When the Grand Monarch died in 1715 France was already very badly impoverished, far more by wars than by any extravagance of the court of Versailles. Louis spent great sums on his splendid palaces and magnificent way of life. But this would not have ruined France. Reckless war destroyed the prosperity of the country, and after that, careless management.
A strong monarchy has two purposes: first, to increase the prosperity of the nation, to make manufacturers and cultivators richer, so that there is plenty of work and sufficient wages for the poor; and secondly, to satisfy the pride and stiffen the sinews of the nation by active war. The king is the war-lord, it is he who leads on in pride and glory; whilst in Louis’ time the minister Colbert attended to the productive prosperity of the nation.
It is a difficult matter to balance a kingdom between material prosperity and strenuous war and glory. The pursuit of glory is an expensive business; but if a people seeks nothing but commercial or material success, then the nation becomes spiritless and fat. Louis xiv. and Louis xv. became too conceited, they forgot that they were enthroned upon the nation’s prosperity. This is the secret of the Grand Monarch’s failure in his old age. All the glory centred in the King. Louis xv. was so vain that he felt himself to be the very Sun of France. No matter what happened, so long as kingly glory shone out the court and government were satisfied. But to keep this glory shining the country had to sweat out its very blood. The blazing sun of France blazed too brightly. The monarchy was a sunflower which exhausted its own leaves and stem and root, and so fell.
During the reign of Louis xv. the debt of France increased enormously. In 1723 the old Cardinal Fleury became minister, and managed well, keeping good financial understanding with Walpole in England. War broke out, and France gained Lorraine. But it was the last real gain of the monarchy.
The War of the Austrian Succession set Europe in arms. The reign of commerce was at hand. The nations of Europe were like business houses, all in competition. All nations were determined that no one nation should become strong enough to command more than its due share of trade and production. This led to a very shaky balance of power. France and Prussia went against England and Austria.
Prussia was the new state in Europe, and Frederick the Great was Europe’s finest war-leader. Both Prussia and France did well in the war. France defeated the English heavily at Fontenoy, in 1745. And yet her government was so weak, that when the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelie came in 1748, France had to let go all she had conquered. The nerve was gone out of the government.
The colonial jealousy of France and England brought on the Seven Years War. This time Prussia went with England, against France and Austria. The mismanagement in France was terrible. Armies were not properly equipped, never ready at the right time; they did not know what to do when they were ready. Unhappy France under her sun-king seemed as if she could find not one good statesman, not one capable general. All was mediocre and muddled, whereas Prussia had the brilliant Frederick in command, and England had her great minister Pitt. Canada was utterly lost to France, and India as good as lost. In Europe the French Army was hopelessly beaten by Frederick at Rossbach, in 1757. When the Peace of Paris was signed in 1763 France was stripped and ashamed.
All this time the gaudy King Louis xv. went on in his foolish splendours and dissipation. He knew what was happening, but he flicked his jewelled fingers, and said with a smile, ‘ After me, the Deluge.’ He knew the flood of ruin was at hand. But he gaily did not care, so long as it did not rise until he was departed.
The French Parlement, or corporation of hereditary lawyers, now began to raise its head. It forced Louis to suppress the intriguing Jesuits in France, in 1764. Then it quarrelled with him about his edicts of taxation. He was vexed. One day the famous Madame du Barry, who was the King’s mistress for the time being, determined to move her foolish royal lover. She was sitting with him in one of the gorgeous rooms in Versailles. On the wall hung a fine portrait of Charles I. of England, related to the French through his Queen, Henrietta Maria. ‘ Do you see him? ‘ said Du Barry, pointing to the sad, handsome face of Charles. ‘ Your Parlement will have your head off too.’ So the woman made the King very angry against his interfering lawyers. He arrested the most important members of the court, exiled them, and banished the Parlement for ever.
Louis xv. died at last in 1774, after a long reign during which the court had glittered, chiefly with women, and the nation had sunk into shame and poverty. Louis xvi. was different. Kind, good-natured, moral, and filled with the best intentions, he would have liked to govern the nation for prosperity. But it was too late. The good king must suffer for the extravagant. Moreover, Louis xvi. was a little stupid, and his wife, the Austrian Marie Antoinette, was both clever and proud. If Louis xv. had been managed by his mistresses, Louis xvi. was a good deal under the influence of his wife. And the indirect rule of women was bad for France. The King of France was the most absolute monarch in Europe, to be compared only with the Sultan of Turkey. And in France as in Turkey, women or woman ruled the King more often than not, and the nation went to pieces.
