Constituent Assembly

The National Constituent Assembly was created in the wake of the Tennis Court Oath (27th June 1789) and Louis XVI’s invitation (after it had already started to occur) for the three orders to sit together.  This collection of nobles, clergy and the third estate would form the National Constituent Assembly.

The legitimacy of the Constituent Assembly was seen to be enhanced when the King visited the Assembly on the 15th July 1789 a day after the storming of the Bastille.  As tension increased in Paris the Assembly would follow the King to Paris after the events of the 5th October 1789.  They would eventually reside in the Manège the former riding school built by Louis XV.

One of the more extraordinary moments in the Assembly’s history was the night of the 4th 1789.  A slew of ever more radical proposals were presented for and voted for by the Assembly.  In one night hundreds of years of history were erased as feudal rights were abolished, the sale of magistrate positions were outlawed, game laws ended and many traces of the noble’s power removed.  The rigid stratified nature of French society ended in one night as peasants were free of their obligations and had the opportunity to truly own their land.

The Assembly would also end the numerous trade tariffs that over the ages had accumulated over France thus ending the ruinous blockages on free trade.  On the 2nd of March 1791 they also removed the power of the guilds as any person was able to pursue a career as long as they purchased a licence.

Crisis would engulf the Assembly when the King made his failed attempts to flee revolutionary France In the summer of 1791.  This failed flight which ended at the King’s capture at Varennes.  The Assembly were quick however to accept the King back to Paris.  This caused tension amongst the populace and led to radicals to call for the abdication of the King.  The petition that called for the end of Louis’ reign ended at the Champ de Mars Massacre where potential petitioners were shot by the National Guard.

Despite the problems France and the Assembly was facing they were able to craft a constitution.  This 1791 constitution was accepted by the recently returned King.  Maximilien Robespierre in an effort to avoid corruption put forward a proposal that all members of the Constituent Assembly should not stand for re-election to the new Legislative Assembly in October 1791.  When his proposals were accepted it robbed the new Assembly of men with any experience of the legislative process.  It also meant that many nobles opted to leave the country rather than remain.

Germaine De Staël on the Constituent Assembly.  Taken from Considerations on the Principle events of the French Revolution, Germaine De Staël, Liberty Fund,  Indianapolis (2008) p208

At a time when France had both famine and bankruptcy to dread, the deputies used to make speeches in which they asserted that “every man has from nature a right and a wish to enjoy happiness; that society began by the father and the son,” with other philosophical truths much fitter for discussions in books than in the midst of an assembly.  But if the people stood in need of bread, the speakers stood in need of applause, and a scarcity in that respect would have seemed to them very hard to bear.

Edmund Burke on the creation of the Departments by the Constituent Assembly.  Taken from Reflections on the Revolution in France, Penguin Classics, London (2004) p314-315

It is boasted, that the geometrical policy has been adopted, that all local ideas should be sunk, and that the people should no longer be Gascons, Picards, Bretons, Normans but Frenchmen, with one country, one heart, and one assembly.  But instead of being all Frenchmen, the great likelihood is, that the inhabitants of that region will shortly have no country.  No man was ever attached by a sense of pride, partiality, or real affection, to a description of square measurement.  He never will glory in belonging to the Checquer, No 71, or any other badge-ticket.

Germaine De Staël on Constituent Assembly and their creation of the Civic Oath for clergy.  Taken from Considerations on the Principle events of the French Revolution, Germaine De Staël, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis (2008) p239

A great error, and one which it seemed easier for the Constituent Assembly to avoid, was the unfortunate invention of a constitutional clergy.  To exact from the ecclesiasticals an oath at variance with their conscience, and, on their refusing it, to persecute them by the loss of a pension, and afterward even by transportation, was to degrade those who took the oath, to which temporal advantages were attached.

The Constituent Assembly ought not to have thought of forming a clerical body devoted to it, and thus affording the means, which were afterwards embraced, of distressing the ecclesiastics attached to their ancient creed.  This was putting political in the place of religious intolerance.  A single resolution, firm and just, ought to have been taken by statesmen under those circumstances; they ought to have imposed on each communion the duty of supporting their own clergy.  The Constituent Assembly thought that it acted with greater political depth by dividing the clergy, by establishing a schism, and by thus detaching from the court of Rome those who would enrol themselves under the banners of the Revolution.  But of what use were such priests?  The Catholics would not listen to them, and philosophers did not want them: they were a kind of militia, who had lost their character beforehand, and who could do not do otherwise than injure the government who they supported.  The establishment of a constitutional clergy was so revolting to the public mind that it was necessary to employ force to give it effect.

Barère on the achievements of the Constituent Assembly.  Taken from Memoirs of Bertrand Barère Volume 1, H. S. Nichols, London (1896) p283

It was the Constituent Assembly, at once courageous, united, and disinterested, that struck off the fetters France had borne for fourteen centuries, that founded national unity by abolishing the peculiar privileges of the provinces, that re-established and handed over to the people exclusively the right to levy taxes, that destroyed the abuses and venalities of justice, and that has endowed the country with the tutelary institution of juries

Social composition of members of Constituent Assembly (July 1789- September 1791).  Taken from The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, Colin Jones, Longman, Harlow (1988) p167