, Vol. I (1906), ch. viii, x, xiii.
PART III
"LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY"
Our narrative of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thus far has
been full of intrigue, dynastic rivalry, and colonial competition. We
have sat with red-robed cardinals in council to exalt the monarch of
France; we have witnessed the worldwide wars by which Great Britain won
and lost vast imperial domains; we have followed the thundering march
of Frederick's armies through the Germanies, wasted with war; but we
have been blind indeed if the glare of bright helmets and the glamour
of courtly diplomacy have hidden from our eyes a phenomenon more
momentous than even the growth of Russia or the conquest of New France.
It is the rise of the bourgeoisie.
Driven on by insatiable ambition, not content to be lords of the world
of business, with ships and warehouses for castles and with clerks for
retainers, the bourgeoisie have placed their lawyers in the royal
service, their learned men in the academies, their economists at the
king's elbow, and with restless energy they push on to shape state and
society to their own ends.
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