Abstract

After the fall of the Ancien Régime in France, the Revolution mercilessly dispatched all that was “old and decaying” throughout the Old Continent. One by one, timeworn ways of ruling the state were overthrown or updated. Revolutions often leave deeper marks in a culture’s customs than in its forms of government. The restorations that followed the great revolutionary uprisings failed to restore the old usages, now outmoded, as new tastes marched vainly on, heedless of the loss.