figure of the Bourbon dynasty: Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu. He proved an indefatigable servant of the French crown, intent on securing absolute obedience to the monarchy and on raising its international prestige through the military prowess of the King's elite Musketeers. Under the last Bourbons, France became the industrial and commercial center of Europe. These developments, although significant by themselves, gave rise to a still more momentous change: the French Enlightenment, a cultural transformation based on rationalism, empiricism, and an amorphous concept of freedom found in the influential writings of Rousseau (1712-78). Hence, what began in 1787 as a conflict between royal authority and aristocrats became a triangular struggle, with "the masses" opposing both absolutism and privilege. By any standard, the fall of the Bastille to the Parisian crowd was a monumental event, a seemingly miraculous triumph of the people. But the Revolution soon degenerated in a reign of terror and chaos. Unlike others before him, Napoleon terminated the bloodshed, but at the price of suppressing freedom altogether. In utter contrast to the Revolution, militarism became the defining quality of the Napoleonic regime. However, the revolutionary fervor of the French citizenry was undiminished by the Napoleonic experience, and led to further revolutions in 1830 and 1848, the latter leading to the Second Republic followed by the Second Empire (1852-1870). Following defeat in the Franco-Prussia War, the Third Republic was formed - surviving the First World War but collapsing in the face of the German invasion in 1940. The period of the short-lived Fourth Republic (1947-59) was succeeded by the Fifth, adopted in September 1958 by popular referendum.