The feudal times had ceased--at least so far as the raising of a military force by its machinery was concerned. Louis XIV., indeed, when pressed for men, more than once summoned the ban and arrière-ban of France to his standards, and he always had a gallant array of feudal nobility in his antechambers, or around his headquarters. But war, both on his part and that of his antagonists, was carried on, generally speaking, with standing armies, supported by the belligerent state. The vast, though generally tumultuary array which the Plantagenet or Valois sovereigns summoned to their support, but which, bound only to serve for forty days, generally disappeared before a few months of hostilities were over, could no longer be relied on. The modern system invented by revolutionary France, of making war maintain war, and sending forth starving multitudes with arms in their hands, to subsist by the plunder of the adjoining states, was unknown. The national passions had not been roused, which alone would bring it into operation. The decline of the feudal system forbade the hope that contests could be maintained by the chivalrous attachment of a faithful nobility: the democratic spirit had not been so aroused as to supply its place by popular fervour. Religious passions, indeed, had been strongly excited; but they had prompted men rather to suffer than to act: the disputations of the pulpit were their natural arena: in the last extremity they were more allied to the resignation of the martyr, than the heroism of the soldier. Between the two, there extended a long period of above a century and a half, during which governments had acquired the force, and mainly relied on the power, of standing armies; but the resources at their disposal for their support were so limited, that the greatest economy in the husbanding both of men and money was indispensable.