The warlike temper nursed on foreign fields begot at home a new turbulence and scorn of law, woke a new feudal spirit in the baronage, and sowed in the revolution which placed a new house on the throne the seeds of that fatal strife over the succession which troubled England to the days of Elizabeth.

Nor was the contest of less import in the history of France.

If it struck her for the moment from her height of pride, it raised her in the end to the front rank among the states of Europe.

It carried her boundaries to the Rhone and the Pyrenees.

It wrecked alike the feudal power of her _noblesse_ and the hopes of constitutional liberty which might have sprung from the emancipation of the peasant or the action of the burgher.