he died, worn out by his herculean labors, the nobles tried to regain the privileges and powers they had lost, and a miserable warfare called the “Fronde” was the result, carried on without genius or system.  But the Fronde produced some heroes who were destined to be famous in the great wars of Louis XIV.  Mazarin, with less ability than Richelieu, and more selfish, conquered in the end, by following out the policy of his predecessor.  He developed the resources of the kingdom, besides accumulating an enormous fortune for himself,—­about two hundred millions of francs,—­which, when he died, he bequeathed, not to the Church or his relatives, but to the young King, who thus became personally rich as well as strong.  To have entered upon the magnificent inheritance which these two able cardinals bequeathed to the monarchy was most fortunate to Louis,—­unrestricted power and enormous wealth.

But Louis was still more fortunate in reaping the benefits of the principle of royalty.  We have in the United States but a feeble conception of the power of this principle in Europe in the seventeenth century; it was nursed by all the chivalric sentiments of the Middle Ages.  The person of a king was sacred; he was regarded as divinely commissioned.  The sacred oil poured on his head by the highest dignitary of the Church, at his coronation, imparted to him a sacred charm.  All the influences of the Church, as well as those of Feudalism, set the king apart from all other men, as a consecrated monarch to rule the people.  This loyalty to the throne had the sanction of the Jewish nation, and of all Oriental nations from the remotest ages.  Hence the world has known no other form of government than that of kings and emperors, except in a few countries and for a brief period.  Whatever the king decreed, had the force of irresistible law; no one dared to disobey a royal mandate but a rebel in actual hostilities.  Resistance to royal authority was ruin.  This royal power was based on and enforced by the ideas of ages.  Who can resist universally accepted ideas?

Moreover, in France especially, there was a chivalric charm about the person of a king; he was not only sacred, of purer blood than other people, but the greatest nobles were proud to attend and wait upon his person.  Devotion to the person of the prince became the highest duty.  It was not political slavery, but a religious and sentimental allegiance.  So sacred was this allegiance, that only the most detested tyrants were in personal danger of assassination, or those who were objects of religious fanaticism.  A king could dismiss his most powerful minister, or his most triumphant general at the head of an army, by a stroke of the pen, or by a word, without expostulation or resistance.  To disobey the king was tantamount to defiance of Almighty power.  A great general rules by machinery rather than devotion to his person.  But devotion to the king needed no support from armies or guards.  A king in the seventeenth century was supposed to be the vicegerent of the Deity.