Baron Larrey (1766-1842)

in 1766, three years before Napoleon Bonoparte, whose loving follower Larrey was destined to become. His birthplace was in the romantic region of the High Pyreniees, at the village of Beaudeau. At the period of Larrey's birth, centuries of misrule were about to culminate in a mighty catastrophe for Franice. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, France was the most powerful nation in Europe. Under Louis XIV, she had threatened to dominate the whole Continent, but her advance had been checked largely by the genius of Marlborough. From twenty years of aggression her finances had never recovered. Though with her virile, ingenious people, France's capacity to recover financial equilibrium seemed self-evident, her every effort to do so failed. Ihe blame was laid at the door of the aristocrats, whose privileges alone seemed to stand between the nation and a happier future. All power was centred in the throne, and the once turbulent nobles of France lived lives of (lissipation around the palace of Versailles. Increased privi'lege was the price which the sovereigns of France had paid the Nobility for the loss of ancient powers-privilege, not to do but to receive. Everything went by favour and not by merit; the nobles thronged Versailles, leaving their estates in utter neglect and ruin, and permitting their peasants to starve and rot. The people, in the words of Macauley, were "beasts of burden, and were soon to become beasts of prey."