HEROES,

PHILOSOPHERS, AND COURTIERS.

VOL. I.

HEROES,

PHILOSOPHERS, AND COURTIERS

OF

THE TIME OF LOUIS XVI. ·

BY

THE AUTHOR OF

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT OF FRANCE

UNDER LOUIS XV.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:

HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL,

BLENHEIM HOUSE, OXFORD STREET.

"HISTORY," said M. Rollin, "is the book of Kings." It ought not less to be the book of Peoples. The history of the American Rebellion against the Crown of England,—of the contest of Right against Might in the New World, and of the time when young Democracy was about to spring from corrupt Feudalism in the Old World,-is peculiarly the book of Kings and Peoples too. It is the history of a war between France and England, and of facts which drew together, in grotesque contrast, the most distant and different members of the human family,-the courtiers of