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
In the Reign of Terror: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy – much of the St. Caux family are killed for the sake of their aristocratic status. Harry, himself a middle-class English boy, "sympathizes with the oppressed peasantry but tries to protect his adoptive noble French family from the terror." The theme of class divisions is threaded with nationalistic rhetoric: Harry’s father states that "the condition of the vast body of the French nation has been terrible," and that England, in contrast, has "long conquered our liberties." "In the Reign of Terror" was well received in its time and is one of Henty's more popular works. Contemporary reviews were positive: The