The First Estate represents one hundred Catholic clergy; the Church owns about ten percent of the land and collects its own taxes (the tithe) on peasants.

The lands are controlled by bishops and abbots of monasteries, but two-thirds of the three hundred and three delegates from the First Estate are ordinary parish priests; only fifty-one are bishops.

The Second Estate represented the nobility, about four hundred men and women who own about twenty-five percent of the land and collect seigneurial dues and rents from their peasant tenants.

About a third of the two hundred and eighty-two deputies representing the Second Estate are nobles, mostly with minor holdings.

The Third Estate representation is doubled to five hundred and seventy-eight men, representing ninety-five percent of the population.

Half are well-educated lawyers or local officials.

Nearly a third are in trades or industry; fifty-one are wealthy land owners.

The Réglement that had gone out by post in January had thus specified separate voting for delegates of each Estate.

Each tax district (cities, boroughs, and parishes) will elect their own delegates to the Third Estate.

The Bailliages, or judicial districts, will elect delegates to the First and Second Estates in separate ballots.

Each voting assembly will also collect a Cahier, or "Notebook", of grievances to be considered by the Convocation.

The election rules differ somewhat depending on the type of voting unit, whether city, parish or some other.

Generally, the distribution of delegates is by population: the most populous locations have the greatest number of delegates.

The City of Paris is thus dominant.

The electorate consists of males twenty-five years and older, property owners, and registered taxpayers.

They can be native or naturalized citizens

The number of delegates elected is about twelve hundred, half of whom form the Third Estate.

The First and Second Estates have three hundred each.

French society has changed since 1614, and these Estates-General are not identical to those of 1614.

Members of the nobility are not required to stand for election to the Second Estate, and many of them are elected to the Third Estate.

The total number of nobles in the three Estates is about four hundred.

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

Despite their status as elected representatives of the Third Estate, many of these nobles will be executed by guillotine during the Terror.

The Nobles in the Second Estate are the richest and most powerful in the kingdom.

The King can count on them, but this will be of little use to him in the succeeding course of history.

He had also expected that the First Estate would be predominantly the noble Bishops.

The electorate, however, has returned mainly parish priests, most of whom are sympathetic to the Commons.

The Third Estate elections have returned predominantly magistrates and lawyers.

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

The grievances returned are mainly about taxes, which the people consider a crushing burden.

As a consequence, the people and the King are totally at odds from the very beginning.

Aristocratic privilege is also attacked.

The people resent the fact that nobles can excuse themselves from most of the burden of taxation and service that falls on the ordinary people.

A third type complains that the ubiquitous tolls and duties levied by the nobility hinder  internal commerce.

The Estates-General convenes on May 5, 1789, amid general festivities, in an elaborate but temporary Île des États set up in one of the courtyards of the official Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs in the town of Versailles near the royal château.

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

Louis XVI and Charles Louis François de Paule de Barentin, the Keeper of the Seals of France, address the deputies on May 6, at which point the Third Estate discovers that the royal decree granting double representation also upholds the traditional voting "by orders", i.e. that the collective vote of each estate will be weighed equally.

The apparent intent of the King and of Barentin is for everyone to get directly to the matter of taxes.

The larger representation of the Third Estate will remain merely a symbol while giving them no extra power.

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

The King and his ministers, in trying to avoid the issue of representation and to focus solely on taxes, have gravely misjudged the situation.

The Third Estate wants the estates to meet as one body and for each delegate to have one vote.

The other two estates, while having their own grievances against royal absolutism, believe—correctly, as history is to prove—that they stand to lose more power to the Third Estate than they stand to gain from the King.

Necker sympathizes with the Third Estate in this matter, but the astute financier lacks equal astuteness as a politician.

He decides to let the impasse play out to the point of stalemate before he will enter the fray.

As a result, by the time the King yields to the demand of the Third Estate, it seems to all to be a concession wrung from the monarchy, rather than a magnanimous gift that would have convinced the populace of the King's goodwill.

The Estates-General had reached an impasse.

The Second Estate has pushed for meetings that are to transpire in three separate locations, as they have traditionally.

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

Instead of discussing the King's taxes, the three estates had begun to discuss separately the organization of the legislature.

These efforts had continued without success until 27 May, when the nobles voted to stand firm for separate verification.

