The Ancient Regime

The Ancient Regime is by Hippolyte A. Taine and is volume 1 of The Origins of Contemporary France. The contents list an introduction, a preface by the author on political ignorance and wisdom, and a first book on the structure of the ancient society.

The contents give a first chapter, The Origin of Privileges, with sections on the services and recompenses of the clergy, the nobles and the king. The text says that down to the end of the twelfth century the clergy bears heavily on the princes, and that in its churches and in its convents it preserves the ancient acquisitions of humanity, the Latin tongue, Christian literature and theology. The text also holds that every circumstance is conditioned, and that laws exist for numbers, forms and motions, for the revolution of the planets and the fall of bodies, and for the birth, maintenance and development of human societies. The text explains that privileged persons escape the taille, which falls wholly on those subject to it, and that the taille, ever augmenting, provides a vast number of new offices.