This book treats two basic subjects: (1) royalist explanations of the causes of the French Revolution, and (2) royalist defenses of royalist political positions. The royalists began with a simplistic conspiracy theory of history—the Old Regime was right. But then they came up with increasingly sophisticated explanations, thereby making an important contribution to historical explanation. In political thought, they eventually offered a tempered defense of the Old Regime, a call for political elitism in the face of the chaos unleashed by the Revolution, and an early explanation of the organic theory of history, a true contribution to political thought.
