Absolute monarchy was not a French tradition. It was an importation from Spain. Anne of Austria, who did not understand any other regime, had educated her son to accept her ideas and habits of thought, and the substitution of king for minister was, at the death of Mazarin, accomplished without shock. It was, however, a real _coup d'etat_. Before Louis XIV. the royal power, without being submitted to precise limitations, from time to time hurled itself against certain rights, themselves often loosely defined. There existed privileges of the Parliament, others of the State, together with those of the nobles, and others belonging to bodies and individuals, which when united left the King of France in a situation resembling that in which Gulliver found himself, when the Liliputians bound him with hundreds of minute threads. Each single thread was of no consequence; through the compression of all together every movement was paralysed. Louis XIV. resolutely broke the numerous threads which had trammelled the power of his predecessors. He freed himself in suppressing the ancient liberties of France. No student of history can be ignorant of the material results, so splendid at first, so disastrous in the end; but certain moral consequences of his government have been perhaps less clearly remarked. The French aristocracy ceased from the second generation to be a nursery for men of action. This was the result desired from the policy of keeping it chained to the steps of the throne. The end had been attained at the date of the King's death. Saint-Simon, who cannot be suspected of hostility towards the nobility, certifies to this. When the Duke arrived at power under the Regent, his brain swarming with projects for replacing the aristocrats in positions of importance, and when he sought great names with which to fill great posts, he realised that he was too late. The "nursery" was empty. The difficulty, say the _Memoires_ lay in the ignorance, the frivolity, and the lack of application of a nobility which had been accustomed to lives of frivolity and uselessness; a nobility that was good for nothing but to let itself be killed, and that reached the battle-field itself only through the force of heredity. For the remainder of the time, it was content to stagnate in an existence without a purpose. It had delivered itself over to idleness and felt keen disgust for all education, excepting that relating to military matters. The result was a general incapacity and unfitness for affairs. It is proper to render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. The effacement of the French aristocracy is not to be laid at the door of the great Revolution, which acted only upon an accomplished fact; it was the personal work of Louis XIV.