This has an eerily familiar ring...
The Tennis Court Oath was a pivotal event during the French Revolution. The Oath was a pledge signed by 576 out of the 577 members from the Third Estate and a few members of the First Estate during a meeting of the Estates-General on 20 June 1789 in a tennis court building near the Palace of Versailles.
On 17 June 1789 this group, led by Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, began to call themselves the National Assembly. On the morning of 20 June the deputies were shocked to discover that the doors to their chamber were locked and guarded by soldiers. The deputies congregated in a nearby indoor real tennis court where they took a solemn collective oath 'never to separate, and to meet wherever circumstances demand, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and affirmed on solid foundations.'
The deputies pledged to continue to meet until a constitution had been written, despite the royal prohibition. The oath was both a revolutionary act, and an assertion that political authority derived from the people and their representatives rather than from the monarch himself. Their solidarity forced Louis XVI to order the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly.
Down with Prorogation!
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