George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 7, 4th edition.

[26] superior culture; never mirthful but in mockery of

Chap. I.} 1774. May.

misery; not cared for in their want, nor solaced in hospitals, nor visited in prisons; but the bonds had been struck alike from the mechanic in the workshop and the hind in the fields. The laborer at the forge was no longer a serf; the lord of the manor exercised jurisdiction no more over vassals; in all of old France the peasants were freemen, and in the happiest provinces had been so for half a thousand years. Only a few of them, as of the nobles in the middle ages, could read; but a vast number owned the acres which they tilled. By lineage, language, universality of personal freedom, and diffusion of landed property, the common people of France formed one compact and indivisible nation.

Two circumstances which increased the wretchedness of the third estate, increased also their importance. The feudal aristocracy had been called into being for the protection of the kingdom; but in the progress of ages, they had escaped from the obligation to military service. They abdicated their dignity as the peers of their sovereign; and though they still scorned every profession but that of arms, they received their commissions from the king's favor, and drew from his exchequer their pay as hirelings. Thus the organization of the army ceased to circumscribe royal power, which now raised soldiers directly from the humbler classes. The defence of the country had passed from the king and his peers with their vassals to the king in direct connection with those vassals who were thus become a people.

Again, the nobility, carefully securing the exemption of their own estates, had, in their struggles with