The Ancien Régime: From this….

King Louis XIV (1643-1715)

….To This

Louis XVI (1774-1792)

Introduction: Defining the Ancien Régime

• Term coined by French Revolutionaries: ‘ancien’ = former

• First systematic analysis Alexis de Toqueville (1856)

• A particularly French story but term also applied to rest of 18th century Europe: Britain, Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Russia

Key features

• Strong absolutist monarchy

• An established church

• Privileged order of nobility

1) Absolute Monarchy

• Personal power

• Peter I (the Great) of Russia (1682-1725): autocrat

• France: Bourbon dynasty: absolutist rule from palace at Versailles

• Britain: constitutional monarchy – power limited by Bill of Rights (1689); Triennial Act (1694); Act of Settlement (1702) but monarch appointed ministers, patronage

Multiple kingdoms and composite states: Size and diversity of territory, needed strong control from

the centre

• Russia: added parts of E.Europe, the Baltic, Ottoman Empire

• Habsburg Empire: ‘a mildly centripetal agglutination of bewilderingly heterogeneous elements’ (Robert Evans) parts of central & E. Europe, N. Italy, Luxembourg,Belgium

• France: different linguistic groups

• Britain: Ruled by Hanoverians, Scotland added (1707); Ireland (1800)

Law and Order

• Need to impress authority and compel obedience

• Extensive capital code everywhere, judicial torture in Eastern Europe

• France – lettres de cachet

• Even in Britain with common law, right of habeas corpus – number of capital offences rose from 160 in 1760 to 200 in 1800 (though juries reluctant to convict)

• Public executions: power of authority made visible

Mercantilism

• Total subjection of economy to needs of state

• Protection of national trades, trade policy = inflow of gold and silver (from Americas and Asia) and outflow of manufactured goods.

• Aim: favourable balance of trade – more exports than imports

• Rationale: easier to tax income from overseas trade than to introduce unpopular domestic taxes

• Required expensive navies and colonies, agriculture neglected

The costs of warfare

•

• 18th century – almost constant warfare

• Gold and silver needed to fund armies and navies

• World trade = zero-sum game

• Trade was war, war = best way to increase trade

• France at war every other year from 1660 to 1780

• 3 expensive wars:

War of Spanish Succession (1713)

War of Austrian Succession (1740)

Seven Years War (1756-63)

• European monarchs reliant on loans to fund warfare

Britain and the ‘fiscal-military’ state

• Monarchs – poor personal credit rating (Charles II defaulted on £1.3 million loan in 1671)

- needed to de-personalize public credit

• 1694: Bank of England founded

• Creation of National Debt – money lent to nation not the monarch – collateral = land and wealth of nation

• National debt: allowed massive government expenditure in wartime to be repaid by tax money in peacetime

• Growth in state bureaucracy:

1660 – 1200 revenue officials; 1750 – 16,000 officials

• Beginning of 18th century Royal Navy had 173 ships, by the end nearly 1,000

And the rest…

• Other monarchies reliant on mercantile policy of ‘liquid cash’ (gold and silver in coffers, expensive loans)

• End of Seven Years war, Louis XV paying 10% interest on loans

• Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary (1740-1780) debt of 7-8 times

Empire’s income after wars with Prussia in 1740s

• Much of instability of ancien regime & desire for enlightened reform derived from need to rationalise finance to pay for war

War and Patriotism

• Patriotism, or national pride – justified financial and personal demands of warfare

but

• Patriotism, could also be used against state

• Idea that the nation, not the ruling dynasty = ultimate source of authority

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii (1784)

2) The confessional state

• Ancien regime: no separation between church and state

• Most of Europe still in grip of Catholic counter-reformation

• Britain and some smaller states = outposts of Protestantism

• Russia - Orthodox church

Church and civil society

• Function of established church = to uphold established order

• Church responsible for civil registration (births, marriages deaths)

