Such Teutonic
rank and file as there was became absorbed into this population; and
except in sundry chartered towns there was nothing like a social stratum
interposed between the nobles and the common people.
The slow conversion of the feudal monarchy of the early Capetians into
the absolute despotism of Louis XIV. was accomplished by the king
gradually _conquering_ his vassals one after another, and adding their
domains to his own. As one vassal territory after another was added to
the royal domain, the king sent prefects, responsible only to himself,
to administer its local affairs, sedulously crushing out, so far as
possible, the last vestiges of self-government. The nobles, deprived of
their provincial rule, in great part flocked to Paris to become idle
courtiers. The means for carrying on the gigantic machinery of
centralized administration, and for supporting the court in its follies,
were wrung from the groaning peasantry with a cynical indifference like
that with which tribute is extorted by barbaric chieftains from a
conquered enemy. And thus came about that abominable state of things
which a century since was abruptly ended by one of the fiercest
convulsions of modern times. The prodigious superiority--in respect to
national vitality--of a freely governed country over one that is
governed by a centralized despotism, is nowhere more brilliantly
illustrated than in the contrasted fortunes of France and England as
_colonizing_ nations.
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