DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

During the winter they were often the prey of the wolves of the great forests; in the summer their small holdings were devastated by deer and wild boar, which they were not allowed to destroy ; and in years of bad harvests they were the victims of famine and pestilence. Devoid of all means of redress, they brooded over their wrongs, ready to involve the innocent with the guilty in one com- mon and indiscriminate vengeance. When Louis XVI. ascended the throne in 1774, the spirit of dissatisfaction had spread amongst all classes. The State was on the verge of bankruptcy, the throne was debased, the nobility was detested, and the people were desperate. A radical change had become inevitable. To effect constitutional re- forms peaceably, France needed a monarch gifted with the political sagacity of William II. of Eng- land, and a population endowed with the political sense and self-restraint of the English people. Louis XVL., alike by circumstances and by na- ture, was the last prince competent to grapple with the situation. Even had he inherited the genius possessed by his ancestors, Henri IV. and Louis XIV.— genius which had been trained in the school of adversity—he must have been wrecked on the stubborn resistance of his nobility, who, while indulging in philosophical theories, was loth to forego any of its privileges. No reforms could