Estates of the realm composed of the former representatives of the three estates stepping up to govern along with an emergency committee in the power vacuum existing after the Bourbon monarchy fled Paris. Among the Assembly was Maximilien de Robespierre, an influential member of the Jacobins who would years later become instrumental in the turbulent period of violence and political upheaval in France known as the Reign of Terror (5 September 1793 – 28 July 1794). Whilst the estates were never formulated in a way that prevented social mobility, the English (subsequently the British) parliament was long based along the classic estate lines being
Paris in the 18th century The former city government, the Commune, had virtually disappeared; of the one hundred forty members of its General Council before the Terror, eighty-seven had been guillotined, and forty imprisoned. Of the thirty-three senior city administrators, twenty had been executed and ten imprisoned. It was impossible to have a document registered for lack of living city employees. On August 24, 1794, the new government of France, the Directory created a whole new city government. The forty-eight sections, each governed by a revolutionary committee, were replaced by twelve arrondissements, strictly under the control of the Directory. Each arrondissement was governed by a