• Notices from government read at Sunday services

• Controlled education – the Jesuits in Austria, Spain and France

• Censorship: The Index in Austria and Spain

• Major landowner (monasteries, estates, universities, schools, charities)

• Supported by its own taxes: tithes to Church of England, portion congrué to Catholic Church in France

Persecution and Toleration

• Russia and Austria notorious for persecution of non-orthodox

• Maria Theresa’s promotion of Catholicism: baroque churches, ‘conversion’ houses for Protestants, ‘heretics’ removed to remote regions

• 1727: decree banishing all Jews from Russian empire

More tolerant: Frederick II of Prussia

• Britain, considered most tolerant kingdom in Europe but

Penal laws against Catholics and non-conformists in Britain

• Test Act 1673 – Prohibited those who were not members of the established church from holding public office 

• Marriage Act 1697 – Discouraged marriages between Catholics and Protestants 

• Popery Act [1704 & 1709] RCs to divide land equally among sons – diminished RC landholdings 

• 1728 - Disenfranchising Act: RCs prohibited from voting

Popular Religion

• Spread of religious enthusiasm

• Jansenism (France)

• Pietism (Germany)

• Wesleyean Methodism (Britain)

• More authentic form of religious observance

• Pietism made state religion in Prussia, 1727

3) Nobility

• 2 to 5 % of population

• Many recent titles – owed their rank to monarch

• Peter the Great: tried to make noble rank dependent on service to Tsar

Table of Ranks (1722): nobility classified into 14 ranks, 262 posts: military, naval, administrative and court – rank = performance related

Privilege and honour

• Usually exempt from taxation, right to carry swords

• Britain – elite relatively open, but small (peerage = 1000 families)

• Prussia – dominated officer class and civil service

• France – church hierarchy, leader of Parlements and intendants

• Britain, magistrates

Privileges also limitations

• Usually, not allowed to trade, or practice professions

• Prussia, banned from selling land outside nobility

• Britain, primogeniture, but most of European aristocracy had to provide for extensive families

• Wealthy nobility – Esterhazys in Austria, Dukes of Devonshire, Earls of Carlisle

• But also poorer cousins

Landownership

• France and Britain nobility owned estimated ¼ of arable land

• Fixed labour force: Prussia, Poland, Russia, eastern provinces of Habsburg monarchy = serfs

• Russia – nearly half population = serfs, around 56% owned by nobility

• Western Europe: Peasants – harsh conditions, no compensations for improvements, payment in kind, obliged to work on royal roads (corvée), liable for military conscription

• Food riots and ‘moral economy’ (grain should be sold at ‘just price’)

• Russia, 1773: Pugachev revolt against landowners

Wealth

• Leverage over monarchs provided by nobles independent wealth

• Coal and iron ore on aristocratic estates, ownership of town property – benefited from urban industrial expansion

• Austria, France and Britain – loans and contracts with royal houses

• France: nobility’s resistance to attempts to reform taxation (eg. By Louis XV’s ministers: Machault, 1749 and Calonne 1780s)

• Monarchs forced to draw on a short-term, high-interest loans – in France would lead to bankruptcy

Conclusion: When (and why) did ancien regime fall?

• Only one regime fell: France in 1789

• Failure of Bourbon dynasty to evolve and adapt

• Ossified political culture, lack of legitimacy

• Financial burdens of warfare, state heavily indebted

• Failed to recognize growing authority of the ‘nation’

And the rest?

• State reform (Prussia, Austria-Hungary) enlightened state reforms. Frederick II of Prussia as ‘first servant of state’

• End of ‘old regime’ in Prussia? Possibly after defeat at Jena in 1806 – revolution from within, rather than without, left monarchy intact

• Evolution and adaptation: King George III’s reinvention as ‘patriot king’

End of ‘old regime’? Possibly 1828-1832, Catholic emancipation, Reform Act

• The persistence of the old regime? (Arno Mayer)