The _esprit de caste_ impelled the nobility to emigrate, the _esprit de corps_ similarly influenced the officers, and the _esprit de cour_ made it shameful to remain on a soil stained with so many outrages to royalty.

The women, who then formed public opinion in France, and whose tender and easily excited imagination is soon transferred to the side of their victims, all sided with the throne and the aristocracy.
They despised those who would not go and seek their avengers in foreign lands.

Young men departed at their desire; those who did not, dared not show themselves.

They sent them distaffs, as a token of their cowardice! But it was not shame alone that led the officers and the nobles to join the ranks of the army, it was also the appearance of a duty; for the last virtue that was left to the French nobility was a religious fidelity to the throne: their honour, their second and almost only religion, was to die for their king; and any design against the throne, in their belief, was a design against heaven.

Chivalry, that code of aristocratic feeling, had preserved and disseminated this noble prejudice throughout Europe; and, to the nobility, the king represented their country.