But in the Fourth Gospel, there is only one patron (God) and one clientage (Israel, including the Johannine group), but competing brokers (Jesus vs.

82) Within the polity of the village, just as within the wider polity of the realm, links of clientage and deference constituted one of the forces that bound together a profoundly unequal society.

Parrott demonstrates that Cardinal Richelieu, instead of being an innovative modernizer of France's military system who embraced new ideas, made the bureaucracy more efficient, and concentrated power in his own hands, in fact failed to initiate effective reforms in military administration, and owed what limited success he had in expanding and strengthening the French army to improvised expedients and the cultivation of the great nobles and existing clientage networks.