English

The Old Regime and the Revolution

LibriVox recording of The Old Regime and the Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville. (Translated by John Bonner.) Read in English by LibriVox Volunteers. A calm, philosophical inquiry into the causes of the French Revolution, and the working of the Old Regime. In this work, M. de Tocqueville has daguerreotyped French political society under the old monarchy; shown us where the real power lay, and how it affected individual Frenchmen in the daily avocations of life; what was the real condition of the nobility, of the clergy, of the middle classes, of the "people", of the peasantry; wherein France differed from all other countries in Europe; why a Revolution was inevitable. The information derived under these various heads, it may safely be said, is now first printed. It has been obtained, as M. de Tocqueville informs us, mainly from the manuscript records of the old intendants' offices and the Council of State. Of the labor devoted to the task, an idea may be formed from the author's statement, that more than one of the thirty odd chapters contained in the volume, alone cost him a year's researches. "I trust," says M. de Tocqueville in his Preface, "that I have written this work withou

Sign in with your free account to read, download EPUBs or listen.