French Old Regime

The French Old Regime (Ancien Régime) was the aristocratic, social and political system which had been established in France during the 15th century, at the end of the Hundred-Year War. With the Valois and Bourbon dynasties, it hung onto the throne of France until the late 18th century when it was violently overthrown by the French Revolution.

The political and social structures of the French Old Regime were the result of years of State-building, legislative acts, internal conflicts and civil wars. During the Old Regime, the clergy and nobility constituted the First and Second Estates respectively, enjoying political and economic privileges. These two classes or estates did not pay taxes, for example, even though the main source of revenue of the French crown was the heavy taxes, which were unequally and unfairly imposed on the Third Estate, which was composed of the bourgeoisie, the craftmen, and farmers.

During the Old Regime period, France was ruled by an absolute monarch, which meant that the King held all three ruling powers in his hands; there was no legislative assembly or parliament system that initiated laws, checking, revising or approving bills initiated by an executive power; nor was there an independent judicial system.

The absolute power of a monarch was based on the Divine Right of a King theory; which was the right to rule without limits conferred upon the monarch by God. The Old Regime was put an end by the French Revolution with the abolition of the monarchy by the National Convention in 1792. It was the existent inequity and financial disorder and the crown’s debt during the Old Regime that helped push France in the direction of Revolution.