The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Europe from 1789 to 1918

Chapter II
The Old Regime in France

The French Revolution brought with it a new conception of the state, new principles of politics and of society, a new outlook upon life, a new faith which seized the imagination of multitudes, inspiring them with intense enthusiasm, arousing boundless hopes, and precipitating a long and passionate struggle with all those who feared or hated innovation, who were satisfied with things as they were, who found their own conditions of life comfortable and did not wish to be disturbed. Soon France and Europe were divided into two camps, the reformers and the conservatives, those believing in radical changes along many lines and those who believed in preserving what was old and tried, either because they profited by it or because they felt that men were happier and more prosperous in living under conditions and with institutions to which they were accustomed than under those that might be ideally more perfect but would at any rate be strange and novel and uncertain.

In order to understand the French Revolution it is necessary to examine the conditions and institutions of France out of which it grew; in other words, the Old Regime. Only thus can we get our sense of perspective, our standard of values and of criticism.

The Revolution accomplished a sweeping transformation to the life of France. Putting it in a single phrase it accomplished the transition from the feudal system of the preceding centuries to the democratic system of the modern world. The entire structure of the French state and of French society was remodeled and planted on new and far-reaching principles.

The essence of the feudal system was class divisions and acknowledged privileges for all classes above the lowest. The essence of the new system is the removal of class distinctions, the abolition of privileges, the introduction of the principle of the equality of men, wherever possible.

What strikes one most in contemplating the Old Regime is the prevalence and the oppressiveness of the privileges that various classes enjoyed. Society was simply honeycombed with them. They affected life constantly and at every point.

It is not an easy society to describe in a few words, for the variations were almost endless. But, broadly speaking, and leaving details aside, French society was graded from top to bottom, and each grade differed, in legal rights, in opportunities for enjoyment and development, in power.

The system culminated in the monarch, the lofty and glittering head of the state, the embodiment of the might and the majesty of the nation. The king claimed to rule by the will of God, that monarchy claimed to rule by divine right, not at all by the consent of the people. He was responsible to no one but God. Consequently in the actual conduct of his office he was subject to no control. He was an absolute monarch. He could do as he chose. It was for the nation to obey. The will of the king and that alone was, in theory, the only thing that counted. It determined what the law should be that should govern twenty-five million Frenchmen in their daily lives. "This thing is legal because I wish it," said Louis XVI, thus stating in a single phrase the nature of the monarchy, the theory, and the practice also, if the monarch happened to be a strong man. The king made the laws, he levied the taxes, he spent them as he saw fit, he declared wars, made peace, contracted alliances according to his own inclination. There was in theory no restriction upon his power, and all his subjects lay in the hollow of his hand. He could seize their property; he could imprison them by a mere order, a lettre de cachet, without trial, and for such a period as he desired; he could control, if not their thoughts, at least the expression of them, for his censorship of the press, whether employed in the publication of books or newspapers, could muzzle them absolutely.

So commanding a figure required a broad and ample stage for the part he was to play, a rich and spacious background. Never was a being more sumptuously housed. While Paris was the capital of France, the king resided twelve miles away amid the splendors of Versailles. There he lived and moved and had his being in a palace that was the envy of every other king in Christendom, a monumental pile, with its hundreds of rooms, its chapel, theater, dining halls, salons, and endless suites of apartments for its distinguished occupants, the royal family, its hundreds of servants, and its guests. This mammoth residence had been built a century before at an expense of about a hundred million dollars in terms of our money today, an imposing setting for a most brilliant and numerous court, lending itself, with its miles of corridors, of walks through endless formal gardens studded with statues, fountains, and artificial lakes, to all the pomp and pageantry of power. For the court which so dazzled Europe was composed of 18,000 people, perhaps 16,000 of whom were attached to the personal service of the king and his family, 2,000 being courtiers, the favored guests of the house, nobles who were engaged in a perpetual round of pleasures and who were also busily feathering their own nests by soliciting, of course in polished and subtle ways, the favors that streamed from a lavish throne. Luxury was everywhere the prevailing note. Well may the occupants of the palace have considered themselves, in spirit and in truth, the darlings of the gods, for earth had not anything to show more costly. The king, the queen, the royal children, the king's brothers and sisters and aunts all had their separate establishments under the spacious roof. The queen alone had 500 servants. The royal stables contained nearly 1,900 horses and more than 200 carriages, and the annual cost of this service alone was the equivalent of $4,000,000. The king's table cost more than a million and a half. As gaiety was unconfined, so necessarily was the expenditure that kept it going, for every one in this household secured what, in the parlance of our vulgar democracy, is called a handsome 'rake-off.' Thus ladies-in-waiting secured about $30,000 each by the privilege they enjoyed of selling the candles that had once been lighted but not used up. Queen Marie Antoinette had four pairs of shoes a week, which constituted a profitable business for somebody. In 1789 the total cost of all this riot of extravagance amounted to not far from $20,000,000. No wonder that men spoke of the court as the veritable nation's grave.

Not only were the king's household expenses pitched to this exalted scale, but, in addition, he gave money or appointments or pensions freely, as to a manner born, to those who gained his favor. It has been estimated that in the fifteen years between 1774, when Louis XVI came to the throne, and 1789, when the whirlwind began, the King thus presented to favorites the equivalent of more than a hundred million dollars of our money. For those who basked in such sunshine it was unquestionably a golden age.

Such was the dazzling apex of a state edifice that was rickety in the extreme. For the government of France was ill-constructed and the times were decidedly out of joint. That government was not a miracle of design, but of the lack of it. Complicated, ill-adjusted, the various branches dimly defined or over-lapping, it was thoroughly unscientific and inefficient. The king was assisted by five councils which framed the laws, issued the orders, conducted the business of the state, domestic and foreign, at the capital. Then for purposes of local government France was split up into divisions, but, unfortunately, not into a single, simple set. There were forty 'governments,' so called, thirty- two of which corresponded closely to the old provinces of France, the outcome of her feudal history. But those forty "governments" belied their name. They did little governing, but they furnished many lucrative offices for the higher nobility who were appointed governors and who resided generally in Versailles, contributing their part to the magnificent ceremonial of that showy parade ground.

The real, prosaic work was done in the thirty-six 'generalities,' as another set of divisions was called. Over each of these was an intendant who was generally of the middle or bourgeois class, accustomed to work. These intendants were appointed by the king to carry on the royal government, each in his own district. They generally did not originate much, but they carried out the orders that came from the capital and made their reports to it. Their power was practically unrestricted. Upon them depended in large measure the happiness or the misery of the provinces. Judging from the fact that most of them were very unpopular, it must be admitted that this, the real working part of the national government, did not contribute to the welfare of the people. The intendants were rather the docile tools of the misgovernment which issued from the five councils which were the five fingers of the king. As the head is, so are the members, and the officials under the intendants for the smaller local areas enjoyed the disesteem evoked by the oppressive or unjust policies of their superiors.

Speaking broadly, local self-government did not exist in France, but the local, like the national, government was directed and determined in Versailles. Were a bridge to be repaired over some little stream hundreds of miles from Paris, were a new roof required for a village church, the matter was regulated from Paris, after exasperating delay. It was the reign of the red tape in every sense of the word. The people stood like dumb, driven cattle before this monstrous system. The only danger lay in the chance that they might not always remain dumb. Here obviously was no school for popular political education...