There were soon attempts by King Louis XVI and the Second Estate to prevent the delegates from meeting, as well as misunderstandings on both sides about each other's intentions.

Locked out of its chamber, the new assembly, led by its president Jean-Sylvain Bailly, was forced to relocate to a nearby tennis court, on 20 June;[4] there, it swore the Tennis Court Oath, (Le serment du Jeu de Paume) promising "not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established and consolidated upon solid foundations.

[7]The number of the Estates-General increased significantly during the election period, but many deputies took their time arriving, some of them reaching Paris as late as 1791.

[8][page needed] Some of the leading figures of the Assembly at this time were: One must add the role played by the Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, especially in regard to the proposition of legislation in this period, as the man who, for a time, managed to bridge the differences between those who wanted a constitutional monarchy and those who wished to move towards more democratic, even republican directions.

In the summer of 1791, the National Constituent Assembly decided that the king needed to be restored to the throne if he accepted the constitution.

[11] This article incorporates text from the public domain History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814, by François Mignet (1824), as made available by Project Gutenberg.