📅 On This Day in Military History

June 20

1 event across history

⚔️📍 Versailles, France1789

Tennis Court Oath — French Revolution Begins

Locked out of their meeting hall by royal order, members of the National Assembly gathered on a nearby tennis court and swore not to disperse until France had a constitution. The oath defied the absolute authority of King Louis XVI.

The Tennis Court Oath was the decisive act of defiance that transformed a fiscal crisis into a revolution, leading within weeks to the storming of the Bastille and the collapse of the ancien régime.

Outcome

Constitutional monarchy demanded; revolution begins