Thus in France the protective spirit maintained its ascendancy intensified.  Literature and science, allied to and patronised by government, suffered demoralisation, and the age of Louis XIV. was one of intellectual decay.  After the death of Louis XIV. the French discovered England and English literature.  Our island, regarded hitherto as barbarous, was visited by nearly every Frenchman of note for the two succeeding generations.  Voltaire, in particular, assimilated and disseminated English doctrines.

The consequent development of the liberal spirit brought literature into collision with the government.  Inquiry was opposed to the interests of both nobles and clergy.  Nearly every great man of letters in France was a victim of persecution.  It might be said that the government deliberately made a personal enemy of every man of intellect in the country.  We can only wonder, not that the revolution came, but that it was still so long delayed; but ingrained prejudices prevented the crown from being the first object of attack.  The hostility of the men of letters was directed first against the Church and Christianity.  Religious scepticism and political emancipation did not advance hand in hand; much that was worst in the actual revolution was due to the fact that the latter lagged behind.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries some progress had been made in the principles of writing history.  Like everything else, history suffered from the rule of Louis XIV.  Again the advance was inaugurated by Voltaire.  His principle is to concentrate on important movements, not on idle details.  This was not characteristic of the individual author only, but of the spirit of the age.  It is equally present in the works of Montesquieu and Turgot.  The defects of Montesquieu are chiefly due to the fact that his materials were intractable, because science had not yet reduced them to order by generalising the laws of their phenomena.  In the second half of the eighteenth century the intellectual movement began to be turned directly against the state.  Economical and financial inquiries began to absorb popular attention.  Rousseau headed the political movement, whereas the government in its financial straits turned against the clergy, whose position was already undermined, and against whom Voltaire continued to direct his batteries.

The suppression of the Jesuits meant a revival of Jansenism.  Jansenism is Calvinistic, and Calvinism is democratic; but the real concentration of French minds was on material questions.  The foundations of religious beliefs had been undermined, and hence arose the painful prevalence of atheism.  The period was one of progress in the study of material laws in every field.  The national intellect had taken a new bent, and it was one which tended to violent social revolt.  The hall of science is the temple of democracy.  It was in these conditions that the eyes of Frenchmen were turned to the glorious revolt in the cause of liberty of the American people.  The spark was set to an inflammatory mass, and ignited a flame which never ceased its ravages until it had destroyed all that Frenchmen once held dear.