allies; yet the part taken by France was the almost inevitable result of the sympathy and enthusiasm of the French nation. Never was a war not strictly of defense more completely national in its character. Frenchmen fought in Virginia because they loved American ideas, and hated the enemy of America. [Footnote: Rosenthal, _America and France_,--an excellent monograph.] Thus France, while still an absolute monarchy, undertook a war in defense of political rights. Such an action could not be without results. Writers of a later time, belonging to the monarchical party, have not liked the results and have blamed the course of the French upper classes in embarking in the war. But it was because they were already inclined to revolutionary ideas in politics that the nobility did so embark. Poor Louis was dragged along, feebly protesting. He was no radical, and to him change could mean nothing but harm; if it be harm to be deprived of authority beyond your strength, and of responsibility exceeding your moral power. The war, in its turn, fed the prevailing passions. Young Frenchmen, who had first become warlike because they were adventurous and high-spirited, adopted the cries of "liberty" and "equality" as the watchwords of the struggle into which they entered, and were then interested to study the principles which they so loudly proclaimed. Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, even Montesquieu, became more widely read than ever. Officers returning from the capture of Yorktown were flushed with success and ready to praise all they had seen. They told of the simplicity of republican manners, of the respect shown for virtuous women. Even Lauzun forgot to be lewd in speaking of the ladies of Newport. So unusual a state of mind could not last long. A reaction set in after the peace with England. Anglomania became the ruling fashion. The change was more apparent than real. London was nearer than Philadelphia and more easily visited. Political freedom existed there also, if not in so perfect a form, yet in one quite as well suited to the tastes of fashionable young men. Had not Montesquieu looked on England as the model state?[Footnote: Ségur, i. 87. The French officers who were in the Revolutionary war often express dissatisfaction with the Americans, but their voices appear to have been drowned in France in the chorus of praise. See Kalb's letters to Broglie in Stevens's MSS., vii., and Mauroy to Broglie, _ibid_., No. 838. The foreign politics of the reign of Louis XVI. are admirably considered by Albert Sorel, _L'Europe et la Révolution française_, i. 297.]