I couldn't fully answer this however I suggest a look at the Mark Steel Lectures on the French Revolution and Thomas Paine's the rights of man.
One bit of intellect I can provide on this subject is.
Being, as it was, a very liberal book, Thomas Paine's "The Rights of Man" threatened to upset the social order of an aristocratic hierarchy in France, and thus when the lower classes read it, and decriminalised it's publication, people were able to read it and break out of this to assert their own regime. When The aristocracy was ousted and executed so were many positions of authority, so the judiciary almost crumbled and reformed due to a total overhaul of people contributing to it and also being fed into by the legislative differently.