The Reconstruction of France, 1789-1791

Abstract The Constituent or National Assembly of 1789-91 was the largest parliament in French history, with more than 1,200 members of the clergy, nobility and commons who had previously convened for the Estates-General in May 1789. Over the next two years, the deputies threw themselves with extraordinary energy into the task of reworking every dimension of public life. The work of its thirty-one committees was facilitated by the preparedness to co-operate of a large number of nobles, styled ‘patriots’, by abundant harvests in 1789 and 1790, and above all by the deep reservoir of popular goodwill. However, the rostrum and committees of the Assembly were dominated by about one-tenth of the deputies, and it could be suggested that the seeds of later southern misgivings about the Revolution were sown in the domination of the Assembly from the outset by men from the north.