A short time before Brienne fell from power, he had summoned the Estates-General, for the first of May 1789. Necker, his successor, was able, thanks to his reputation as a financial wizard, to obtain the funds required to avert the collapse of the régime. His sole ambition was to tackle outstanding problems. Yet a number of serious issues were still unresolved. How would the deputies be elected and, above all, how would they vote in the future Assembly? The Estates of the Dauphine had accepted the doubling of the Third Estate's vote, and voting by head also. Would their example be followed?

As far as Louis XVI and Necker were concerned, the Estates-General would have to ratify the indispensable taxes which were put before them. But, for the deputies who were about to meet at Versailles, fiscal reform was neither the most fundamental nor the most urgent problem. They adopted a loftier point of view, for they regarded themselves as being above all else entrusted by their constituents with the task of‘regenerating the nation’ and giving France a Constitution. Indeed, thanks to the eddies produced by the Assembly of Notables and by the preparations of the provincial Estates, public opinion had grown conscious of its own political weight, so that the deputies regarded themselves as its trustees and reckoned themselves ready to confront ‘despotism’.

The ambiguities respecting the Third Estate's mode of casting its votes, and the misunderstanding between the King and the representatives of the nation over the ultimate purpose of the Estates-General, gave rise to an immediate conflict.