itality for many generations,
France achieved steady progress to primacy in the arts of peace.
None but a marvellous people could have made such efforts without
exhaustion, yet even now in the twentieth century the astounding vigor
of this race has not ceased to compel the admiration of mankind.

In the seventeenth century, moreover, France owed much of her national
power to a highly-centralized and closely-knit scheme of government.
Under Richelieu the strength of the monarchy had been enhanced and the
power of the nobility broken. When he began his personal rule, Louis
XIV continued his work of consolidation and in the years of his long
reign managed to centralize in the throne every vestige of political
power. The famous saying attributed to him, "The State! I am the
State!" embodied no idle boast. Nowhere was there a trace of
representative government, nowhere a constitutional check on the
royal power. There were councils of different sorts and with varied
jurisdictions, but men sat in them at the King's behest and were
removable at his will. There were _parlements_, too, but to mention
them without explanation would be only to let the term mislead, for
they were not representative bodies or parliaments in the ordinary
sense: their powers were chiefly judicial and they were no barrier in
the way of the steady march to absolutism. The political structure of
the Bourbon realm in the age of Louis XIV and afterwards was simple:
all the lines of control ran upwards and to a common center. And all
this made for unity and autocratic efficiency in finance, in war, and
in foreign affairs.

Another feature which fitted the nation for an imperial destiny was
the possession of a united and militant church. With heresy the
Gallican branch of the Catholic Church had fought a fierce struggle,
but, before the seventeenth century was far advanced, the battle had
been won. There were heretics in France even after Richelieu's time,
but they were no longer a source of serious discord. The Church,
now victorious over its foes, became militant, ready to carry its
missionary efforts to other lands--ready, in fact, for a new crusade.

These four factors, rare geographical advantages, racial qualities
of a high order, a strongly centralized scheme of government, and a
militant church, contributed largely to the prestige which France
possessed among European nations in the seventeenth, century. With all
these advantages she should have be