Memory, Michel Foucault has argued, “is actually a very important factor in struggle. … If one controls people's memory, one controls their dynamism. … It is vital to have possession of this memory, to control it, administer it, tell it what it must contain.” Recognition of this relationship between memory and political practice was by no means absent in France at the end of the Old Regime. Indeed, it was explained to Louis XVI on his accession – and with disarming simplicity – by one of the crown's most enlightened and innovative ministers, Henri Bertin. “The history and public law of a nation are based on the records,” Bertin instructed his sovereign:

Bertin was not simply offering the statement of an abstract proposition. He was also defending a political strategy that he regarded as imperative for the crown to follow, given the political conditions with which it was now faced. Participants in the constitutional contestations that transformed the nature of French political culture in the course of the eighteenth century were to become increasingly conscious of the importance of the relationship between memory and political practice.