Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
When, after the October crisis, the National Assembly followed the French court from Versailles to Paris, it was able quickly to come to grips with the task of devising a new constitution. The danger of counter-revolution had once more receded and by November the food shortage in the capital was over. The timely surrenders of feudal privileges made in the August decrees, officially promulgated on 3 November, allayed peasant discontents at least temporarily and bought time for the lawyers of the feudal committee to consider how total the alleged ‘destruction’ of the feudal régime was to be in fact. A hiatus in the administration of justice and in the conduct of local government was averted by the provisional continuation of existing office-holders. The suspension, on 3 November, of the activities of the parlements removed a possible spring-board for counter-revolutionary resistance in the provinces. Though the October crisis prompted Louis XVI to send a secret and solemn protest against the restrictions forcibly imposed on the crown's authority to Charles IV of Spain, and though, by contrast, it encouraged the Belgian democrats to launch a revolt against the Austrian government in the Netherlands, neither of these repercussions involved much danger of European intervention in France. Most European governments were content to feel that France's political influence on the continent had been extinguished for some time to come. The first serious difficulties in France's foreign relations were in fact delayed till May 1790 and culminated in a solemn renunciation by the National Assembly of aggressive warfare and territorial conquest.
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