On the "Ancien Régime"
Who has not known the Ancien Régime does not know what is the sweetness of living.
Charles Maurice de Tayllerand
There was probably no epoch more vilified and misrepresented than the Ancien Régime. After all, the liberals followed the logic of every victor during the current revolutionary system we live in, they despise the old system and glorify their rule. It is also a mistake to see this age as impermanent during the centuries it lasted since changes occurred with the passage of time, but really the essence remained the same. What was this essence? A true Christian hierarchy.
We can talk a lot about this topic, we will focus on its general characteristics. Divine law was one of the main bases of any traditional Catholic monarchy, in it the power of the kings was legitimized by God himself (that is why it is said that Catholic kings had 8 sacraments instead of 7, if we count their anointing as kings ). Throughout history the famous system of the warrior-priest-peasant existed (and today, in a Godless way, it continues to exist), however it was during the Ancien Régime when that hierarchy reached its spiritual peak. It was an imitation of the celestial order on Earth. The king, subordinate to God, ruled in His Name, the clergy protected His Name, and the subjects lived freely obeying the divine hierarchy.
Many of you likely know what a hierarchy pyramid is. To understand how the liberal revolutions developed and ended up, I want you to imagine some physical form in which a pyramid, by itself, can collapse. For Pythagoras the pyramid was a perfect figure, built to resist its shape in a perfectly harmonious way. There really is no natural way for a well-built pyramid to collapse on its own, so an exterior object was necessary, in this case the inverted ideology of egalitarianism, which was in no way part of this order.
Let us look at the example of France. According to Joseph de Maistre in his work "Considerations on France", each man has the ratio of his action that reached a certain section of the kingdom. The king logically ruled the entire kingdom, what happens if we remove the pinnacle of this pyramid? According to De Maistre, it was death that happened. Anyone who ventured to rule that destructive tornado of the French Revolution ended up dead or in failure (France had 5 republics). Democracy is, therefore, the perfect system for revolution, since there is no one who is really head of the nation, no one who has a commitment to his people, the people are involved in struggles encouraged by demagogic orators who inexorably lead them to the degeneration and spiritual (and even physical) death of the nation. An inverted pyramid has no way to stand on its own, unless you add artificial elements.
It is also for this reason that any dictatorial regime that does not have aspirations to constitute a true monarchy will inevitably have an expiration date and will end up democratizing. We can see how this pattern has been repeated throughout history, Francoist Spain, USSR, Salazarist Portugal, etc. During this process the state grows in an exponential way that interferes in the daily life of people, something that however did not happen in the Ancien Regime, since there is no need to harass your subjects if the hierarchy is well defined.
Joseph de Maistre himself mocks in "Considerations on France" the fact that in less than six years since the French Revolution more than 15,000 laws had been passed. The Revolution always goes hand in hand with the overflow of laws, since it tries to make the state occupy the place that the crown and the state had at the same time. When you give the people the illusion of ruling themselves, freedom becomes tyranny (as the Louis de Saint Just said, "no freedom for the enemies of freedom, or as Robespierre said, "only reason will guide the people").
We can trace the origins of liberalism in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation, for example. The total freedom of the press and worship led to the majority being imposed as the norm, and in the end that majority ended up slowly developing a different system. Thus, one can speak of the "moderate revolution" that took place in countries that, although they did not have a violent revolution, ended up succumbing to democracy (such as England, Sweden or the Netherlands).
We can conclude with the following statement. Although we currently live in a "reverse hierarchy", there are still elites, and the elites will always dictate the rules to the people. If the elite is an aristocracy of divine right, then the people will not tolerate impious customs against religion, but if an elite without God ends up imposing itself and the people do not fight it, then the people will accept their norms. As we said at the beginning, this is what the Old Regime was about, a hierarchy around God and by God, everything derived will be a crude imitation or something undesirable in the eyes of the Lord.
Let us pray to the Most High so that with His expected coming He will grant us to be part of His Celestial Kingdom and participate in his Divine Order.