So in the New World, there’s a new country, with a new Constitution and a new central government. This had never happened before, it was an astounding thing in world history, and that fact was not lost on the people of the Old World. People all over Europe were watching what happened in America with great interest. And when the United States was able to actually throw off the British government, and then were also able to come together and successfully create a new form of government, the people of Europe were impressed, and also inspired to begin to think about creating new forms of government for themselves.
And one of the countries that was the most eager to think about new forms of government was France. But France was a very, very different place than the United States, and its process of altering and abolishing the old form of government and instituting new government was also very different.
And the biggest single reason for that was the entrenched power structures that existed in France, that were not present in the United States at all. Those structures had held power there in France for almost 1000 years. While the United States was throwing of a foreign power structure, that of Great Britain, France was going to have to throw off its very own power structure. A power structure that very much didn’t want to be thrown off.