282 Readings in European History hill, and sometimes with the destruction of those that forced it on, — till the time of Cardinal Richelieu. It was in this great minister most to be admired that, finding the regency shaken by the factions of so many great ones within, and awed by the terror of the Spanish greatness without, he durst resolve to look them both in the face, and begin a war by the course of which for so many years (being pursued by Mazarin till the year 1660) the crown of France grew to be powerfully armed ; the peasants were accustomed to pay- ments (which could have seemed necessary only by a war, and which none but a successful one could have helped to digest) and grew heartless as they grew poor. The princes were sometimes satisfied with commands of the army, some- times mortified and suppressed by the absoluteness or ad- dresses of the ministry. The most boiling blood of the nobility and gentry was let out in so long a war, or wasted with age and exercise ; at last it ended at the Pyrenees in a peace and the match so advantageous to France as the reputation of them contributed much to the authority of the young king, who was bred up in the councils and served by the tried instruments of the former ministry; but most of all, advantaged by his own personal qualities, fit to make him obeyed, grew absolute master of the factions of the great men, as well as the purses of his people. . . . The common If there were any certain height where the flights of lot m France. p 0wer an( j ambition used to end, one might imagine that the interest of France were but to conserve its present greatness, so feared by its neighbours and so glorious in the world ; but besides that the motions and desires of human minds are endless, it may perhaps be necessary for France (from respects within) to have some war or other in pursuit abroad which may amuse the nation, and keep them from reflecting upon their condition at home, hard and uneasy to all but such as are in charge or in pay from the court. I do not say miserable (the term usually given it), because no condition is so but to him that esteems it so ; and if a paisan of France thinks of no more than his coarse bread and his onions, his canvass cloaths, and wooden shoes, labours
