assed through, the king
promptly, replied: "_Ce que je veux_"--"_What I please._"[28]

[Sidenote: Fruits of the abasement of the people.]

Yet it must be noted, in passing, that the studied abasement of the
_Tiers Etat_ had already begun to bear some fruit that should have
alarmed every patriotic heart. It was, as we have seen, impossible to
obtain good French infantry except from Gascony and some other border
provinces. The place that should have been held by natives was filled by
Germans and Swiss. What was the reason? Simply that the common people
had lost the consciousness of their manhood, in consequence of the
degraded position into which the king, and the privileged classes,
imitating his example, had forced them. "Because of their desire to rule
the people with a rod of iron," says Dandolo, "the gentry of the kingdom
have deprived them of arms. They dare not even carry a stick, and _are
more submissive to their superiors than dogs_!"[29] No wonder that all
efforts of Francis to imitate the armies of free states, by instituting
legions of arquebusiers, proved fruitless.[30] Add to this that trade
was held in supreme contempt,[31] and the picture is certainly
sufficiently dark.

[Sidenote: Checks upon the king's authority.]

Yet, while, through the absence of any effectual barrier to the exercise
of his good pleasure, the king's authority was ultimately unrestricted,
it must be confessed that there existed, in point of fact, some powerful
checks, rendering the abuse of the royal prerogative, for the most part,
neither easy nor expedient. Parliament, the municipal corporations, the
university, and the clergy, weak as they often proved in a direct
struggle with the crown, nevertheless exerted an influence that ought
not to be overlooked. The most headstrong prince hesitated to disregard
the remonstrances of any one of these bodies, and their united protest
sometimes led to the abandonment of schemes of great promise for the
royal treasury. It is true that parliament, university, and chartered
borough owed their existence and privileges to the royal will, and that
the power that created could also destroy. But time had invested with a
species of sanctity the venerable institutions established by monarchs
long since dead, and the utmost stretch of royal displeasure went not in
its manifestation further than the mere threat to strip parliament or
university of its privileges, or, at most, the arrest and temporary
i