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42 o General History of Europe less and less important as the years go on. The Reign of Terror will be described in good time, but it is a matter of far greater importance to understand clearly how the permanent reforms were wrought out and how France won the proud distinction of being the first nation to do away with the absurd and vexa- tious institutions which continued to weigh upon Europe in the eighteenth century. 731. The "Old Regime." We have already examined these institutions which were common to most of the European coun- tries, despotic kings, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair taxation, censorship of the press, serfdom, feudal dues, friction between Church and State, all of which the reformers had been busy denouncing as contrary to reason and humanity, and some of which the benevolent despots had, in a half-hearted way, at- tempted to remedy. The various relics of bygone times and of outlived conditions which the Revolution abolished forever are commonly called in France the "old regime." 1 We shall now try to see how almost everyone, from the king to the peasant, came to realize that the "old regime" was bad and consequently re- solved to do away with it and substitute a more rational plan of government for the long-standing disorder. 732. France not a Unified State. Of the evils which the Revo- lution abolished, none was more important than the confusion in France due to the fact that it was not in the eighteenth century a well-organized, homogeneous state whose citizens all enjoyed the same rights and privileges. A long line of kings had patched it together, adding bit by bit as they could. By conquest and bargain, by marrying heiresses, and through the extinction of the feudal dynasties the original restricted domains of the early French kings about Paris had been gradually increased by their descendants. We have seen how Louis XIV gained Alsace and Strassburg. Louis XV added Lorraine in 1766. So when Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774 he found himself ruler of prac- tically the whole territory which makes up France today. But these different parts had different institutions. 1 From the French ancien regime, the old or former system.