Introduction: Building a National Assembly

One of the most lively of France's younger historians, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret argues in this pioneering essay that the traditional picture of the pre-revolutionary French nobility as a caste of intransigent reactionaries and parasites is a fabrication of revolutionary propaganda. Using a whole range of new research and calculations, he argues that the nobility represented all that was most vigorous and forward-looking in eighteenth-century French society. Constantly renewing itself by recruiting the richest members of the middle classes or marrying their daughters, the nobility was in the forefront of French economic and intellectual life, and until 1789 was at the head of the movement for reform of the old regime state. In an afterword specially written for the English edition, the author explains how the revolutionaries came to turn against a group that had done more than any other to bring about the Revolution.

How did the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity evolve out of the corporate structure of the Old Regime in France? This 1994 study investigates the evolution of a new ideal in polity in 1789 and the reaction of French society to it. Concentrating especially on the restructuring of the administration and judiciary, the author argues that the new political structure created by the constitution of 1791 was the most equitable and participatory national political system in the world. In particular, by the standards of the eighteenth century, the polity enacted by the National Assembly was more inclusive than exclusive, and the Constitution of 1791 was much more of an object of consensus than has been acknowledged. Challenging criticisms of the Assembly and the constitution, The Remaking of France argues that the achievements of the National Assembly deserve greater recognition than they have traditionally received.