FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FRENCH REPUBLIC 349 National Assembly attacked what seemed to be the root-cause of the general grievances; and within a month of the fall of the Bastille, it had practically wiped out all the obnoxious privileges of noblesse and clergy. But the whole fabric of the social order in France was based on the existence of these privileges ; it was necessary to replace them by some system on which a new social order could rest. In England, something like popular government had gradually grown up, but at every stage the reformers had always claimed and felt that they were not introducing innovations but merely safeguarding the funda- mental principles of the Constitution. In France, it was the fundamental principles that were shattered, and new funda- mental principles had to be found and substituted for them. Intent on its high purpose, the Assembly set about The First constructing a new constitution, for which reason Constitution, it was now entitled the 'Constituent' Assembly. 1790, A constitution was arrived at which was entirely incapable of working. A strong central government was a sheer necessity in a state where the old order was broken up, as Oliver Cromwell had found in England ; but anything creating a strong central government in France was looked on as a return to despotism. The one man who might conceivably have saved France, Mirabeau, died. The king made the disastrous blunder of attempting to fly from the country — and failing; while the emigres, those of the court party who had fled, were clamouring to persuade foreign powers to intervene and restore the French monarchy. A reconciliation was effected however. The king remained king, accepting the new constitution, and the governing body was a new Legislative ' Assembly of which no one who had sat in the National Assembly was allowed to Legislative be a member. The immense majority of them were Assembly, practically republicans, divided into two parties known as the Girondins and the Jacobins or the ' Mountain. The real leaders of the latter, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat were actually not members of the Assembly at all. The Emperor Leopold and the King of Prussia had adopted an attitude which in France was regarded as insolently aggressive ;
