French Revolution
The National Constituent Assembly dissolved itself on 30 September 1791. Upon Robespierre's motion it decreed that none of its members should be capable of sitting in the next legislature; this is known as the self-denying ordinance. Its successor body, the Legislative Assembly, operating under the liberal French Constitution of 1791, did not last a year and was generally deemed a failure. It left behind an empty treasury, an undisciplined army and navy, and enormous domestic turmoil.
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Famous quotes containing the words french revolution, french and/or revolution:
“The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have seen in this revolution a circular motion of the sovereign power through two usurpers, father and son, to the late King to this his son. For ... it moved from King Charles I to the Long Parliament; from thence to the Rump; from the Rump to Oliver Cromwell; and then back again from Richard Cromwell to the Rump; then to the Long Parliament; and thence to King Charles, where long may it remain.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)