On the eve of the Revolution, an unprecedented public effort was undertaken in the management of inland navigation. It led to a policy that encouraged public action and was shaped and then implemented by practical managers for whom politics and administration strongly overlapped. This organisational layout was shattered by the Revolution. The creation of National Assemblies and an independent and dominant legislative power, the institutional instability and the frequent reorganisations that this involved, the situation of emergency and hardship caused by war and economic crisis, all destabilised the systems and practices previously in operation. These organisational experiments led, above all, to a clearer demarcation between the administrative and political spheres.