How Centralization Was Thus Able to Insinuate Itself among the Old Powers and Supplant Them Without Destroying Them

Let us now briefly recapitulate what was said in the three previous chapters: a single body at the center of the kingdom controlled the public administration throughout the country; the same minister was in charge of nearly all domestic affairs; in each province, a single agent managed all details; there was no subordinate administrative body or any other type of body that could act without prior authorization; special courts heard all cases in which the administration had an interest and protected all its agents. What is this if not the centralization with which we are familiar? Its formal institutions were less identifiable than they are today, its procedures were less regulated, its existence was more agitated, but it was the same being. In the interim, it was unnecessary to add or take away anything essential. It was enough to eliminate everything that had been built around it to reveal what we see today. Most of the institutions that I have just described were subsequently imitated in a hundred different places, but at the time they were peculiar to France, and we shall soon see what a great influence they had on the French Revolution and its aftermath. But how was it possible for institutions of such novel design to establish themselves in France amid the rubble of feudal society?