was actually from the top-down: the ministers tried to replace the regressive courts and assemblies -- representing only the upper-tier nobility and landowners -- with more "representative" legal bodies. In 1788 this led to the "Aristocratic Revolt," a wave of defiance of "despotism" led by those who controlled more wealth and power than the king and feared giving up an ounce of it. The aristocratic "rebels" compelled Louis' ministers to agree to convene the States General, a national assembly, for the first time since 1614.
The States General met in 1789 in Versailles. To the shock of the upper classes, almost immediately the States-General was paralyzed by the refusal of the Third Estate, the Commons assembly, to meet separately as a distinct, inferior body. Instead of the expected impasse, however, the Commons took the revolutionary step of declaring their assembly to be the "National" Assembly, thereby destroying the States General.
In retrospect it appears almost inevitable that the first phase of the French Revolution would be marked by mora
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