she expressed her admiration for the new doctrines of the Rights of Man, and even summoned a convention to draw up a Russian constitution. But she knew that the new doctrines were not applicable to the Russian people, and would be absurdly inappropriate to the nomad Tartar tribes which wandered over the southern districts of the Russian Empire. She was fully aware that their village organisation protected the peasants from many of the evils which prevailed in seemingly more enlightened countries, and gave them a right and interest in the soil to which they were attached. Russia, in fact, had experienced no Reformation, no Renaissance, no awakening of the ideas of individual and political liberty, and therefore was eminently fitted for the rule of a benevolent despot. [Sidenote: France: Louis XVI.] Next to the Austro-Russian alliance, the Austro-French alliance, sealed by the Treaty of 1756, was of the greatest significance to the peace and welfare of Europe in 1789. As has been said, in neither country was the alliance popular; France and Austria were hereditary enemies; classical policy in both courts favoured a resumption of this enmity; the friendship was rather dynastic than national, the work of Kaunitz and Maria Theresa, the Abbé de Bernis, Madame de Pompadour, and Louis XV. France still appeared a very powerful nation. Its intervention in the American War of Independence had largely contributed to England’s loss of her American colonies, and the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 had involved a confession that England was beaten by her cession of the West India islands of St. Lucia and Tobago. But in spite of her seeming power, France was from political and economic causes really very weak. She had been unable in 1787 to effectually support the republican and French party in Holland, and had been forced to allow England and Prussia to reinstate the Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange. In spite of her alliance with Austria, she had been obliged in pursuance of a peace policy, made necessary by her financial condition, to draw near to England, and had made a commercial treaty with her in 1786. The weakness of France arose from internal circumstances. The State and the Court were financially identical. The Court was extravagant, and the result was a chronic national deficit. Efforts had been made to meet this deficit, but all expedients, even partial bankruptcy, had failed. It was evident that a systematic attempt must be made to rearrange the finances by introducing a regular scheme of taxation to take the place of the feudal arrangements for filling the royal treasury, which with some modifications still survived. But a regular scheme of taxation, which should abolish feudal privileges, and make the government responsible to the nation for its expenditure, could not be established without the consent of the people, and the educated classes, who were both numerous and prosperous, claimed a voice in its establishment.