It is the fall, the crumbling away in a brief
period, of all that up to that time has composed the essence
of social, religious, political and economic life in a nation.''
Such a revolution took place in France in the eighteenth
century when the old civilisation of the country had grown
stale. The king in the days of Louis XIV had become
EVERYTHING and was the state. The Nobility, formerly
the civil servant of the federal state, found itself without any
duties and became a social ornament of the royal court.
This French state of the eighteenth century, however, cost
incredible sums of money. This money had to be produced
in the form of taxes. Unfortunately the kings of France had
not been strong enough to force the nobility and the clergy
to pay their share of these taxes. Hence the taxes were paid
entirely by the agricultural population. But the peasants
living in dreary hovels, no longer in intimate contact with their
former landlords, but victims of cruel and incompetent land
agents, were going from bad to worse. Why should they
work and exert themselves? Increased returns upon their
land merely meant more taxes and nothing for themselves
and therefore they neglected their fields as much as they dared.
Hence we have a king who wanders in empty splendour
through the vast halls of his palaces, habitually followed by
hungry office seekers, all of whom live upon the revenue obtained
from peasants who are no better than the beasts of the
fields.
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