The Old Regime
The European monarchical-aristocratic political order before 1789
Also known as: Old Regime, Ancien Régime, Old Régime, pre-Revolutionary order
The Old Regime — French Ancien Régime — is Quigley's name for the European political order between the late Middle Ages and the French Revolution of 1789. It was the long subject of his 'chief intellectual concern' as a young scholar (Quigley Lectures, p. 1): a thousand-year-long process of state-building in France and the European monarchies more broadly, organized around the principle that 'the king is the source of justice' and 'bound more than anyone else in the society to obey the laws' (Quigley Lectures, p. 9). Quigley returned to the Old Regime repeatedly across his career — in his doctoral work on Napoleonic Italy, in his Georgetown lectures, and in Weapons Systems and Political Stability.
Quigley's lifelong subject
Quigley opened his Georgetown lecture series 'The Public Authority Tradition: A Thousand Years of Growth, A.D. 976–1976' by acknowledging the Old Regime as the great preoccupation of his early career. 'For a decade after 1931, my chief intellectual concern was the growth of the European state in the Old Regime, before 1789. I dreamed that at some date in the future, perhaps thirty years in the future, I would write the definitive history of the growth of public authority and the development of the' state in this period (Quigley Lectures, p. 1). The thousand-year frame — 976 to 1789, divided into the 'State of Communities' (976–1576) and the 'State of Estates' (1576–1776) — names the Old Regime as the long pre-history of the modern state. Quigley's doctoral dissertation on the public administration of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy examines the moment at which the new revolutionary administrative form replaced the institutions of the Old Regime in northern Italy, and uses the contrast to anchor his analysis.
Constitutional substance: the king under law
Quigley's central claim about the Old Regime is that it was not — despite later revolutionary rhetoric — an arbitrary or absolute monarchy but a constitutional order resting on the principle of royal legal restraint. 'The interesting thing is that in 1792, when Louis XVI was going to the scaffold, he still believed that the obligation he had as king was to support the rights of everyone, including the nobles and the Church. This was the central core of the Old Regime and it cannot be emphasized too much: the king is the source of justice. And as such, he was bound more than anyone else in the society to obey the laws' (Quigley Lectures, p. 9). Out of this principle Quigley draws two intertwined doctrines: the king was 'under legal restraints,' and 'property as dominia, that is, as bundles of customary individual rights, was entrenched' (Quigley Lectures, p. 10). The Old Regime is therefore the political form in which a strong central executive coexists with a dense network of corporate, customary, and ecclesiastical rights — a balance the French Revolution would shatter.
Institutional architecture
Quigley identifies Charles VII of France as 'the true architect of the Old Regime.' Charles 'codified the customary relations of church and state in the Pragmatic Sanction (1438); created the royal artillery which drove out the English' (WSPS 1052), and — in 1454 — issued the edict of Montils-lès-Tours, 'the most important edict of the Old Regime,' which 'ordered each locality to codify its local customs as the law of that district' (Quigley Lectures, p. 12). The Gallican Church, the royal artillery, the codified customary law of the provinces, the Concordat of 1516, and the slow accumulation of royal jurisdiction over the next two centuries are the institutional pieces of the order. Mercantilism — 'state mercantilism in the period 1690–1810' (EoC 11) — was its characteristic economic policy. 'The existence of these restraints of law explains why the government was bankrupt in 1789' (WSPS 1052): the Crown could not unilaterally raise taxes against the structure of corporate rights, and its fiscal collapse was the proximate cause of the convocation of the Estates-General and the Revolution.
Weapons systems and the Old Regime
In Weapons Systems and Political Stability Quigley situates the Old Regime within his broader cycle of weapons technology. The mistaken assumptions of the nineteenth century, he argues, 'rise as a barrier to block our view, not only of the political and military realities of the Old Regime (before 1789), but, to an even greater degree, they block the political and military realities of the medieval period (before 1400). Medieval governors were not concerned with controlling...' the territory in the modern sense (WSPS 802). The Old Regime is therefore for Quigley a transitional military order: post-medieval enough to feature standing royal armies, royal artillery, and professional bureaucracies, but pre-Napoleonic in that warfare remained a limited contest between dynastic states whose populations were largely not mobilized. The mass-conscript citizen army produced by the French Revolution and Napoleon is the weapons-system innovation that ends the Old Regime — and that exports its political form (the centralized, citizen-mobilizing state) across Europe over the next century.
Cited in
- quigley-lectures · p. 1 Quigley
For a decade after 1931, my chief intellectual concern was the growth of the European state in the Old Regime, before 1789.
- quigley-lectures · p. 9 Quigley
This was the central core of the Old Regime and it cannot be emphasized too much: the king is the source of justice. And as such, he was bound more than anyone else in the society to obey the laws.
- quigley-lectures · p. 10 Quigley
From this emerged two intertwined principles which became the central core of the Old Regime in France until 1789: first, the king was under legal restraints, and secondly, the medieval idea of property as dominia, that is, as bundles of customary individual rights, was entrenched.
- quigley-lectures · p. 12 Quigley
Then in 1454, one year after the war ended -- this is amazing -- the king issued an edict, Montils-le-Tours... It ordered each locality to codify its local customs as the law of that district... probably the most important edict of the Old Regime.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 802 Quigley
The mistaken assumptions of the nineteenth century rise as a barrier to block our view, not only of the political and military realities of the Old Regime (before 1789), but, to an even greater degree, they block the political and military realities of the medieval period (before 1400).
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 1052 Quigley
The true architect of the Old Regime was Charles VII. Charles codified the customary relations of church and state in the Pragmatic Sanction (1438); created the royal artillery which drove out the English...
- napoleonic-italy · p. 96 Quigley
These terms were similar to those which bound the Receivers of the Clergy in France in the Old Regime.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 11 Quigley
Outmoded institutions like feudalism and—in the commercial area—municipal mercantilism in the period 1270-1440, and state mercantilism in the period 1690-1810 were discarded.