National Assembly

He democratized government at that point.

So, and that played itself out because by June of 1789, the Estates General, which had convened with all these different people, they said, hey, you know what? We are now the National Assembly.

We are not the Estates General anymore.

We're not this antiquated ad board.

So June of 1789, the Estates General declares itself to be the sovereign body, the sovereign government of France.

It asserted that it was the government and not the monarchy.

So in that way, the National Assembly, the Estates General, that delegitimized the monarchy in France by that declaration.

And the funny thing about it is if you look at what happened here, like the monarchy in France stood for a thousand years.

They were gonna limit the, the powers of the monarch.

They were gonna give, uh, power to the French Assembly, which hadn't met in about a hundred and fifty years or so.

So that was what Jefferson was hoping for, uh, in, in France.

But, but once it did turn bloody, he continued to, to support it.

I like to point out frequently that the modern left right nomenclature for our political divides actually goes back to late 18th century France and the end of the monarchy and the revolution.

French National Assembly.

Exactly.

So the left at the time was most associated with the revolutionaries, with the Jacobins and, uh, ul- ultimately Robespierre, the Reign of Terror.

Paris are angry and restless.

After years of indignities, hardships, and a struggle for a voice in their own government, King Louis XVI called a national assembly at Versailles to write a new constitution.

The hopes of the people for recognition of their rights were raised high, only to be rudely shattered a few days ago, when the king suddenly, without warning, threw 30,000 troops around Paris, mostly foreign mercenaries, and threatened to suspend the National Assembly by force.

The people are boiling with anger at this betrayal of their hopes, and they are also desperately afraid that the king's troops may invade the city, or at the very least attempt to force them into submission by starvation.

In a frantic hurry to gather arms with which to defend themselves, they have assembled here before the Bastille, the only remaining royal garrison in the city.

The king was in the palace when the Duke de Leoncourt, a member of the royal household, brought him the news.

When de Leoncourt told the king that the Bastille had been stormed, his majesty inquired, is this a revolt? And the duke replied, no, sire, it is a revolution.

The king then, without his usual bodyguard, without even his hat, but accompanied by his two brothers, ran out of the palace to the National Assembly on the edge of the palace ground.

And for that, you know, he sort of celebrated as an American revolutionary hero.

But Tom Paine continues down this road of radicalism and actually ends up becoming like a delegate in the French, whatever, French Assembly.

He's actually in the French Revolution.

And like not like a moderate.

Furthermore, his propaganda took on an unambiguously religious cast.

He referred to the French National Assembly as the inviolable priesthood of national policy and baptized the revolutionary ideology as a political gospel and a new religion for which the people are ready to die.

The rites of this new religion were macabre.

According to an account provided by Heckethorn, who was, it must be remembered, sympathetic to the Illuminati, the initiation rituals of the French branch of the order were a satanic burlesque in which a naked, tormented, and sexually degraded neophyte was compelled to repeat an oath which included this asseveration.

The business of the States General did not pass off as gaily as the opening ceremony.

Conflict between the orders followed immediately on points of procedure with the result that the Third Estate constituted itself the National Assembly of France, refusing to admit the other orders to its deliberations except on a basis of equality.

The king manifested his displeasure by closing the door of the Hall of the States against them.

The assembly answered by the celebrated oath it took outside in the tennis court of Versailles 20th June, by which it pledged itself not to separate until it had given France a constitution.

Only one servant was allotted to the whole family.

Louis amused himself at this time with reading Hume's History of England, especially the parts relating to Charles I.

On the vote of the Convention being declared, Santerre, the commandant of the National Guard, was commissioned to conduct Louis to the bar of the National Assembly.

This took place on the eleventh of December.