Between the years 1455 and 1795 this old aristocracy was largely
exterminated. The Wars of the Roses, the massacres of the Reformation,
and the Civil Wars in England; the Thirty Years' War in Germany; the
Hundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion, and the Revolution in France
had decimated the families old in honour, preserving the tradition of
culture, jealous of their alliances and their breeding--the natural and
actual leaders in thought and action. England suffered badly enough as
the result of war, with the persecutions of Henry VIII, Edward VI and
Elizabeth, and the Black Death, included for full measure. France
suffered also, but Germany fared worst of all. By the end of the Thirty
Years' War the older feudal nobility had largely disappeared, while the
class of "gentlemen" had been almost exterminated. In France, until the
fall of Napoleon III, and in Germany and Great Britain up to the present
moment, the recruiting of the formal aristocracy has gone on steadily,
but on a different basis and from a different class from anything known
before.
Pages:
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29