1st November, 1750, declared all officers not noble by four generations
incapable of filling the rank of captain, and denied all military rank to
the roturiers, excepting sons of the chevaliers de St. Louis.

["M. de Segur," says Chamfort, "having published an ordinance which
prohibited the admission of any other than gentlemen into the artillery
corps, and, on the other hand, none but well-educated persons being proper
for admission, a curious scene took place: the Abbe Bossat, examiner of
the pupils, gave certificates only to plebeians, while Cherin gave them
only to gentlemen. Out of one hundred pupils, there were not above four
or five who were qualified in both respects."]

The injustice and absurdity of this law was no doubt a secondary cause of
the Revolution. To understand the despair and rage with which this law
inspired the Tiers Etat one should have belonged to that honourable class.
The provinces were full of roturier families, who for ages had lived as
people of property upon their own domains, and paid the taxes. If these
persons had several sons, they would place one in the King's service, one
in the Church, another in the Order of Malta as a chevalier servant
d'armes, and one in the magistracy; while the eldest preserved the
paternal manor, and if he were situated in a country celebrated for wine,
he would, besides selling his own produce, add a kind of commission trade
in the wines of the canton. I have seen an individual of this justly
respected class, who had been long employed in diplomatic business, and
even honoured with the title of minister plenipotentiary, the son-in-law
and nephew of colonels and town mayors, and, on his mother's side, nephew
of a lieutenant-general with a cordon rouge, unable to introduce his sons
as sous-lieutenants into a regiment of foot.

Another decision of the Court, which could not be announced by an edict,