Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/714

648 without even knowing the offence for which they were arrested. The royal decrees were laws. The taxes imposed by the king were simply robberies and confiscations. The public money, thus gathered, was squandered in maintaining a court the scandalous extravagances and debaucheries of which would shame a Turkish Sultan.

The Nobility.—The French nobility, in the time of the Bourbons, numbered about 80,000 families. The order was simply the remains of the once powerful but now broken-down feudal aristocracy of the Middle Ages. Its members were chiefly the pensioners of the king, the ornaments of his court, living in riotous luxury at Paris or Versailles. Stripped of their ancient power, they still retained all the old pride and arrogance of their order, and clung tenaciously to all their feudal privileges. Although holding onefifth of the lands of France, they paid scarcely any taxes.

The Clergy.—The clergy formed a decayed feudal hierarchy. They possessed enormous wealth, the gift of piety through many centuries. Over a third of the lands of the country was in their hands, and yet this immense property was almost wholly exempt from taxation. The bishops and abbots were usually drawn from the families of the nobles, being too often attracted to the service of the Church rather by its princely revenues and the social distinction conferred by its offices, than by the inducements of piety. These "patrician prelates" were hated alike by the humbler clergy and the people.

The Commons.—Below the two privileged orders of the State stood the commons, who constituted the chief bulk of the nation, and who numbered, at the commencement of the Revolution, probably about 25,000,000. It is quite impossible to give any adequate idea of the pitiable condition of the poorer classes of the commons throughout the century preceding the Revolution. The peasants particularly suffered the most intolerable wrongs. They were vexed by burdensome feudal regulations. Thus they were forbidden to fence their fields for the protection of their crops, as the fences interfered with the lord's progress in the hunt; and they