The English peasant was seldom or never so ill off as his continental brethren. There were many reasons for this; the main, no doubt, was our more orderly government and steadier growth in freedom, with which our military and police system was inseparably bound up. I have expressed elsewhere my belief that much of our prosperity in the Middle Ages was due to the fact that here, more truly than in any other great country, every man was his own soldier and his own policeman. As Dr John Moore noted in the Switzerland of 1779, one cannot permanently overtax a population in which every man bears arms. The “Grande Ordonnance” of Charles VII fixed upon France, for more than three centuries, the double curse of a mercenary army and irresponsible taxation. It was the king's business to keep soldiers and to raise taxes; the king's business and nobody else's. This bargain enabled Charles VII to drive out the English invader; but it left the nation helpless against despotism until 1789, while the two freest countries in Europe were Great Britain and Switzerland, each with its own national militia. While our Tudors, with a mere handful of a bodyguard, were obliged to consult the will of the nation, their French contemporaries went on from tyranny to tyranny with the support of a large standing army, and the French peasant suffered all that we have seen in Delisle's description.