Although the nobles were not much more than brilliant butterllies at court, on their own estates they had a good deal of power. They and the clergy paid no taxes — or very little — and yet they were the rich, great landowners. Towns also, because of merchants, were lightly taxed. It was the peasants, those vast numbers of peasants of Gaul, who, because they could not resist, were forced to pay for everything.
The nobles and great landowners divided their land into small lots, little separate farms. Thus little holdings descended from father to son, in the same family of peasants. The peasant paid a half or a third of his produce, corn, wine, cattle, to the lord of the manor, and did certain forced work, as of old. There were no big farms, except, perhaps, the manor farm itself, attached to the chateau. The Englishman, Arthur Young, who travelled in France just before the Revolution, said that this dividing the land into so many little farms, little fields, was wasteful, and led to bad farming.
Many little farmers owned their own farms. But even these were not free. They had to do certain service for the overlord; they must give him a certain number of chickens or sheep, or have their corn ground at his mill, or their grapes crushed in his wine-press, and pay his charges. Then the clouds of pigeons and other game could feed on the crops; rabbits, hares, deer might eat the young corn; and the poor peasant was not allowed to shoot one pigeon nor one rabbit, and he could claim no compensation from the nobleman. All this was very irritating.
The chief tax was the Taille, a tax on houses and land-property of the unprivileged. As soon as a house was repaired and smartened up, or as soon as the land was in good condition, the commissioner came round and raised the tax. But the grand chateaux and parks belonging to the lord paid no taxes, they were in splendid repair, whilst the villages became squalid, the land was left poverty-stricken on purpose, in order to warrant a low taxation. The people hated the Taille. The next was the Gabelle, the salt tax. The State sold all salt, the price was fixed, and every individual, man, woman, and child was forced to buy a certain amount of salt each year. The third tax was the Corvec. Men were summoned to perform a certain amount of forced labour on government roads, or government buildings, for which they were not paid. It is estimated that in some districts the French peasant paid fifty-five per cent, of all he earned to the government: that is, if he managed to earn thirty shillings a week for himself and his family, he had to pay fifteen and sixpence to the tax collector. Meanwhile the nobles were squandering their thousands at Versailles, and paying nothing.
Therefore the peasants were very angry. The parish priests sympathised with them, though the bishops were with the Crown, just as in the old days. And yet the French peasants were perhaps better off than those of Poland, or Spain, or South Germany, and they had far more liberty. But France was alive and angry, these other States were passive, sluggish. It was not so much the suffering that roused France to her Revolution, though there was much suffering, inevitably. It was rather the angry spirit of men who have had a splendid past, which has collapsed, and who now want a future of their own. It was the anger of men who feel that their lives have been used to support folly and extravagance.
The old ways were coming to an end. In every country men were thinking new thoughts, demanding more freedom. In Germany, England, France, and America great writers began to speak out, giving their new ideas. There was a great reaction against glorious kings, a great dislike of the powers that be. Greatness was out of fashion. The educated men looked back to Greece and Rome, the republics of the past. They detested empire and personal authority, and despised the Middle Ages, the Age of Faith. They began to question religion altogether: they would have no authority, neither divine nor human, imposed on them. They wanted to act just according to their own reason; they wanted two and two to make four exactly.
In Luther’s time, men were passionately interested in religious writings. But never perhaps have new books had such a great influence as they had in the middle and later eighteenth century. It has been called the Age of Reason, the very opposite of the Age of Faith. Voltaire (1694-1778) particularly hated the compulsory belief in religion. He said a man should believe what seemed to him sensible, he should not be forced to swallow extraordinary facts just because the Church bade him do so. Montesquieu (1689-1755), in his great book The Spirit of Laws, showed how he thought a government should be constituted. He had a great admiration for the English institutions, and when the Americans came to form a government for themselves, they learned muoh from his book. The man who had most influence, however, was Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). He believed in a return to nature, and in an innocent enjoyment of everything in nature. He passionately preached the rights of man. His little book, The Social Contract, has been called the Bible of the Revolution. It begins: ‘ Man is born free, but we find him everywhere in chains.’ It then goes on to say that governments should be made by the people, for themselves, that there is no divine right of kings, and that contracts with monarchs are not binding. The people should have a right to overthrow any government they do not agree with; and then, when they have really set up a government of their own, it should be all-powerful. This book had a tremendous effect. Thousands of people could reel off from it passages which they had got by heart almost unawares.
