Election of The Legislative Assembly
Despite a limited franchise, the elections of 1791 brought in a legislature which – perhaps even disproportionately to the will of the country – desired to carry the Revolution further. Prominent among this legislature were the Jacobin Club and its affiliated societies throughout France.
The Legislative Assembly first met on 1 October 1791. It consisted of 745 members, and some historians have attempted to argue that they were mostly from the middle class, though this is not universally accepted. The members were generally young, and, since none had sat in the previous Assembly, they largely lacked national political experience. They tended to be people who had made their name through successful political careers in local politics.
The Right within the assembly (in the wider picture of national politics they are better seen as moderates, since the 'real' right wing of monarchists were outside the assembly and in some cases outside the country as émigrés at this time) consisted of about 165 "Feuillants", guided chiefly by persons outside the House, because those had been made incapable of re-election. The Left, generally dominant during this period, consisted of about 330 "Jacobins", a term which still included the party afterwards known as the Girondins or Girondists. The Left as a whole was openly anti-émigré and anticlerical. They also generally, although often not openly, favored a republic. In these views, they were reinforced by the less privileged classes in Paris and throughout France. The remainder of the House, about 250 deputies, generally belonged to no definite party. The king's ministers, named by him and excluded from the Assembly, are described by the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica as "mostly persons of little mark."
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