FRANCE. (HISTORY. 



253 



tiers-etat received a representation equal in number 

 to tliat of the two privileged orders, the nobility and 

 the clergy, and the parliament requested from the 

 king an equal distribution of taxes among all orders, 

 the liberty of the press, and the suppression of the 

 lettres de cachet. Hereupon the states-general were 

 summoned on May 1, 1789, the first time for 175 

 years. The election of deputies excited a violent 

 agitation throughout France, and the epithets/riewefc- 

 or enemies of the people already began to be pro- 

 nounced at Paris. The assembly was opened by the 

 king at Versailles, May 5, with a speech from the 

 throne. The question whether the votes should be 

 given individually, or by orders, led to violent de- 

 bates. The tiers-etat, in the ranks of which was 

 Mirabeau, assumed (June 17th), on the motion of the 

 abbe Sieyes, the title of the national assembly ; a part 

 of the nobility and the clergy united with it, and 

 the revolution was begun. 



II. France from 1789 to 1814, or the French Revo- 

 lution and Napoleon. With the changes which time 

 introduces in the character of society, new principles 

 of social order are continually introduced, and every 

 great change occasions a painful struggle. The 

 middle ages established the principles of feudalism ; 

 the present age is democratic. The struggles attend- 

 ing the introduction of democratic principles on the 

 European continent began in France, and, perhaps, 

 have not yet ceased there, certainly not in the other 

 states of Europe. France has led the way in the 

 political reformation of the European continent, as 

 Germany did in the religious. This is the light in 

 which the first French revolution is to be regarded : 

 that it took so very malignant a character was owing 

 to particular circumstances; to the nobility and 

 clergy quite as much as to the people. The French 

 revolution forms a most important epoch in the his- 

 tory of society. Whoever considers it as the effect 

 of chance does not understand the past, and cannot 

 see into the future. It was not the accident of a day 

 that razed the Bastile, and tore in pieces Maupeou's 

 edict relating to the parliaments ; it was not the 

 deficit, nor the convocation of the states-general, that 

 annihilated the feudal monarchy ; even without the 

 double number of the tiers-etat, the revolution must 

 liave taken place. The deficit was not the cause, 

 but a symptom ; the same policy which had produced 

 that deficit would have soon produced another, for 

 prodigality is the companion of despotism. Hatred 

 of oppression roused the people to revolt; they 

 stormed the Bastile ; they might have been dis- 

 persed with the bayonet; but they would have 

 destroyed that dungeon sooner or later. Permanent 

 tranquillity could not have been restored by sup- 

 porting oppression and tyranny, under cover of artil- 

 lery; it was necessary that they should be over- 

 thrown. Louis XVI. might have dispersed the 

 constituent assembly at the point of the bayonet ; he 

 could .not have rooted out the ideas of liberty from 

 the hearts of his subjects. It was not merely the 

 men of the last half of the eighteenth century ; 

 it was old abuses, passions, and prejudices that pro- 

 duced the revolution. The French revolution must 

 needs be considered in a double point of view, as the 

 consequence of execrable abuses, and, at the same 

 time, of the developement of the human mind ; or, 

 in other words, of knowledge, which always has a 

 democratic tendency. The favourers of old abuses 

 may say that this or that circumstance or individual 

 was the cause of the whole revolution ; this is the 

 way in which the conquered party always reason ; 

 and we have no doubt that Polignac believed the 

 revolution of 1830 to have been occasioned by the 

 fault of some particular person under him. Its 

 leaders were not its authors; they were only its 



instruments : the true authors of the revolution 

 were the imbecile, the tyrannical, and the criminal 

 monarchs and ministers of France ; Louis XIV. and 

 his prodigality; his unprofitable wars and his dra- 

 goonades ! The real authors of the revolution were 

 an absolute government, despotic ministers, a haughty 

 nobility, rapacious favourites, intriguing mistresses, 

 and the indignation thus awakened, assisted by the 

 general spirit of inquiry characteristic of the age. 

 But if the French revolution finally assumed such a 

 malignant aspect of anarchy as was evinced in the 

 policy of the Jacobins, of selfishness and cruelty, to 

 the almost total extinction of moral sentiment, on 

 whom does the guilt of these excesses lie ? Had 

 not priests educated the people which overthrew 

 the throne ? Had not ministers and courtiers, 

 statesmen in the purple of cardinals, princes who 

 assumed the name of roues (rakes), and ladies of 

 the court, poisoned the manners of the capital by 

 their example, from the times of the regency, and 

 seduced the nation into impiety and profligacy ?* 

 We shall treat the revolution under the following 

 divisions : 



1. From the Constituent Assembly to the Estab- 

 lishment of the Republic (June 17, 1789 September 

 21/1792). The national assembly consisted of 616 

 deputies of the tiers-etat, 317 of the nobility, and 

 317 of the clergy. The opposition against the 

 throne itself, of which the feudal system was con- 

 sidered the basis, rose gradually from the contest of 

 the non-privileged with the privileged orders, of 

 popular rights with the feudal prerogatives of the 

 nobility and the clergy. When the representatives 

 of the people continued their session, contrary to the 

 order of the king, and pronounced the solemn oath 

 (June 20th) never to separate until they had given 

 a constitution to France ; when the tiers etat (June 

 23) asserted its rights in the royal presence ; when 

 the king was compelled to order the nobility and 

 clergy to unite with the tiers-etat (June 27), then 

 the ancient royal authority was lost. If these con- 

 cessions of the king had seemed to render his con- 

 currence in the wishes of the nation probable, the 

 irritation was, therefore, the greater, when an army 

 of 20,000 men was assembled under marshal Broglio, 

 and Necker was suddenly dismissed. The tocsins 

 were sounded, and, on the refusal of the king to 

 dismiss the troops, an insurrection broke out in 

 Paris, where the people were inflamed by the 

 harangues of Camille Desmoulins (guillotined April 

 5, 1794). The Bastile was taken (July 14, 1789), 

 the national guard established, and put under the 

 command of Lafayette, and Louis was compelled to 

 recall Necker, to withdraw his troops, and to adopt 

 the tri-coloured national cockade ; whereupon, in 

 the session of Aug. 4., after the feudal system, 

 on the motion of the viscount de Noailles, had been 

 unanimously abolished by the assembly, Louis was 

 proclaimed the restorer of French liberty. In the 

 midst of this tempest, the declaration of the rights of 

 man was adopted, and the emigration (see Emigres) 

 of the nobles and the popular excitement daily 

 increased. The famine in Paris created a fermenta- 

 tion, which the banquet in the opera-house of Ver- 

 sailles exasperated to fury against the court and the 

 queen. October 5, an immense multitude of people 

 proceeded from Paris to Versailles, and, on the 6th, 

 compelled the king to remove, with his family, to 

 the Tuilleries. He was followed, on the 19th, by 

 the national assembly? who were preparing a free 

 constitution for the state. The division of France 

 into eighty-three departments ; the declaring the 



The Mf moires dtt Due de Lauaun describe the profligacy 

 which prevailed before the revolution. 



