Question

Explain about constitutional monarchy in France

Answer 1

What was the constitutional monarchy during the French Revolution?

The flag of the Kingdom of the French; note that it’s the current French flag but mirrored

The Constitutional Monarchy can best be summarized as the first phase of the French Revolution. Essentially, it was the goal of the liberal nobility, who directed the transfer from Feudal Monarchy to Constitutional Monarchy following the Storming of the Bastille. The way the Constitutional Monarchy was ordered was that there would be a legislative assembly, the National Constituent Assembly, who had a President that rotated so many times it’s not worth it to remember them all. Some Frenchmen would vote on this Assembly, but not all. The Constitution made a distinction between active and passive citizens; active citizens exceeded the property limit to vote, passive citizens didn’t. The King, meanwhile, had some power, for example he was able to veto legislation.

Right off the bat, this arrangement ran into problems. As part of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Assembly essentially abandoned every institution of the Ancien Regime. They disbanded the Gendarmes and replaced them with the National Guard, and they completely replaced the magistrates and bureaucrats of the Kingdom; while technically during the months long period between the replacement being announced and it actually being implemented the people were supposed to obey the old bureaucracy, in practice this didn’t happen. Order completely broke down in the countryside surrounding Paris, and while it was eventually restored the damage was done. Additionally, the loyalties of the National Guard were never certain. This was put into stark relief during the Women’s March on Versailles; in response to food shortages(which weren’t the King’s fault) and a rumor that the King had trampled on the Revolutionary cockade, a mob of peasant women marched to Versailles and essentially kidnapped the Royal Family to Paris, where they were at the mercy of the most pro-Revolutionary section of the population, the Sans-Culottes. Crucially, the National Guard did nothing, even when it was possible the mob planned to kill the King.

If Louis hadn’t been opposed to the Revolution before this incident made him oppose it. In 1791 he fled with his family, attempting to drum up support to restore absolutism. They were caught at the town of Varrenes, which turned the Parisians decisively against the Monarchy. The Constitutional Monarchists had one last gambit, however: if France went to war with Austria and won, it could mean that support for the government would increase due to patriotic fervor. As such, France declared war on Austria in 1792. Unfortunately, because they gutted the officer corps(a running theme) the war against Austria was a dismal failure, and the King was blamed due to his Austrian wife’s alleged treason. As the armies of Austria and Prussia neared Paris, their commander, the Duke of Brunswick, declared that hurting the King would mean vengeance on the populace of Paris. This… did not go over well, and resulted in the Insurrection of August 10, where the King was overthrown; a few weeks later the Monarchy was formally abolished. Thus, the Constitutional Monarchy came to an end, and the First French Republic was declared.

The French Constitutional Monarchy was something of a failure. Its total abandonment of the institutions of the old regime rendered it helpless to actually function as a government. It also simply lacked any reference point for dealing with the opening of political discourse resulting from the Revolution; the power of mass media and demagogues like Jean-Paul Marat simply wasn't yet understood. Regardless, I think that the Kingdom of the French was the only chance for democracy succeeding initially in France. I simply can’t see the Terror not happening in the First Republic

Answer 2

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1] It limits the lower of monarchy.

2] These powers instead of being concentrated in the hands of our person, were separated and assigned to different institution, the legislative, the executive and the judiciary.

3] National Assembly completed the draft of constitution in 1791.

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