The following day, the Abbé Sieyès (a senior member of the clergy, but, like Mirabeau, elected to represent the Third Estate) moves that the representatives of the Third Estate, who now call themselves the Communes ("Commons"), proceed with verification and invite the other two estates to take part, but not to wait for them.

The Third Estate had arrived at a resolution on June 13, 1789, to examine and settle the powers of the three orders.

They had invited the clergy and nobles to work with them on this endeavor.

On June 17, with the failure of efforts to reconcile the three estates, the Communes complete their own process of verification and almost immediately vote a measure far more radical: they declare themselves redefined as the National Assembly, an assembly not of the estates, but of the people.

They invite the other orders to join them but make it clear that they intend to conduct the nation's affairs with or without them.

As their numbers exceed the combined numbers of the other estates, they can dominate any combined assembly.

The King tries to resist.

Under the influence of the courtiers of his privy council, he resolves 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.

On June 20, he orders the closure of the hall where the National Assembly meets.

The Assembly moves their deliberations to the nearby tennis court, where they proceed to swear the 'Tennis Court Oath', by which they agree not to separate until they have settled the constitution of France.

The Assembly, soon deprived of the use of the tennis court as well, meets two days later in the Church of Saint Louis, where the majority of the representatives of the clergy join them: efforts to restore the old order have served only to accelerate events.

The King, in the séance royale of June 23, grants a Charte octroyée, a constitution granted by royal favor, which affirms, subject to the traditional limitations, the right of separate deliberation for the three orders, which constitutionally form three chambers.

This move fails; soon, that part of the deputies of the nobles who still stand apart join the National Assembly at the request of the King.

The Estates-General has ceased to exist, having become the National Assembly (and after July 9, 1789, will become the National Constituent Assembly).

A twelve-member Constitutional Committee is convened on July 14, 1789 (coincidentally the day of the Storming of the Bastille).

Its task is to do much of the drafting of the articles of the constitution.

It includes originally two members from the First Estate (Champion de Cicé, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun); two from the Second (the comte de Clermont-Tonnerre and the marquis de Lally-Tollendal); and four from the Third (Jean Joseph Mounier, Abbé Sieyès, Nicholas Bergasse, and Isaac René Guy le Chapelier).

The National Constituent Assembly has become the effective government of France following the storming of the Bastille on 14 July.

The number of the Estates-General had increased significantly during the election period, but many deputies take their time arriving; some of them will reach Paris as late as 1791.

According to Timothy Tackett, there were a total of eleven hundred and seventy-seven deputies in the Assembly by mid-July 1789.

Among them, two hundred and seventy-eight belong to the nobility, two hundred and ninety-five to the clergy, and six hundred and four are representatives of the Third Estate.

For the entire duration of the Assembly, a total of thirteen hundred and fifteen deputies will be certified: three hundred and thirty clerics, three hundred and twenty-two nobles, and six hundred and sixty-three deputies of the Third Estate.

Tackett will note that the majority of the Second Estate has a military background, and the Third Estate is dominated by men of legal professions.

Some of the leading figures of the Assembly at this time are:

    The conservative foes of the revolution, later known as "The Right":
        Jacques Antoine Marie de Cazalès – a forthright spokesman for aristocracy
        the abbé Jean-Sifrein Maury – a somewhat inflexible representative of the Church
    The Monarchiens ("Monarchists", also called "Democratic Royalists") allied with Jacques Necker, inclined toward arranging France along lines similar to the British constitution model with a House of Lords and a House of Commons:
        Pierre Victor, baron Malouet
        Trophime-Gérard, marquis de Lally-Tollendal
        Stanislas Marie Adelaide, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre
        Jean Joseph Mounier
    "The Left" (also called "National Party") is still relatively united in support of revolution and democracy, representing mainly the interests of the middle classes but strongly sympathetic to the broader range of the common people.

In the early period, its most notable leaders include Honoré Mirabeau, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Jean-Sylvain Bailly (the first two of aristocratic background).

Mignet also points to Adrien Duport, Antoine Pierre Joseph Marie Barnave, and Alexander Lameth as leaders among the "most extreme of this party" in this period, leaders in taking "a more advanced position than that which the revolution had [at this time] attained." (Mignet, François (1856). History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814. France. p. 61.)

Lameth's brother Charles also belongs to this group.

In regard to the proposition of legislation in this period, the Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, especially for a time, manages to bridge the differences between those who want a constitutional monarchy and those who wish to move towards more democratic, even republican directions.