The philosophers of the Enlightenment were almost unanimous in rejecting the claims of hereditary royalty and in recommending the republican form of government… On the eve of the American and the French revolutions monarchy had lost its age-old hold on men’s minds.

That is, quite simply, not true, merely echoing the narcissistic self-oriented view of a particular group that wanted that. It is true that the enlightenment was working towards that, consciously or unconsciously, and that matters had gone far enough for the Age of Revolutions to begin when it did. But it is not true that the change was anywhere near complete, any more than all the ice has melted by the time it starts to drift downstream; again and again, the French revolutionary armies, and Napoleon’s later, found that locally based monarchies commanded enough respect to be able to bring polities together again enough to resume resistance, even after repeated shattering defeats that deprived them of the power to compel obedience. Napoleon appreciated that that was very different from his own imperial position, which originally depended on continuing success that couldn’t risk defeat; that was why he went to all the trouble of fomenting the Napoleonic myth, that allowed him to come back in 1815 and let the French Second Empire come into being.

That myth also worked to undercut the older monarchies in just the way Mises mistakenly claims arrived before Napoleon, again serving Napoleon’s purposes though not early enough to help him. This undercutting – from that myth and other processes – was far enough advanced by 1848 for that round of revolutions to take place. Even so, it was far from complete then and still is not today, at any rate not quite. So Mises was definitely wrong in what he wrote just there.

The enormous prestige enjoyed by England, then the world’s richest and most powerful nation…

No it wasn’t, in two ways:-

- England was no longer independent by then, but merely the senior of two partners in the United Kingdom.

- The United Kingdom was only the strongest naval power, and then only as a plurality that could be beaten by an alliance until Trafalgar. Militarily, it was very weak and could only operate effectively with continental allies or in special circumstances.

Even the conservatives who advocated a return to monarchical absolutism, status privileges for the nobility, and censorship were more or less convinced that they were fighting for a lost cause.

Mises doesn’t know the difference between a conservative and a reactionary. Conservatives never did advocate a return to any of that. At most they advocated keeping that, while they still had it.

Russia got a constitution, which all over the world was praised by servile scribblers as the most perfect document in history in spite of its being based on the one-party principle, the negation of all civic liberties.

Mises doesn’t know much about that constitution and the ways it accomplished its hypocrisy. It was not based on the one-party principle at all, it simply provided that principle with a machine it could effectively take over. In fact, nominally and for propaganda and other purposes it did allow other parties at various times and at various levels of representation – though they were often closely affiliated with the Communist Party, or being assimilated by it, or operating only in non-contentious spheres, and they were never allowed to grow to be even potential threats. That way, the party didn’t have to energise the constitution but could use it. (This approach is more visible in the history of the Warsaw Pact countries.) An understanding of just how that worked is very important to understanding and – perhaps – repairing any similar degenerate behaviour of a notionally multi-party or even non-party, and in practice two-equivalent-party, system like those we see today.

“The state had proved itself an insatiable spender, an unrivalled waster. It had also proved itself the greatest killer of all time. By the 1990s, state action had been responsible for the violent or unnatural deaths of some 125 million people during the century, more perhaps than it had succeeded in destroying during the whole of human history up to 1900. Its inhuman malevolence had more than kept pace with its growing size and expanding means.”

Just read the book, “Perfect Day”, by Ira Levin and The Law by Frederic Bastiat due to your recommendations. Very good!