In brief, the central State handed over, or allowed the seizure of the powers of which it ought never to deprive itself, the last of its means by which alone it acts effectively and on the spot, * its sword, which it alone should wield, * its scales of justice, which it alone should hold, * its purse, for it to fill, and we have seen with what harm to individuals, to the communes, and to itself, with what a lamentable series of disastrous results: * universal, incurable, persistent anarchy, * impotence of the government, * violation of the laws, * complete stoppage of revenue, an empty treasury, * despotism of the strong, oppression of the weak, * street riots, * rural brigandage, * extortions and waste at the town halls, * municipal usurpations and abdications, * ruin of the highways, and all useful public works and buildings, and * the ruin and distress of the communes.[4113] In contrast with this, and through disgust, the new Regime takes the other side, and even goes to the other extreme; the central State, in 1800, no longer a party that has resigned, as formerly, becomes the interloper.

Not only does it take back from local communities the portion of the public domain which had been imprudently conceded to them, but, again, it lays its hand on their private domain; it attaches them to it by way of appendices, while its systematic, uniform usurpation, accomplished at one blow, spread over the whole territory, again plunges them all, communes and departments alike, into a chaos in which, under the old monarchy, they would never have fallen.
Before 1789, collective legal entities (persons), provincial and communal, still existed.

On the one hand, five or six great local bodies, represented by elective assemblies, full of life and spontaneously active, among others those of Languedoc and Brittany, still provided for and governed themselves.

The other provinces, which the central power had reduced to administrative districts, retained, at least, their historic cohesion, their time-honored name, the lament for, or at least the souvenir of, their former autonomy, and, here and there, a few vestiges or fragments of their lost independence; and, better yet, these old, paralyzed, but not mutilated bodies, had just assumed new life, and under their renewed organism were striving to give the blood in their veins a fresh start.

Twenty-one provincial assemblies, instituted over the entire territory, between 1778 and 1787, and provided with powers of considerable importance, undertook, each in its own sphere, to direct provincial interests.