h to rule the
people. This loyalty to the throne had the sanction of the Jewish
nation, and of all Oriental nations from the remotest ages. Hence the
world has known no other form of government than that of kings and
emperors, except in a few countries and for a brief period. Whatever the
king decreed, had the force of irresistible law; no one dared to disobey
a royal mandate but a rebel in actual hostilities. Resistance to royal
authority was ruin. This royal power was based on and enforced by the
ideas of ages. Who can resist universally accepted ideas?

Moreover, in France especially, there was a chivalric charm about the
person of a king; he was not only sacred, of purer blood than other
people, but the greatest nobles were proud to attend and wait upon his
person. Devotion to the person of the prince became the highest duty. It
was not political slavery, but a religious and sentimental allegiance.
So sacred was this allegiance, that only the most detested tyrants were
in personal danger of assassination, or those who were objects of
religious fanaticism. A king could dismiss his most powerful minister,
or his most triumphant general at the head of an army, by a stroke of
the pen, or by a word, without expostulation or resistance. To disobey
the king was tantamount to defiance of Almighty power. A great general
rules by machinery rather than devotion to his person. But devotion to
the king needed no support from armies or guards. A king in the
seventeenth century was supposed to be the vicegerent of the Deity.

Another still more powerful influence gave stability to the throne of
Louis: this was the Catholic Church. Louis was a devout Catholic in
spite of his sins, and was true to the interests of the Pope. He was
governed, so far as he was governed at all, by Jesuit confessors. He
associated on the most intimate terms with the great prelates and
churchmen of the day, like Bossuet, Fenelon, La Chaise, and Le Tellier.
He was regular at church and admired good sermons; he was punctilious in
all the outward observances of his religion. He detested all rebellion
from the spiritual authority of the popes; he hated both heresy and
schism. In his devotion to the Catholic Church he was as narrow and
intolerant as a village priest. His sincerity in defence of the Church
was never questioned, and hence all the influences of the Church were
exerted to uphold his domination. He may have quarrelled with popes on
political groun