Louis xvi., the last king of the Ancient Regime, as it is called, really sympathised to some extent with those new ideas. He wanted to make things better in France. So he appointed a good minister, Turgot. But the butterfly court intrigued against Turgot, and the King had to dismiss him.
In 1773 the colonists of North America, after the affair called the Boston Tea Party, declared a cessation of commercial intercourse with England. In 1775 the first blood was shed at Lexington; and in July 4, 1776, the American Declaration of Independence was signed, which was the beginning of a new world.
France watched all this closely. She herself had been driven from America by the English. So the French Crown readily gave help to the Americans. Benjamin Franklin was honourably received at court, and treated with great consideration and respect for years, whilst he resided in France negotiating large sums of money which were paid to him by Louis xvi.’s minister to help the new states in their young independence. Since this time America has always felt a great friendliness towards France, who helped her in her first days against England.
But the French people, though they gloried in their triumph over the English in the war, were still more excited by the founding of the far-off new republic. It was an act which struck their imagination and kindled the desire of their hearts. They thought it marvellous to have no kings, for men to be their own rulers.
Although the war was successful, it was costly, and France could not afford it. The minister Necker decided as the minister Turgot had decided, that the privileged classes, nobles and clergy and wealthy burghers, must be taxed. The whole court turned against him, and in 1784 he retired before a storm of opposition.
The King had now to borrow money at a ruinous interest, to carry on the government. Then he tried to impose taxes on all classes, by issuing royal edicts. It was what the other kings had done. But the Parlement of Paris, which he had revived conscientiously when he came to the throne, immediately opposed him, and the masses of the people were with the Parlement. There was now a weak king and a strong, hostile nation. A general cry arose, that the Estates General, the genuine old French parliament, must be summoned, and all classes represented in that real parliament. But the Estates General had not met for a hundred and seventy years, and nobody was very clear as to how it should meet and what it should do if it did meet. Yet the French nation was bent on having a parliament which they themselves had chosen.
So Louis agreed to summon the Estates General, and he restored Necker. The King was now very popular, the crowds sang his praises. But there was immediate squabbling. The people claimed to have as many representatives in their Commons as the nobles and clergy had in both their upper chambers put together: for the Estates General had three chambers for the three classes. The “nobles opposed this. The King, on Necker’s advice, decided for the people. There was a further rage of controversy, as to how the votes should be counted. If the chambers voted separately, and every question was decided by a majority of chambers, then nobles with clergy could easily outvote the people all the time: whilst if individual votes were counted the people, sure of some support from the clergy, would inevitably carry the day.
The three chambers, or Three Estates, as they were called, could come to no agreement. Petitions and clamours came in from all over France, to the Third Estate, urging the Commons to make a constitution for France, a set of laws binding on king and people alike. Many of the clergy declared themselves in favour of this: they were ready to go over and take their seats with the Commons in the Third Estate. So in June 1789, the Commons took upon themselves the name of the National Assembly, and proceeded to make a constitution for France, whether the privileged classes agreed or not.
This was one Estate claiming to act for the whole nation, the populace acting for king and nobles and asking for no consent. The Crown could not allow it. The Court raged and argued. Louis went down to the House of Representatives to make his intentions clear. He wished everything for the best: he promised many reforms: but he said the Estates General must consist of the three chambers. Then Mirabeau, the great orator and statesman, rose against the King. Mirabeau was a nobleman, but he had joined the Commons and sat in the Third Estate. He declared that the three-chamber model gave power to the privileged classes, and that the Commons were determined to resist it. The National Assembly, of one House, must represent the nation, the mass of the people, not just the nobles and clergy.
