the government that took over after the fall of the Directory government in 1799. The Consulate system of government was instituted after a successful coup orchestrated by Sieyes that toppled the Directory government.