What do the early chapters tell you about the social, political, and religious environment of eighteenth-century Europe?

Even in
's early chapters,presents Europe as a continent rife with injustice and
cruelty. One might well treat it in language of the absurd (even though the modern concept of
the absurd didn't really come into being until the twentieth century, I would suggest it applies
here all the same). Fortune is arbitrary, and Europe itself is defined in terms of cruelty,
hypocrisy, and superstition.

In the book's first chapter, Candide is driven
from Thunder-ten-tronckh because he and the Baron's daughter, Cunegonde, have fallen in love
with one another. Cast out, Candide finds himself (in the next chapter) tricked into
conscripting into the Bulgar army, with Candide being beaten and brutalized during the military
drills. In chapter 3, we see Voltaire tackle the subject of war and its pointless brutality. We
are given a detailed account of the self-destructive slaughter and cruelty of war. First, we
witness the Bulgars pillaging and...