In 1787, the Parlement of Paris refused to ratify Charles Alexandre de Calonne's program of financial reform, due to the competing interests of its noble members.

Calonne received little cooperation from the assembly, being dismissed on 8 April 1787 and banished shortly after for proposing a 'Subvention Territoriale', or land tax.

On 6 July 1787, Loménie forwarded the Subvention Territoriale and another tax, the Edit du Timbre, or "Stamp Act", based on the American model, for registration.

The parlement refused to register an illegal act, demanding accounting statements, or "States," as a prior condition.

The king would not let this slight to his authority pass and commanded the parlement to assemble at Versailles, where on 6 August he ordered them in person to register the taxes.

On 7 August back in Paris, parlement declared in earnest this time the order to be null and void, repudiating all previous registrations of taxes.

Parlement believed that the problem had gone beyond the government and needed the decisions of the Estates General which did not correspond to the king's concept of monarchy.

[9] As the king and parlement could accomplish no more together, Brienne, over the winter, pressed for an alternative plan; to resurrect even more archaic institutions.

The Grand Bailliages, or larger legal jurisdictions that once had existed, would assume parlements' legal functions, while the Plenary Court, last known under Louis IX, when it had the power to register edicts, would assume the registration duties of the parlements, leaving them with no duties to perform.

However, Jean-Jacques Duval d'Eprémesnil heard the government presses running and bribed the printer to give him the proofs of the edict.

Hearing it read the next day, 3 May 1788, parlement swore an oath not to be disbanded and defined a manifesto of their rights.

Warrants were issued for d'Eprémesnil and another but they escaped from their homes from the backdoor in the early morning to seek refuge in parlement.

If the King's commissioners forced the issue, Parlement abandoned the meeting place only to return the next day to declare the registration null and void.

The "most notable persons" of each community and judicial district are summoned "to confer and to record remonstrances, complaints, and grievances."

During the preceding autumn the Parliament of Paris, an aristocratic advisory body to the King, had decided that the organization of the convention would be the same as in 1614, the last time the Estates had met.

The people would nonetheless accept any national convention confident that enough members of the Nobility and the Clergy would be with them to sway the votes.

[14] The Second Estate represented the nobility, about 400,000 men and women who owned about 25 percent of the land and collected seigneurial dues and rents from their peasant tenants.

Each voting assembly would also collect a cahier de doléances (notebook of grievances) to be considered by the Convocation.

Noble representatives of the Third Estate were among the most passionate revolutionaries in attendance, including Jean Joseph Mounier and the comte de Mirabeau.

The lower levels of society, the landless, working men, though present in large numbers in street gangs, were totally absent from the Estates-General, as the King had called for "the most notable persons".

A third type complained that the ubiquitous tolls and duties levied by the nobility hindered internal commerce.

With the étiquette of 1614 strictly enforced, the clergy and nobility ranged in tiered seating in their full regalia, while the physical locations of the deputies from the Third Estate were at the far end, as dictated by the protocol.

When Louis XVI and Charles Louis François de Paule de Barentin, the Keeper of the Seals of France, addressed the deputies on 6 May, the Third Estate discovered that the royal decree granting double representation also upheld the traditional voting "by orders", i.e. that the collective vote of each estate would be weighed equally.

Director-General of Finance Jacques Necker had more sympathy for the Third Estate, but on this occasion he spoke only about the fiscal situation, leaving it to Barentin to speak on how the Estates-General was to operate.

Trying to avoid the issue of representation and to focus solely on taxes, the King and his ministers had gravely misjudged the situation.

The Comte de Mirabeau, a noble himself but elected to represent the Third Estate, tried but failed to keep all three orders in a single room for this discussion.

These efforts continued without success until 27 May, when the nobles voted to stand firm for each estate to verify its members separately.

On the advice of the courtiers of his privy council, he resolved to go in state to the Assembly, annul its decrees, command the separation of the orders, and dictate the reforms to be effected by the restored Estates-General.

Two days later, deprived of the use of the tennis court as well, the Assembly met in the Church of Saint Louis, where the majority of the representatives of the clergy joined them: efforts to restore the old order had served only to accelerate events.

This move too failed; soon, at the request of the King, those representatives of the nobility who still stood apart also joined the National Assembly.