A “self-denying ordinance” passed by the Constituent Assembly prior to its dissolution ensured a complete turnover of personnel when the Legislative Assembly first convened at Paris on 1 October 1791. The new legislature included fewer clerics and nobles and boasted more provincial bourgeois than had its predecessor; its members tended on average to be somewhat younger. Moreover, these neophyte deputies, having been elected in the anxious aftermath of the Flight to Varennes, betrayed from the start a radical bent not heretofore encountered in the Revolution's leaders. That radical proclivity manifested itself above all in a foreign policy which before long plunged France into a war that was destined, with only brief interruptions, to last for a generation. The resumption of a significant French role in Great Power politics in turn further radicalized domestic politics and policy-making. It doomed both king and Legislative Assembly, led to a “reign of Terror,” and forced a basic legislative review of this society's obligations to its people.

This chapter, after summarizing the events of the period from October 1791 to July 1794, will begin its analysis by reappraising the revolutionaries' foreign policy. It will present that policy as reflecting France's strategic needs quite as much as its internal interests and politics. It will then reassess some of the most important administrative, social, and cultural reforms enacted by the men of the short-lived Legislative Assembly and its storied successor, the National Convention.