33. [On the Intermediate (Bourgeois) Class]

Until the discovery of gunpowder the army was composed mainly of men-at-arms, that is, descendants of the Franks. The whole of French territory was originally divided among the Franks. Sovereign power was then attached to landed property. The lawyers, common soldiers, and landowners who are neither nobles nor farmers have usually played the role of protectors of the people against the claims and privileges of the descendants of the Franks. In 1789, considering itself to be sufficiently strong to shake off the supremacy of the descendants of the Franks, the intermediate class incited the masses to rise against the nobles. In the age of ignorance the character of national activity was chiefly military and secondarily industrial. All social classes then had to be subordinate to the military class. This was, in effect, the social organisation of the time, and it would have been bad had it not been trenchant, exclusive, absolute.