Now the King must either fight or give way. He was too kind-hearted to call in troops to crush the rebellion in the Lower House. In spite of the bold words he had spoken before the National Assembly, he had to give way. He must have money to carry on the government, and he could not have money unless the people would grant it him; for he was too weak to force it from them, as his predecessors had done. Therefore at last he asked the nobles and clergy to go over and join the Commons. Many had already done so: many more obeyed. At last, at the end of all the turmoil, all the twelve hundred representatives of France — or at least as many of them as chose to stay in the Assembly — were assembled in one room, and proceeded to draw up a constitution. In the count of votes, the people now had inevitably a fixed majority.
Louis saw that he had ruined the power of the Crown. He did not intend to yield altogether so easily. His courtiers clamoured for him to call up the armies. At last he consented. Necker, whom the people liked, was dismissed. Domineering nobles were gathered round the King. A great movement of troops was ordered, many regiments were to concentrate on Paris.
When the news of this reached Paris, the city went mad with excitement and wrath. The National Assembly sat at Versailles, twelve miles away. But in Paris were the famous, fiery mob-orators and politicians like Marat and Camille Desmoulins. Meetings were held everywhere, loud cries went up, great crowds gathered and swayed and shouted, the whole city was in the streets. Soldiers quartered in Paris went over to the people.
Suddenly the cry went up, ‘ To the Bastille.’ The Bastille was the famous fortress-prison, a great frowning impregnable place of power belonging to the Crown. It was not any more of any great importance. But the people detested it for what it had been, they hated its very name. The vast masses of the people surged forward.
The Bastille could have resisted for ever, if it had been provisioned. It could have dominated and overawed Paris. But the garrison was half-mutinous. The commander did not know what to do. He was told that the King had surrendered himself to the people. So, in the afternoon, he agreed to yield up the vast fortress if his life and the lives of the garrison should be spared. The promise was given by the leaders of the crowd. But as the commandant and his men were being conducted safely off, the crowd broke through the guard and cruelly murdered them. Then the mob surged delirious through the terrible fortress-prison, liberating the few prisoners and looking with fury and hatred on the dungeons where kings had thrown their victims.
The King and Court were thoroughly frightened. Louis at once dismissed the unpopular nobles from his Council, and recalled Necker. Now the people demanded that the King should come to Paris. He, however, refused to leave the great palace of Versailles. On October 5, a great crowd of fierce and hungry women, who had met to make a demonstration against the shortage of food, surged out on to the Versailles road, and swept like a flood towards the palace. The King heard the strange tumult, and went to the window. There he saw fierce masses of terrible women, some bearing arms, mixed with men also bearing arms. They cried fiercely for bread, and demanded that the King should come with them back to Paris. He returned a doubtful answer. The mob stayed muttering in the park and grounds all night. In the morning they swept up like a sea against the palace, broke in, and surged through the splendid corridors. The life of the King and Queen was in danger, when Lafayette arrived with the National Guard, stalwart Swiss mercenaries, and held back the mob. Lafayette, however, brought a request from the town council of Paris, that the King should take up his residence in the city. Unwillingly, and with foreboding, Louis had to give way. On the afternoon of October 6, the royal party set out, with its guards, towards the Tuileries. The crowds surged and muttered. But they did not really hate the King even now. They hated the Queen more.
The National Assembly, which now called itself the ‘ Constituent Assembly,’ proceeded to form a new constitution, very much on the English model, taking the power from the Crown and putting it into the hands of the citizens. ‘ All sovereignty rests with the people,’ they said. They also reorganised the Church, taking authority away from both the Pope and the King, and putting it in the hands of the voters. The Pope issued a Bull of Condemnation against this new order, and excommunicated all those who had helped in it. The King, however, was forced to sign the whole order, though he was most unhappy and uneasy, particularly at the religious changes. He hoped secretly to get a chance soon to undo all this wicked work, for such it seemed to him.
