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1918
To my good friend FATHER HENRI BEAUDÉ (Henri d'Arles) this tribute to the men of his race and faith is affectionately inscribed.
France, when she undertook the creation of a Bourbon empire beyond theseas, was the first nation of Europe. Her population was larger thanthat of Spain, and three times that of England. Her army in the daysof Louis Quatorze, numbering nearly a half-million in all ranks, waslarger than that of Rome at the height of the imperial power. Nonation since the fall of Roman supremacy had possessed such resourcesfor conquering and colonizing new lands. By the middle of theseventeenth century Spain had ceased to be a dangerous rival; Germanyand Italy were at the time little more than geographical expressions,while England was in the throes of the Puritan Revolution.
Nor was it only in the arts of war that the hegemony of the Bourbonkingdom stood unquestioned. In art and education, in manners andfashions, France also dominated the ideas of the old continent, thedictator of social tastes as well as the grim warrior among thenations. In the second half of the seventeenth century France mightjustly claim to be both the heart and the head of Europe. Small wonderit was that the leaders of such a nation should demand to see the"clause in Adam's will" which bequeathed the New World to Spain andPortugal. Small wonder, indeed, that the first nation of Europe shouldinsist upon a place in the sun to which her people might go to trade,to make land yield its increase, and to widen the Bourbon sway. Ifever there was a land able and ready to take up the white man'sburden, it was the France of Louis XIV.
The power and prestige of France at this time may be traced, in themain, to three sources. First there were the physical features, thecompactness of the kingdom, a fertile soil, a propitious climate, anda frontage upon two great seas. In an age when so much of a nation'swealth came from agriculture these were factors of great importance.Only in commerce did the French people at this time find themselvesoutstripped by their neighbors. Although both the Atlantic and theMediterranean bathed the shores of France, her people were beingoutdistanced on the seas by the English and the Dutch, whosecommercial companies were exploiting the wealth of the new continentsboth east and west. Yet in France there was food enough for all and tospare; it was only because the means of distributing it