England, and later Britain and the United Kingdom, have a long history of gradually granting concessions to other political actors resulting in a power balance that would eventually lean almost entirely towards Parliament. Power in France, even before the revolution, was almost always found in a singular person or group of people, with the source of their power ranging from having the support of the mobs of Paris to having a powerful military under their command. England, on the other hand, has had a long tradition of parliamentary power sharing. France has never really had this sort of dualism. It was either a monarch (or an authoritarian analogue), or a republic.

The conflict between the Monarchy and Parliament in England that led to the civil war and later the Protectorate was the result of the perceived "Personal Rule" of King Charles I. Charles I dismissed three sessions of Parliament in the first three years of his reign over disputes between new taxes and concessions to Parliament. He went on to rule for 11 years without summoning a single session. He was perfectly entitled to do this, but it stood in stark contrast to the long-standing tradition of cooperation between the Monarchy and Parliament. When he did finally call another Parliament, he again failed to come to an agreement with the Parliamentarians and went so far as to barge into Parliament without invitation and attempt to arrest five sitting members. This would spark the Civil War and the eventual beheading of Charles.

When the Stuart king Charles II was invited to assume the throne, it was at the request of Parliament. And when his brother James II was deposed in favor of his daughter Marry II and William II/III, it was Parliament who declared that James had effectively abdicated and that the throne should pass to his daughter and her husband.

In 1701 Parliament passed the Act of Settlement which restricted the throne to non-Catholics. Particularly George I, George II, and to a lesser extent his successor George III, ruled primarily through Parliament by supporting de facto Prime Ministers from their favored parties through the French Revolution. Parliament cemented its role in Britain as an indispensable force of government that could co-exist quite happily with the monarchy. With the Nobility represented in the House of Lords and well-to-do commoners represented in the Commons, the balance of political power was such that the other power-holders of the realm did not feel overly threatened by the existence of the Monarchy.

France on the other hand, lacked a true parliament, and more importantly, a true continuous legislative body to oppose Monarchy. Before the revolution, France was notorious for their absolute monarchy. The Palace of Versailles was the pinnacle of this absolutism, with the King residing in the central room on the central axis, surrounded by nobility who were completly beholden to him. The closest thing France had to a parliament was the Estates General, which until 1789 hadn't met since 1614. This would eventually morph into the National Assembly, and then into the National Constituent Assembly, then the Legislative Assembly, the National Convention, Legislative Body, etc, etc. The Legislatures of France from the revolution on have a remarkable tendency to be purged, rigged, reformed, dissolved, made inept, or otherwise done away with to accommodate whoever happens to be holding the key power at the time. Even during the constitutional monarchy under the Constitution of 1791, the King was completely beholden to the legislature, which eventually deposed and behead him. Taking a glance through the next few decades, it’s difficult to find examples of true power-sharing agreements that couldn’t be altered or usurped at will by one of the players. France moved from powerful executive to powerful executive, interrupted by brief bouts of republicanism through the revolution and much of the 19th century.

So as summary, we have a long standing and increasingly powerful parliament in England that could and did rival the power of the Monarch, vs an ever increasingly absolute government in France up to the revolution, which was replaced by very centralized power structures. The power-dualism that England enjoys simply had no real equivalent in France, with the monarch having no interest in sharing power with a powerful legislature and vise versa. Happy to elaborate on anything you’re still curious about. Happy to give source recommendations too.

Some sources, Anything by Georges Lefebvre for details on the French Revolution and beyond William Church’s The Impact of Absolutism in France Clyve Jones, A Short History of Parliament