The Forgotten Constitution
"Although little known outside of France, the French Constitution of 1791 is the progenitor of the movement toward constitutionalism in Europe and the world. The constitution developed out of an increasing fear of royal despotism during the eighteenth century that culminated with the calling of an Estates General in 1789. The transformation of the Estates General into the National Assembly in June 1789 and the declaration by the Assembly three days later that it would not disband until it had given France a constitution ultimately led to the proclamation of the Constitution of 1791 in September 1791. The conquests of the Revolution and the Empire carried the constitutional ideal across Europe from Madrid to Warsaw. After Bonaparte's final defeat in 1815, the European powers sought to stamp out constitutionalism, but it burst forth again in the Revolutions of 1848. The Constitution of 1791, with its conferral of legal equality and civil rights on all citizens, as well as its critical role in the concept of human rights, was an exemplar in a way that its better-known contemporary, the United States Constitution, with its acceptance and institutionalization of slavery, could not be. Furthermore, the Constitution of 1791-and the French Revolution-legitimized the right to change, which has continued to inspire down to the present. To understand the Constitution of 1791 is central to an understanding of the French Revolution"--