Précis du siècle de Louis XV

[1] The material for the Précis had previously been part of a history that Voltaire spent twenty years working on and which included Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations (Essay on the customs and spirit of the nations) and The Age of Louis XIV.

[2][3] Voltaire comments on the trial of Thomas Arthur, comte de Lally; a case he had been following closely.

When Lally was involved at a military defeat, relinquishing the Indian town of Pondicherry to the English, his fellow officers blamed him.

On his return to France, Lally was imprisoned without charge, put on trial in which he was denied a lawyer, and finally executed.

This courage was so great that in one of these battles, near a river named Golo, they made a rampart of their dead in order to have the time to reload behind them before making a necessary retreat […] Bravery is found everywhere, but such actions aren’t seen except among free people.