The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to EnlightenmentOne of the most lively of France's younger historians, Guy Chaussinand Nogaret argues in this pioneering essay that the traditional picture of the pre revolutionary French nobility as a caste of intransigent reactionaries and parasites is a fabrication of revolutionary propaganda. Using a whole range of new research and calculations, he argues that the nobility represented all that was most vigorous and forward looking in eighteenth century French