(2) History of the Europe
The Old Regime and the Enlightenment
The year of the French Revolution, 1789, marks the beginning of a new era of revolutionary change in Europe and the end of the old regime of absolutist monarchy, at least in France. But the overthrow of the old order in France had significance far beyond French borders for many reasons.
In the eighteenth century, France was the most powerful country on the Continent, the most populous, and one of the most prosperous.
French culture was admired and mimicked by the upper classes throughout Europe, and French was the language of the aristocracy and royal courts all over the Continent, including in Russia.
The palace that France’s King Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) built at Versailles in the seventeenth century symbolized the grandeur, wealth, and power of absolute monarchy, and monarchs in other countries modeled their own palaces after it. Because of the French monarchy’s influence across the Continent, its fall in 1789 sent shock waves across Europe.
So, it is important to understand the nature of the old regime in France and the factors that led to its downfall.
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