15.  France under Louis XV.—­Meantime the gross vice and licentiousness of the king was beyond description, and the nobility retained about the court by the system established by Louis XIV. were, if not his equals in crime, equally callous to the suffering caused by the reckless expensiveness of the court, the whole cost of which was defrayed by the burghers and peasants.  No taxes were asked from clergy or nobles, and this latter term included all sprung of a noble line to the utmost generation.  The owner of an estate had no means of benefiting his tenants, even if he wished it; for all matters, even of local government, depended on the crown.  All he could do was to draw his income from them, and he was often forced, either by poverty or by his expensive life, to strain to the utmost the old feudal system.  If he lived at court, his expenses were heavy, and only partly met by his pension, likewise raised from the taxes paid by the poor farmer; if he lived in the country, he was a still greater tyrant, and was called by the people a hobereau, or kite.  No career was open to his younger sons, except in the court, the Church, or the army, and here they monopolized the prizes, obtaining all the richer dioceses and abbeys, and all the promotion in the army.  The magistracies were almost all hereditary among lawyers, who had bought them for their families from the crown, and paid for the appointment of each son.  The officials attached to each member of the royal family were almost incredible in number, and all paid by the taxes.  The old gabelle, or salt-tax, had gone on ever since the English wars, and every member of a family had to pay it, not according to what they used, but what they were supposed to need.  Every pig was rated at what he ought to require for salting.  Every cow, sheep, or hen had a toll to pay to king, lord, bishop—­sometimes also to priest and abbey.  The peasant was called off from his own work to give the dues of labour to the roads or to his lord.  He might not spread manure that could interfere with the game, nor drive away the partridges that ate his corn.  So scanty were his crops that famines slaying thousands passed unnoticed, and even if, by any wonder, prosperity smiled on the peasant, he durst not live in any kind of comfort, lest the stewards of his lord or of Government should pounce on his wealth.

16.  Reaction.—­Meantime there was a strong feeling that change must come.  Classical literature was studied, and Greek and Roman manners and institutions were thought ideal perfection.  There was great disgust at the fetters of a highly artificial life in which every one was bound, and at the institutions which had been so misused.  Writers arose, among whom Voltaire and Rousseau were the most eminent, who aimed at the overthrow of all the ideas which had come to be thus abused.  The one by his caustic wit, the other by his enthusiastic simplicity, gained willing ears, and, the writers in a great Encyclopaedia then in course of publication, contrived to attack most of the notions which had been hitherto taken for granted, and were closely connected with faith and with government.  The king himself was dully aware that he was living on the crust of a volcano, but he said it would last his time; and so it did.  Louis XV. died of smallpox in 1774, leaving his grandsons to reap the harvest that generations had been sowing.