Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/242

228 of vigorous and fruitful anarchy. . . when society desires to form and regulate itself, without knowing how to do so by the free concord of individual wills." After the long and bloody wars of Charles V and Francis I, so quickly succeeded by the more ferocious and devastating wars of the Reformation, the universal extinction of freedom in Europe was inevitable. "The traditional liberties perish" says Guizot again, summing up the history of the period, "and new and more concentrated and regular powers arise" These powers were, of course, the powers of despotism—the powers that became most completely personified in Louis XIV. Hardly had they begun to yield to the emancipating influences of peace before the Napoleonic wars came to give them new life, and to fasten upon Europe a despotism that required the Reform Bill in England and the revolutionary movement on the continent to weaken and partly overthrow. But with the Crimean War and the other great contests that followed so quickly, there has been a return to despotism again, particularly in France and Germany.

Like a powerful poison, the despotism called into existence by war diffuses itself through every part of the social fabric. Upon the penalty of defeat or extinction, society must be so organized politically, industrially, and ecclesiastically as to enable the central authority to summon to its aid every resource with the least possible delay. The organization best adapted to this purpose is the organization of feudalism. At the head of the nation stands the despot himself; over each great division, a prince or duke; over the lesser divisions, the counts, viscounts, and barons; finally, there is the great mass of people, whose duty it is to provide without complaint or protest the soldiers that constitute the army and the means to sustain them in the field. Hence the quickness of the movements of Francis I compared with those of Charles V and Henry VIII. "Before his enemies were ready to execute any of their schemes" says Robertson, bringing out the superiority of a despotic organization of society over a condition of popular freedom, "Francis had assembled a numerous army. His authority over his own subjects was far greater than that which Charles and Henry had over theirs. They depended on their diets, their cortes, and their parliaments for money, which was usually granted them in small sums, very slowly and with much reluctance. The taxes he could impose were more considerable, and levied with greater dispatch; so that. . . he brought his armies into the field while they were only devising ways and means for raising theirs" What was true of the great struggle between these potentates is true of every other. The nation most perfectly organized, other things being equal, will be the most successful in war.