The people suspected his intentions. Orators and newspapers charged him with being the enemy of the Revolution. In the wine-shops his name was loudly execrated, insults against him and the Queen were scrawled large on the walls. Louis longed to flee. Marie Antoinette urged him to it. At last, on a night in June 1791, the royal pair escaped in disguise in their coach through the barriers of Paris, and galloped on towards the north-east, to the troops that were stationed near Flanders. Louis thought he would place himself under the protection of his troops. Many miles were travelled, and they approached the frontier. And then, as they drew near to safety, the royal fugitives were detected and escorted back to Paris, real prisoners now.
The Assembly determined to suspend the King from his functions until they had finally drawn up the Constitution. This Constitution he would be asked to sign. If he signed it, well and good. If he refused, he would be considered to have abdicated. But the masses were already raging for the King’s deposition, and for the declaration of a republic. A vast crowd met. It was dispersed by the National Guard. But there was great resentment, then resistance, then furious, frenzied fighting and crushing, and many people, men and women, were killed. This put the rest of the citizens of Paris into greater fury.
In September 1791 the Constitution was at last finished. Louis was to be king without any power of making or altering laws: he was to occupy something of the same position in the Government as the English king occupies. Louis formally accepted this Constitution, and promised to rule by it. Many now thought the great aim was achieved, and France would enjoy a free, national government such as Britain enjoyed, a time of prosperity and liberty.
But it did not turn out so. The King did not really abide by the new system. The Queen openly hated it and scorned it all, for she was proud to the backbone. And the people were worked up, their passions were roused, they had not had enough. They wanted to make a clean sweep.
At this time, Austria, Prussia, and Russia were seizing portions of Poland, dividing the country among themselves. They were too busy to interfere in France. But when the French declared that feudalism, with the paying of tithes and taxes to the overlord, was abolished, then the neighbouring countries began to look round; for many of the tithes and taxes of the French frontiers went to German princes, or to the emperor. All Europe began to think the French Revolution was going too far, that it would upset order everywhere.
The French were quite indignant when they were asked to pay compensation for the tithes and taxes they repudiated. They had a grievance of their own. Many nobles, the King’s brothers among them, had crossed the frontiers since the Revolution began, and, establishing themselves in Treves or by the Rhine, had proceeded to drill troops and prepare armies, loudly declaring their intention of marching on the revolutionaries and chastising them severely.
Therefore the French people, very touchy, were all up in arms against their old enemy, the Emperor, who was supposed to be sheltering these runaway, menacing nobles. On either hand the war fever spread. The French people clamoured for war against Austria. Louis was quite willing, for he thought this might be a way out for him. Only the extreme revolutionaries, those who wanted a republic at once, were firmly against it. This party was called the Jacobins, because they belonged to an advanced revolutionary club which met in a building that once belonged to the Jacobin friars. The Jacobin leaders, Marat, Robespierre, Danton, declared that no good could come of a European war, at the moment where they found themselves. Yet the people wanted it. War was declared against the Emperor Leopold in April 1792.
The war began with great enthusiasm on the part of the French. But the first campaign in Belgium was a failure. The public now turned on the Kin”. The Queen was an Austrian. They declared that Louis had been in sympathy with the enemy, and had betrayed his own nation.
The Jacobins then formed a conspiracy. Danton, a barrister, was the leader. Troops that arrived in Paris from the frontier were secretly won over by the conspirators. Suddenly, on August 10, 1792, the Jacobin force made an attack upon the palace. The King was warned just in time. He fled with his family. But the palace was stormed, the Swiss guards who so faithfully defended it were cut down. The victorious insurgents crowded to the Assembly Room, and demanded that the King should be deposed.
The Assembly could not help itself. Louis was declared deposed: he was no longer king. The people were called to vote for a new Assembly. Each man was to have his vote. The Assembly should be called the Convention, and this should decide the destiny of the new republic of France.
This was the beginning of the end. France was now without a government. Who would lead, what would happen? People held their breath and trembled. The strong power’ in Paris was the Municipal Council, called the Commune. The extremist, Marat, was the leader of the Commune. He wanted the revolution to be very thorough, for there was a great, burning bitterness in him against the privileged classes.
