The Ancien Régime and the Revolution

The effort to make the actions of the revolutionaries of 1789 comprehensible and to show that 'the Revolution was a foregone conclusion' forces de Tocqueville to paint a huge, detailed portrait of the regime that they attacked. The result is a remarkable depiction of civil society in decay: men at odds, institutions crumbling, subversive ideas springing up like weeds in a fertile garden run wild. with characteristic irony he shows that the monarchy fell, not because it was backward, but because it was one of the most modern in Europe.