THE word 'revolution' may mean either the forcible overthrow of an established social or political order or any great change brought about in a pre-existing situation, even slowly and without violence. The word can be used in both senses for the upheaval that took place in France towards the end of the eighteenth century. In so far as it consisted in the violent destruction of the feudal and monarchical rǧime, the French Revolution may be said to have come to an end on September 21st, 1792, when the monarchy was formally abolished. But as the creation of a new social and political order it continued until the coup d'ťat of Brumaire, indeed, up to the time of the Consulate for Life, when nineteenth-century France appeared finally constituted. This book is concerned with the French Revolution as understood in the first sense. Its aim is to explain why and in what way the feudal monarchy was destroyed. In this endeavour it has been necessary to present the four revolutionary years in relation to a complex system of cause and effect the origins of which must be traced to former times, often centuries before the Revolution itself. A considerable part of the book, therefore, is devoted to social conditions, ideas and events chronologically remote from, but logically bound up with, the revolutionary period. The author's aim has been, not to bring new facts to light, but simply to put before his readers, in a rapid synthesis, the conclusions he has reached in the course of extensive study of the subject

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