The Commune declared that conspiracies were being formed to overthrow the new government. Paris must be searched for arms and traitors. By the end of August, the prisons were crammed with men who had been arrested because they were suspected of being friendly to the King. A tribunal was set up. Ordinary offenders, thieves, or scoundrels were sent back to prison. But men suspected of being friendly to the monarchy were thrust out of the doors and massacred in the street by the bloodthirsty, howling mob. This went on for three, even for five days, and more than a thousand people were butchered. Marat said it was the vengeance of a wrathful people on those who for centuries had ill-treated and trodden them down. But it was in part, at least, a deliberate plan carried out by the Commune.
Meanwhile the revolutionary forces under Dumouriez had inflicted a defeat at Valmy on the Prussians, and the advance of the enemy on Paris had been checked.
The Convention, elected by the men of the nation, met in September. It declared France a republic, and summoned King Louis to trial. He was found a traitor, and guillotined in January 1793.
Now began the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins were certainly a minority, yet they were in power. Civil wars broke out. In La Vendee, a district of Western France, peasants rose in arms because the Republic tried to conscript them into the army, and because they wished to defend the Church. In Lyons and Toulon were dangerous movements. The execution of the King had made enemies of Britain, Holland, and Spain. In 1793 France had to face a coalition of all the great states of Europe, except Russia. The French armies were defeated, and the collapse of the Republic seemed imminent.
Yet the Jacobins were determined to stand against everything. They knew that the majority, even in France, were against them. They were a small body. They must either fall, or deal a great blow at their opponents, that would strike terror into them and cow them for the time being.
They formed the Committee of Public Safety, led first by Danton, then afterwards by Robespierre. This Committee overruled every other authority. It at once set itself to raise troops and organise campaigns on the different fronts of battle.
And then, in Paris, it set up the Revolutionary Tribunal. Men and women were seized, who were suspected of having any connection with the aristocracy or any sympathy with the old system. The Queen was sent to the guillotine, more and more people followed her. It seemed as if the Jacobins got greedier for blood, the more they shed. Victims were condemned in batches. Even good republicans, even the very leaders who had started the Revolution, but who were now not red enough, were seized, condemned, and sent to the guillotine. For the extreme revolutionaries were frightened too. They felt all Europe was against them. They felt that even at home great numbers of the people were ready to betray the Revolution. Unless they struck first, and struck hard, and struck deep, they and all they stood for would be wiped out, the old would come back, all would be again as bad or worse than if they had never existed.
Then the Jacobins divided among themselves. Danton wished to be more merciful, and to limit the foreign wars. Hebert and Chaumette wanted to go further, to utmost extremes, to destroy every trace of the old way. They swept away the calendar, and called the year 1792 the Year One. They christened the months with new names. They made a week of ten days, and introduced the decimal system. They declared Christianity abolished, and the worship of Reason substituted for it.
But the third or middle party, led by Robespierre, ultimately triumphed. He drew the energetic revolutionaries of Paris, men and women, to his side, and obtained control of the fierce armed forces of the streets. He triumphed over his rivals. Danton and the others went to the guillotine. The Terror went on. Robespierre wanted to be supreme dictator, and to bring this about he condemned his victims by batches to death. He knew he could not last. Terror in his own heart urged him to inflict, or to try to inflict more terror on the hearts of the populace. In July 1791 men rose and denounced him in the Convention. He tried to gather his followers together, to fight for his position. But his adherents fell away. He was declared an outlaw, seized at last, and executed without any form of trial. The Terror came to an end.
King, Queen, nobles, gentry, all were gone. Republican leaders were gone too. The bloodstained crowds remained. Louis xv.’s Deluge had indeed come.
While all this was going on in Paris, the rest of France was more or less terrorised. First the provinces had to watch the foreign war, where so many of their men were enrolled and fighting. The enemy were penetrating into France, from the north, from the east, from the south. Every one felt unsafe, everything was in danger. Very bitter insurrections broke out, there was civil war against the hated rule of the Jacobins. The armies sent against the foreign enemies were disheartened and defeated. Things looked very black in 1793.
But the Jacobin leaders were swift and relentless. They crushed the rebels in France and punished them with great cruelty, using the fierce revolutionary troops against them. They appointed new, determined officers to the army, and infused into the men a great passion for the Revolution, a great hatred of foreign emperors and kings who were out to destroy the newly-risen people of France. As the Jacobins were relentless in Paris, against those who might bring back the hated old system of monarchy, the soldiers in the far fields became relentless against the foreigners who would crush the new rule of the people. The tide of war turned. The enemy was rolled back beyond the frontiers, and by the time Robespierre fell, France was almost free.
