ABSTRACT
The final crisis that the ancien régime went through was essentially manmade. Indeed, it was triggered in large measure by the needs and actions of absolute monarchy. If the Bourbons had refrained from foreign-policy entanglements that required heavy war expenditures, it is possible that the budgetary problem could have been managed within existing structures. This was not to be, and Alexis de Tocqueville’s dictum, which holds that the most dangerous moment for an authoritarian government occurs when it embarks on reform, was framed precisely to accommodate the situation in which France now found herself (1969, Headlam edn: 182).
