ABSTRACT
French leadership in the region of practical discovery was general until Englishmen were forced to meet new problems and invent a new technique for their solution. The French genius gave form and elegance to ideas which came from England and Germany; the civilisation of France was a model for less-favoured nations, and attracted the talent of other states. Throughout the nineteenth century the effects of the industrial revolution were mixed with the effects of the political changes introduced in France by the revolution of 1789, and spread over Europe by the soldiers, civil servants, and tax-collectors of Napoleon. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes had taken from France and added mainly to Germany and England some four hundred thousand exiled French citizens. During the Franco-Prussian war the German civil and military governors of Amiens were of French Huguenot descent.
