Nevertheless, while the idea of shared sovereignty continued to inform the struggle for freedom, Montesquieu remained the most important political philosopher of the French Revolution; even those orators and journalists who invoked the name of John Locke as the great theorist of modern freedom did not move far from Montesquieu's conception of things, since Montesquieu saw himself as Locke's successor in the liberal tradition, and modestly claimed only to wish to adapt Locke's general principles to the particular conditions of France.
