Beginning in 1789 with the calling of the Estates-General and the storming of the Bastille, the French Revolution overthrew the Bourbon absolute monarchy and the privileges of the old order. It passed through successive republican and radical phases before culminating in Napoleon's rise, and its armies and ideals of liberty, equality and citizenship spread across Europe. The revolutionaries abolished feudal dues and seized and resold Church and émigré lands.
By abolishing feudal tenure and redistributing land, it transformed rural property relations and helped lay the groundwork for the systematic cadastral surveys and rational administrative geography on which modern planning depends.
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