The First Meeting of the Estates General, Versailles, 1789

Brienn announced that the meeting of the estates general would no longer be at some vague point in the future. The king then invited public debate on the form the estates should take. This was supposed to drive a wedge between the nobility and commoners. It opened up an unbridgeable chasm that would eventually cost the king his head. With freedom of the press all but declared, france would be flooded with newspapers and pamphlets.