With the reign of Louis XV.

hope died, and his successor fell heir to the inevitable.
A heartless sybarite, depraved in tastes, without sense of responsibility or comprehension of his times, a brutalized voluptuary governed by a succession of designing women, regardless of national poverty, indulging in wildest extravagance--such was the man in whom was vested the authority rendered so absolute by Richelieu; such the man who opened up a pathway for the storm.
As for the nobility, their degradation may be imagined when it is said there was as bitter rivalry between titled and illustrious fathers to secure for their daughters the coveted position held by Madame de Pompadour, as for the highest offices of State.
Could the upper ranks fall lower than this?
Had not the kingdom reached its lowest depths, where its foreign policy was determined by the amount of consideration shown to Madame de Pompadour?
But this woman, whose friendship was artfully sought by the great Empress Maria Theresa, was superseded, and the fresher charms of Madame du Barry enslaved the king.

The deposed favorite could not survive her fall, and died of a broken heart.

It is said that as Louis, looking from an upper window of his palace, saw the coffin borne out in a drenching rain, he smiled, and said, "Ah, the marquise has a bad day for her journey." It may be imagined that the man who could be so pitiless to the woman he had loved would feel little pity for the people whom he had not loved, but whom he knew only as a remote, obscure something, which held up the weight of his glory.
But this "obscure something" was undergoing strange transformation.
The greater light at the surface had sent some glimmering rays down into the mass below, which began to awaken and to think.

Misery, hopeless and abject, was changing into rage and thirst for vengeance.
A new class had come into existence which was not noble, but with highly trained intelligence it looked with contempt and loathing upon the frivolous, half-educated nobles, Scorn was added to the ferment of human passions beneath the surface, and when Voltaire had spoken, and the restraints of religion were loosened, no living hand, not that of a Richelieu nor a Louis XIV., could have averted the coming doom.