Maistre presents a providential interpretation of the Revolution and argues for a new alliance of throne and altar under a restored Bourbon monarchy.

He interpreted the Revolution as a providential event in which the monarchy, the aristocracy and the Ancien Régime in general, instead of directing the influence of French civilization to the benefit of mankind, had promoted the atheistic doctrines of the 18th-century philosophes.

The prominent French author Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, who was an admirer of Maistre, spoke of a "delayed explosion" and compared it to a cannonball shot with an unusually long interval between the flash and the boom.

[10]Historian of ideas Carolina Armenteros, who has written four works on Maistre, characterized the prose style as follows: The Considérations sur la France (1797) uses the ancient technique of deinôsis, a Greek term signifying the religious horror that mortals experience in the presence of a terrifying divinity.

[11]According to French historian Pierre Glaudes, Maistre's appropriation of Burke's notion of the sublime provided him with both an interpretive key for understanding the Revolution and a new rhetoric for elucidating and imposing its transcendent meaning.