ABSTRACT
There was a widespread belief amongst the nobility that the traditional order had been subverted by nouveaux riches upstarts, that virtue had been displaced by money, and that valour and honour were no longer publicly recognised. It went hand in hand with a gloomy conviction that the political regime was being recast at the expense of the nobles. Such feelings were not confined to the provincial nobility or those in danger of sinking into the ranks of the peasantry. In the last decades of Louis XIV’s reign, long after the years of greatest tension had passed, they were taken up and articulated by members of the high nobility. Foremost amongst these were Archbishop Fénélon, the Duc de St Simon, and the Comte de Boulainvilliers, a descendant of the House of Croy which had once known more glorious times. They differed in some of their specific propositions but their common desire was to restore the authority and reassert the distinctive status of the nobility as an estate of the realm. This they believed had been usurped through the combined effects of money and the need felt by those of lowly birth to please the prince.1
