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PREPARATIONS FOR REVOLUTION—FRANCE
THE civil war called the Fronde 124 (1648-1654) ushered in the period of the Grand Monarque. Of this faction fight it should be noted that the bourgeoisie, led by the Councils of lawyers called Parliaments, who were at first on the side of the Minister Mazarin, and were used by him, were driven to take part with the “Princes” who opposed him, and who in their turn used them and flung them away, after they had drawn the chestnuts out of the fire for them; the Fronde, however, has its interest as being the germ of the disaffection of the middle classes with the nobility and government. As we have said, Louis 125 XIV. succeeded in making the French monarchy a pure autocratic bureaucracy, completely centralised in the person of the sovereign. This with an ambitious King like Louis XIV. involved constant war, for he felt himself bound to satisfy his ideal of the necessary expansion of the territory and influence of France, which he looked upon as the absolute property of the King. The general success of Louis XIV. brought with it the success of these wars of aggrandisement, and France became very powerful during his reign.
Under the rule of his minister Colbert, industrialism in France was, one may say, forced as in a hothouse. Colbert developed the new modes of production that were inevitably coming, and thereby established the workshop, or division of labour system, which is the transition from handicraft to machine production. He spared no pains or energy in bringing this about. Often, with more or less success, he drove an industry forward artificially, as with the silk and woollen manufactures.