Ancien Régime

Examples of Ancien Régime in the following topics:

• The Ancien Regime

  • The Ancien Régime was the social and political system functioning in the Kingdom of France from the 15th until the end of the 18th centuries that was based on the rigid division of the society into three disproportionate and unequally treated classes.
  • The Ancien Régime (Old Regime or Former Regime) was the social and political system established in the Kingdom of France from approximately the 15th century until the latter part of the 18th century under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties.
  • The best known system is a three-estate system of the  French Ancien Régime used until the French Revolution (1789–1799).
  • France under the Ancien Régime (before the French Revolution) divided society into three estates: the First Estate (clergy); the Second Estate (nobility); and the Third Estate (commoners).
  • Describe the structure of the Ancien Régime and the societal rules at play.

• Taxes and the Three Estates

  • The taxation system under the Ancien Régime largely excluded the nobles and the clergy from taxation while the commoners, particularly the peasantry, paid disproportionately high direct taxes.
  • France under the Ancien Régime (before the French Revolution) divided society into three estates: the First Estate (clergy); the Second Estate (nobility); and the Third Estate (commoners).
  • This tax continued throughout the Ancien Régime.

• The Constitution of 1791

  • The Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution of France that turned the country into a constitutional monarchy following the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime.
  • The short-lived French Constitution of 1791 was the first written constitution in France, created after the collapse of the absolute monarchy of the Ancien Régime.

• Voltaire

  • He is remembered and honored in France as a courageous polemicist who indefatigably fought for civil rights (as the right to a fair trial and freedom of religion) and who denounced the hypocrisies and injustices of the Ancien Régime.
  • The Ancien Régime involved an unfair balance of power and taxes between the three Estates: clergy and nobles on one side, the commoners and middle class, who were burdened with most of the taxes, on the other.

• The Cuban Revolution

  • Others were fortunate enough to be dismissed from the army and police without prosecution, and some high-ranking officials in the ancien régime were exiled as military attachés.

• Open vs. Closed Stratification Systems

  • This fifteenth-century woodcutting illustrates the closed stratification system of the three estates of the French Ancien Régime.

• Louis XVI

  • Louis's indecisiveness and conservatism led some to view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime and his popularity deteriorated progressively, despite the king's many decisions triggered by his desire to be loved by the public.

• The Rise of the Nobility

  • In the years immediately before the start of the French Revolution in 1789, their extreme concern to preserve Ancien Régime institutions of noble privilege prevented France from carrying out many simple reforms, especially in the area of taxation, even when those reforms had the support of the king.

• Politics within the Revolutionaries

  • "Innovators" sat on the left, "moderates" gathered in the center, while the "conscientious defenders of the constitution" found themselves sitting on the right, where the defenders of the Ancien Régime had previously gathered.

• Progress and Poverty

  • Gronlund considered the United States more advanced, and therefore better fitted for a socialistic régime, than any other country.