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torian expressly adds, soldiers dismissed from service, wereadmitted into it, and provided with bed, board, and clothing. 6Although the Emperor secured to it several sources ofrevenue, it does not appear to have existed long; for GeorgeCodinus, in the fifteenth century, says, the high office ofdirector or master, had been disused.
The most ancient as well as the largest hospital for inva-lids known in Europe, is the Hofei des Invalides at Paris ,built anno 1670, a monument, it is said, of extravagancein the sovereign, rather than of care for the alllicted. TheKings of France enjoyed from the earliest times, a sourceof revenue or immunity, called droit d'oblat, which con-sisted in the power of quartering upon abbeys and monas-teries, officers and soldiers unfit for service, and particularlythe wounded. Traces of this practice are said to occurunder the reign of Charles the Great , at least so it is re-ported by Seissel, in his life of Louis XII . who recites thatthere was an old tradition in Languedoc , that the abbot hadbeen punished by that Prince, because he would not receivesoldiers assigned to him. The different habits of the hostsand their guests, must really have been such as not to renderthem, it has been justly thought, altogether so social, asmight be desired. Be this as it may, such really appearsto have been the fact, and from the result will be, perhaps,more apparent; for the complaints on this subject appear tohave been so serious under Henry IV. that he, at length,resolved to cause all invalids to be lodged and maintainedtogether, in a place called La Maison lioyale de la ChariteChretienne. But the revenues destined for the support ofthis establishment were not sufficient; it was abolished underthe same sovereign, and the invalids again becamethe inmates of the cloister. However, in course of time,these houses purchased exemption from this burden, bygiving an annual pension to their guests; but the improvi-dent soldiers soon spent the money, and then fell into a stateof the greatest poverty. On this account Louis XIII . re-newed the experiment of founding an hospital, but couldnot proceed for want of money. It was reserved for themighty mind of Louis XIV. to project and complete thisreceptacle for the sons of military glory, when unfit for fur-ther service; accordingly, in 1670, he began to build theHotel des Invalides ; the capacity of the design, and theprojected elegance of execution, has been alleged againstthat very able monarch as a proof that he was more desirous