towards the cataclysm of the Revolution; yet the old monarchy, full of
the germs of decay, was still imposing and formidable. The House of
Bourbon held the three thrones of France, Spain, and Naples; and their
threatened union in a family compact was the terror of European
diplomacy. At home France was the foremost of the Continental nations;
and she boasted herself second only to Spain as a colonial power. She
disputed with England the mastery of India, owned the islands of Bourbon
and Mauritius, held important possessions in the West Indies, and
claimed all North America except Mexico and a strip of sea-coast. Her
navy was powerful, her army numerous, and well appointed; but she lacked
the great commanders of the last reign. Soubise, Maillebois, Contades,
Broglie, and Clermont were but weak successors of Condé, Turenne,
Vendôme, and Villars. Marshal Richelieu was supreme in the arts of
gallantry, and more famous for conquests of love than of war. The best
generals of Louis XV. were foreigners. Lowendal sprang from the royal
house of Denmark; and Saxe, the best of all, was one of the three
hundred and fifty-four bastards of Augustus the Strong, Elector of
Saxony and King of Poland. He was now, 1750, dying at Chambord, his iron
constitution ruined by debaucheries.

The triumph of the Bourbon monarchy was complete. The government had
become one great machine of centralized administration, with a king for
its head; though a king who neither could nor would direct it. All
strife was over between the Crown and the nobles; feudalism was robbed
of its vitality, and left the mere image of its former self, with
nothing alive but its abuses, its caste privileges, its exactions, its
pride and vanity, its power to vex and oppress. In England, the nobility
were a living part of the nation, and if they had privileges, they paid
for them by constant service to the state; in France, they had no
political life, and were separated from the people by sharp lines of