The End of an Élite

The End of an Élite is the first scholarly study in English of the bishops of the French church at the outbreak of the French Revolution. The 130 members of the episcopate formed an élite within an élite, the First Estate of France.

Nigel Aston explores the role of the episcopate in national and provincial politics in the last years of the ancien régime. He traces the policies and patronage of episcopal ministers such as Lomiénie de Brienne and J.-M. Champion de Cicé, who were as much politicians as pastors, and examines their relationships with their fellow bishops. Dr Aston emphasizes the leading role of the bishops in the Assemblies of Notables and offers a fresh interpretation of clerical elections to the Estates-General of 1789.

This is an intensively researched and immensely readable account, which will be invaluable to all historians of late eighteenth-century France.