Taine examines the three pillars of pre-revolutionary France: the clergy, the nobility, and the king. For centuries, these privileged classes earned their pre-eminence through genuine services—defending the land, preserving culture, and administering local justice. Over time, however, this functional system degraded into empty pomp and aristocratic parasitism. The local lords abandoned their estates for the glittering drawing rooms of Versailles, leaving their tenants at the mercy of greedy stewards and burdensome feudal dues. Meanwhile, the central government absorbed all administrative power, transforming local governance into a rigid bureaucratic machine that crushed the tax-paying commoner.
The nobility and upper clergy grew fat on exemptions, pensions, and sinecures, leaving the lower nobility and parish curates in bitter poverty. The king, acting as the supreme proprietor of a vast national estate, drained the public treasury to maintain an extravagant court and indulge personal whims. Taine demonstrates how this systemic isolation severed the ties of mutual obligation between the elite and the people. When the privileged classes kept their honors while discarding their duties, they reduced the social fabric to a collection of disconnected particles. The text traces the inevitable outcome of this apathy, showing how the accumulated misery and resentment of the peasantry erupted into the violent cataclysm of the Revolution.
