DEFEATING ARCHAIC OPPONENTS OF GROWTH

OBSOLETE ADVERSARIES OF GROWTH: THE SPANISH MONARCHY AND THE FEUDAL FRENCH NOBILITY

A struggle like that in Djimini when "pagans" cannot control Muslim introduction of a divisible currency.  

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Spain's outside revenues allow its immobility, and French nobles see stronger kingship limiting their liberties, not braking the economic transformation that is undermining them.

• Spain: The slain commander has gone to battle in an armchair — Spanish warfare retains practices that maintain the status quo by limiting efficiency:

This and other illustrations on this page by Maurice Leloir, in Le Roy-Soleil by T. Cabu, 1931.

(The book gives no reference for this fact, another example of skipping over details that seem incomprehensible).   

France begins to swallow up Spain at the end of the Thirty Years' War, a change that the marriage of Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse cements (in 1660) and that their grandson becoming the ruler of Spain finalizes (in 1700).

• Nobles: Five revolts (1626-1642) and civil war (1648-1652): 

The Count of Chalais on his way to execution (in 1626); Henri II de Montmorency's mother pleads unsuccessfully for his pardon (in 1632)

Marie-Louise de Montpensier orders the cannon of the Bastille fortress to be fired on the royal troops (in 1652).

Spain and French nobles belong

 to societies of an earlier kind: 

Their defeat announces 

the victorious, powerful French monarchy
keeping capitalism under control. 

End of this section.

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  Next section,
V.3.
 The Sun King, anti-capitalist?