The Constitutional Monarchy 1789–1792

The period from October 1789 to August 1792 saw France attempt to build a new political order: a constitutional monarchy in which the king would share power with an elected legislature. This experiment ultimately failed, destroyed by the mutual distrust between Louis XVI and the revolutionaries, the divisive impact of religious reform, and the radicalising effect of war.

Key Definition: A constitutional monarchy is a system in which the monarch's powers are defined and limited by a written constitution. The French Constitution of 1791 was the revolution's attempt to create such a system.

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The Work of the National Constituent Assembly (1789–1791)

The Assembly undertook a comprehensive reorganisation of France:

Administrative Reform

• France was divided into 83 departments, replacing the old provinces with their tangled jurisdictions
• Departments subdivided into districts, cantons, and communes
• Officials were elected, not appointed by the crown

Legal Reform

• Lettres de cachet (arbitrary imprisonment orders) abolished
• Judicial torture abolished
• An independent judiciary established

Economic Reform

• Guilds abolished (Le Chapelier Law, June 1791), establishing freedom of enterprise
• Internal customs barriers removed
• A uniform system of weights and measures began (later the metric system)

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The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (12 July 1790)

The most divisive reform of the revolution was the reorganisation of the Catholic Church:

Provision	Detail
Bishops and priests elected	Clergy chosen by voters, including non-Catholics
Dioceses reorganised	Reduced from 135 to 83, matching the new departments
Clergy paid by the state	Church property had been nationalised (November 1789) to fund assignats (paper currency)
Papal authority rejected	The Pope's jurisdictional authority over the French Church was denied

The Clerical Oath (November 1790)

All clergy were required to swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution. The result was catastrophic:

• Only 7 out of 160 bishops swore the oath
• Approximately 54% of parish priests refused
• France was divided between juring (oath-swearing, "constitutional") and non-juring (refractory) clergy
• Pope Pius VI condemned the Civil Constitution in April 1791

A-Level Analysis: The Civil Constitution was the revolution's greatest mistake of 1789–1791. It created a religious schism that divided communities, turned devout Catholics into counter-revolutionaries, and gave the royalist cause a mass base it had previously lacked. As Timothy Tackett demonstrated, regions with high rates of oath refusal (western France, particularly the Vendée) later became centres of counter-revolutionary resistance.

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The Flight to Varennes (20–21 June 1791)

Louis XVI and his family attempted to flee Paris and reach the Austrian-controlled Netherlands. They were recognised and arrested at Varennes, approximately 30 miles from the border.