" Bad tactics and the suicide of the French aristocracy: For France the 18th century was a period of aristocratic reaction, so badly handled, however, that instead of resulting in the limitation of the monarchial Power, it ended by destroying monarchy and aristocracy alike, and by exalting a Power which was far more absolute than that of the “Great King” had ever been. "

― Bertrand De Jouvenel , On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth