The Growth and Decline of the French Monarchy (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Growth and Decline of the French Monarchy

This volume has grown out of a desire to investigate the origins of the French Revolution. Many books have been written on that Revolution, and a goodly number deal directly or indirectly with its origins. Writers like M. Taine have generalised its causes with philosophical grasp and acute ness. They have unfolded the more direct of these causes by a study of the Old rc'glfnc in its later phases. M. Taine, in particular, has given us a graphic picture of the social and political institutions of France in the eighteenth century in his Origines de la France Contemporaine. The roots of the Revolution lie, however, deeper down in the layers of French history; below as well as in the upper stratum Of the eighteenth century. For its causes were indirect as well as direct, remote as well as immediate. To unfold this twofold category of causes, it is needful to go far back into the history of the old French monarchy, to review, in fact, the history of monarchic France from the Middle Ages onward. It is this that I have attempted to do in the following chapters, and in this endeavour I have eschewed the method of philosophical generalisation for that of consecutive historical investigation. I have adopted the historic method in a large sense in my search for an adequate explanation of the great upheaval which, in the last decade Of the eighteenth century, affected the history not only of France, but Of Europe, permanently as well as transiently.

Several questions suggested themselves to my mind on looking at the history of France from this point of view. How did the power of the French kings, from Hugh Capet onwards, grow? How did these kings exercise this power in the work Of government? How, as the result of the exercise of this power, did the monarchy decline, and thus invite its own fall by the violent process of revolution? In seeking the answers to these questions, I became engrossed in my subject.

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