Marx and Guizot

Guizot, Orleanist Premier of France, and the most famous historian of the English Revolution, described the two sides thus: "While the higher nobility, flocking to Court to repair their losses, were invested with factitious greatness, as corrupting as precarious, and which, without giving them back their former fortunes, separated them more and more from the people; the gentry, the freeholders, and citizens, solely occupied in improving their lands or commercial capital, were increasing in riches and credit, were becoming daily more closely united, were drawing the entire people under their influence; and, without show, without political design, almost unconsciously to themselves, were taking possession of all the social strength, the true source of power."

In other words, the King and his clique clung to a political power with no social foundation: the bourgeoisie had secured by gradual accretion a social foundation which logically required, and had the power to acquire, political power. Was not conflict inevitable? And was not the middle class the obvious trustee of social progress, and the ill-fated Charles the symbol of social decadence?