, but to keep them subservient, to make them circle around
royalty and chant its praises, they were {401} given a large extension
of rights and privileges. They were exempt from the responsibilities
for crime; they occupied all of the important places in church and
state; they were exempt from taxation; many who dwelt at the court with
the king lived off the government; many were pensioned by the
government, their chief recommendation apparently being idleness and
worthlessness. There was a great gulf between the peasantry and the
nobility. The latter had control of all the game of the forests and
the fish in the rivers; one-sixth of all the grain grown in the realm
went to the nobility, as did also one-sixth of all the land sold, and
all confiscated property fell to them. The peasants had no rights
which the nobility were bound to respect. The nobility, with all of
the emoluments of office, owned, with the clergy, two-thirds of all the
land. Yet this unproductive class numbered only about 83,000 families.

_The Misery of the People_.--If the nobility despised the lower classes
and ignored their rights, they in turn were hated intensely by those
whom they sought to degrade. The third estate in France was divided
into the bourgeoisie and the peasantry and small artisans. The former
gradually deteriorated in character and tended toward the condition of
the lowest classes. By the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a large
number of the bourgeoisie, or middle class, was driven from France.
This deprived France of the class that would have stood by the nation
when it needed support, and would have stood for moderate
constitutional government against the radical democrats like
Robespierre and Marat.

The lowest class, composed of small peasant farmers, laborers, and
artisans, were improved a little under the reign of Louis XIV, but this
made them feel more keenly the degradation in succeeding years, from
which there was no relief. The condition of the people indicated that
a revolution was on its way. In the evolution of European society the
common man was crowded down toward the condition of serfdom. The
extravagances and luxuries of life, the power of kings, bishops, and
nobles bore like a burden of heavy weight upon his {402} shoulders. He
was the common fodder that fed civilization, and because of this more
than anything else, artificial systems of society were always running
for a fall, for the time must co