FRENCH SIXTH 



3345 



FRENSSEN 



Then, while French armies were 

 achieving successes against their 

 enemies beyond the frontier, the 

 parties in Paris fell to devouring 

 each other. The Girondins had 

 now become the party of modera- 

 tion ; the Jacobins won the supre- 

 macy, drove them from office, and 

 sent many of them to the guillotine. 

 A Committee of Public Safety was 

 organized which wielded despotic 

 power ; its emissaries accompanied 

 the armies, and were scattered all 

 over the country, none daring to 

 dispute their behests. While one 

 of the members, Carnot, was 

 sufficiently occupied as the war 

 minister organizing victories, the 

 Reign of Terror was instituted, and 

 the guillotine devoured its victims 

 in numbers that increased week by 

 week from scores to hundreds. On 

 July 13 Marat was slain by Char- 

 lotte Corday, but his death made no 

 difference. The mere accusation of 

 being well affected to the aristocrats 

 was the almost unfailing precursor 

 of imprisonment and death. 



On Oct. 16, 1793, Marie Antoin- 

 ette, the widow of Louis, who had 

 died with kingly calm and dignity, 

 followed her husband to the 

 scaffold. A month later the guillo- 

 tine claimed among its victims 

 Marie Roland, the heroine of the 

 Girondists. Day by day the 

 tumbrils rolled through the streets 

 of Paris ; in the provinces like 

 scenes, and scenes even more 

 repulsive, were enacted. 

 The Fall of Danton 



Danton the inexorable, who 

 shrank from nothing when he 

 deemed that the cause of Liberty 

 would be furthered by f rightf ulness, 

 sickened of the purposeless slaugh- 

 ter ; even Robespierre was nause- 

 ated by the vulture flock that was 

 headed by the detestable Hebert. 

 Suddenly he turned on them, and 

 on March 24, 1794, Hebert's own 

 head fell. But Robespierre was 

 minded for no more concessions 

 to the Indulgents, the group of 

 whom Danton, weary of bloodshed, 

 was the leader ; his own ascendancy 

 was at stake ; on April 5 the great 

 Tribune was struck down. But 

 the carnival of blood was no longer 

 to be endured. A conspiracy was 

 organized. Suddenly, on July 27, 

 Robespierre himself was seized, 

 and on the following morning he 

 was beheaded. With his death and 

 the execution of his partisans which 

 immediately followed, the Reign 

 of Terror was ended. 



It remained to evolve one more 

 constitution, a constitution which 

 was to place the administration 

 in the hands of a Directory of five, 

 while, legislation was to be en- 

 truste4 to two Assemblies. This 

 soheine, arrived at a year after 



the fall of Robespierre, did not 

 command universal assent, especi- 

 ally in Paris. But the government 

 were prepared for an insurrection, 

 and when it came they had 

 entrusted the arrangements for its 

 suppression to a young officer of 

 artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte. His 

 success was complete. The Direc- 

 tory was established by the coup 

 d'etat of Vendemiaire (Oct. 5, 

 1795), and Bonaparte was re- 

 warded with the command of the 

 armies of the Republic in N. 

 Italy. Four years were to pass 

 before another coup d'etat made 

 the young general First Consul, 

 and in effect transformed the 

 French Republic into a military 

 monarchy. Not till 1871 was a 

 republic to be permanently estab- 

 lished in France. 



Results of the Revolution 



But the meaning of the French 

 Revolution is not to be tested by 

 its success or its failure in es- 

 tablishing republican institutions. 

 Republicanism was only one of its 

 accidents ; the basic principles on 

 which it rested are no less com- 

 patible with a constitutional 

 monarchy than with a republic. 

 Essentially, its political demand 

 was for the " government of the 

 people for the people by the 

 people"; the movement assumed 

 its terrific character because it 

 arose when nearly all the peoples 

 of Europe were governed mainly 

 in the interests of particular 

 classes by absolute rulers. It did 

 not succeed in establishing any- 

 where the practice of " govern- 

 ment by the people "; in Europe 

 generally the force wielded by 

 governments, not by the people, 

 was too strong for them to be 

 readily overthrown, and the actual 

 excesses perpetrated in France 

 checked for the time the moral 

 forces which would naturally have 

 been thrown into the scale on the 

 side of Liberty. But a spirit had 

 been aroused which, though it 

 might be sternly repressed, could 

 never again be completely allayed. 



If the French people were still 

 willing to submit themselves com- 

 pletely to a master who could be 

 idealised as a hero, it had yet be- 

 come impossible after the Revolu- 

 tion to lay upon them the old 

 yoke, to subject them to the 

 absolutism of an hereditary prince 

 or the domination of an hereditary 

 caste. Everywhere the Revolution 

 forced upon privileged and un- 

 privileged classes alike the con- 

 sciousness that the unprivileged 

 have rights which cannot altogether 

 be ignored, that revolution will 

 always lurk under the throne of 

 tyranny; the peoples of Europe owe 

 it to the French Revolution that, 



however slowly and gradually, 

 they have yet won in a greater or 

 less degree a hearing for them- 

 selves in their own governments. 



The French Revolution was the 

 direct cause of the great movement 

 which has turned South America 

 into a group of self-governing 

 states instead of a congeries of 

 provinces administered as the 

 estates of an absolute monarch. 

 Politically, the feudal system of the 

 Middle Ages had perished long 

 before ; as a social system it had 

 remained rampantly dominant. 

 As a social system the Revolution 

 shattered it utterly among the 

 Latin peoples, though not so 

 completely elsewhere. However 

 we may shudder at the methods 

 which the Revolution employed, 

 at a time when elemental forces 

 broke loose which no man could 

 control, its fundamental principles 

 have become part and parcel of the 

 creed of civilized humanity. See 

 Bastille, illus. 



Bibliography. The French Revo- 

 lution, Thomas Carlyle, 1837, and 

 since frequently re-edited ; The 

 French Revolution, B. M. Gardiner, 

 1883 ; Hist, of the French Revolu- 

 tion. H. Morse Stephens, 1886, etc. ; 

 The Revolutionary and Napoleonic 

 Era, J. H. Rose, 6th ed. 1907 ; The 

 French Revolution, H. Belloc, 

 1911 ; The Relations of French and 

 English Society, 1763-1793, C. H. 

 Lockitt, 1920. 



French Sixth. In music, 

 chromatic chord consisting of a 

 bass note with a major third, 

 augmented fourth, and augmented 

 sixth above it : 



It belongs H) rr 



to the key of 



its major third 



in this case 



C but it can 



be used also in other keys. The 



origin of the name is uncertain. 



See Chromatic ; Interval. 



Frensham. Village and parish 

 of Surrey, England. It is 3A m. S. of 

 Farnham, and is noted for its two 

 lakes or ponds. The larger of 

 them covers 90 acres and is visited 

 for boating and fishing. The church 

 of S. Mary, restored in 1866, has 

 some interesting features, parts of 

 it being Early English. Frensham 

 Common is a large open space, 

 used by the military for manoeu- 

 vres and the like. Pop. 3,272. 



Frenssen, GUSTAV (b. 1863). 

 German novelist. Entering the 

 Church as a young man, he became 

 a country pastor. His first work, 

 Die Sandgrafin, appeared in 1896, 

 and was followed two years later 

 by Die drei Getreuen. Jora Uhl, 

 1901, was a great success and was 

 followed by a series of novels. 

 After 1902 he gave up his cure and 

 devoted himself to literature. 



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