Pre-revolutionary France: a system of absolute monarchy. The clergy and nobleman enjoyed special privelages.
Post-Revolutionary France: The government was a constitutional monarchy. Special privelages of clergy and nobles abolished.
The French Revolution was a social and political conflict, with various periods of violence, which convulsed France and, by extension of its implications, other nations of Europe that faced supporters and opponents of the system known as the Old Regime. It began with the self-proclamation of the Third State as a National Assembly in 1789 and ended with the coup d'état of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1799.
