unit 2

• Reforms to the Church in France

  1. Every department was to have a bishop

  2. Clergymen would become paid state officials

  3. Bishops and priests here to be elected

  4. This would give French citizens control over their spiritual leaders

  5. Made the Church subservient to the state

  6. Clerics deprived of their offices and salaries
• Economic reform


  • Assignant government bonds
  • Used paper money
  • Excessive printing caused inflation
  • Economic restructuring programme & replace direct taxes and compensate for the loss of indirect taxation
  • Internal tariffs disappear
  • Emergence of a new trade-earning budget
  • Crisis helped agriculture
• Social reform


  • Titles, nobility and privilege abolished
  • More became citizens
  • Individual rights and liberties were more protected in law than ever before
  • Men had more rights than women
• Judicial reform


  1. Hierarchy of courts created

  2. Justices of the Peace to hear minor civil cases in each commune

  3. District Courts dealt with severe civil cases
• Before the reforms, social inequality existed where men had more rights than women and all must carry a livret
• The Le Chapelier law limited freedom of association and forbade workers from conducting strikes
• The bourgeoisie benefitted the most from the reforms
• Political reform


  • Elected government, legislative, to body acted as the independent
  • King retained the right to select and appoint ministers to form a cabinet
  • All active citizens were eligible to vote in primary elections where they hold senate electors and officials for this local councils
• Decentralisation of local government

  • Each department to have elected council
  • Decentralisation was key revolutionary idea to prevent possible
  • Councils were made responsible for law and order
• The reforms favoured the bourgeois interests and presented new opportunities to those with money and education to land, official positions and political influence
• The reforms restricted brokers and trade unions, and lacked educational opportunities, preventing social advance
• The church reform made some people think the Assembly was trying to change their faith, turning them against the measures