Men now began to recover their senses. The Terror was over, the hated Jacobins were gone, the people were masters and they seemed secure. What next? First, there was hostile Europe hemming France in. The French people recovered all their jauntiness. Let France expand, they cried, to her natural boundaries, of the Rhine, the Pyrenees, and the Alps. The Gallic vanity called loudly for the restoration of France to the limits of old Gaul. At the beginning, the Revolution had declared that it did not want to make conquests or acquire territories; it wanted to live at peace with all men. Now, quite the opposite, it defiantly announced itself at war with its neighbours, and proceeded to extend its dominions at the cost of all.
But at home, people wanted to solidify the country and appease many enemies by making a moderate Constitution. The present governing power was the Convention. It had the armies under its control. Men were now tired of the Convention. They wanted something quite new, an arrangement whereby perhaps there would be more balance of power, where the old Convention would not be so autocratic: for the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety had been far more deadly and overbearing than the old Kings’ Councils. But Convention decided that the first assemblies of the new Constitution should consist of two-thirds of its own members. There was an uproar. Convention was not going to be bullied any more by the mob. It called out its soldiers, under their young officer, Napoleon Bonaparte. When the masses attacked the Convention they were driven off with artillery.
Convention now came to an end, in October 1795, and the new assemblies met. People were tired of political troubles at home. They saw, or felt that nothing could be gained by altering the government every year. So they turned round, they looked outwards at the surrounding world. Their hearts fired up. All their enthusiasm they put behind their soldiers in the field. The old regime was smashed in France. Now they were ready to destroy it in all the world.
The victories of the revolutionary armies had caused Prussia to withdraw from the war, yielding to France territories on the left bank of the Rhine, and obtaining promise that Prussia should be regarded as the chief power in North Germany, and should not be attacked. Spain also came out of the war. This left France to face Britain and Austria only.
Austria was the immediate enemy. She was to be attacked by one army in Italy, whilst two others marched towards Vienna. Napoleon had command of the Italian army. The Italians themselves loathed the Austrian rule, so they welcomed his advance against their masters. France watched, electrified. They saw the brilliant way in which Napoleon defeated and broke the Austrians in Italy. Austria made peace in 1797, and this left France with only one enemy, Britain.
The next step was a strange one. The Directors in Paris ordered Napoleon to undertake the invasion of Egypt. He reached Egypt safely, and then his position was endangered by Nelson’s victory of the Nile. At the same time Napoleon heard that there was a new coalition of powers in Europe, against the French. He determined to return. Russia had joined Austria in the attack on the Republic. He hastened back. His Italian campaign had made him the hero of France. Everybody believed he could bring peace and order to the land. He was expected with excitement, the coming great man.
Meanwhile the executive government called the Directory, composed of five Directors, were muddling things at home. When Napoleon arrived in Paris many leaders and politicians came to him complaining bitterly of this. He listened to these unsatisfied republicans. They asked him to be the leader, to take control of the government. He was such a hero among the people that they thought this could be done without any more fighting in Paris. But the muddling Directors and assemblies refused to come out of office. Napoleon had command of the troops of Paris. He just marched down to the Assembly Rooms and scattered the obstinate legislators. Then there was nothing to oppose him.
After this, for twenty years the history of France is a history of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a wonderful military genius, but he was also a brilliant ruler in peace time. He knew that if the government rested with the mass of the people, it would be a disastrous mob rule where everything was pulled down as soon as it was put up. So he most carefully arranged a government which depended upon the richer, more stable, property-owning, privileged classes. And yet he ruled in the name of the people.
Again we see the Tyrant rising up. Napoleon became an almost absolute sovereign, much as Louis xiv. had been. But Napoleon ruled in the name of the people, according to the agreement of the people. Though he was supreme, he was supreme because the people willed it, not because he had been appointed by God. Louis xiv. claimed to be king by divine right: the people had nothing to do with it. Napoleon was emperor by the will of the people, although, for form’s sake, he crowned himself in presence of the Pope.
God-made kings and nobles were destroyed in France for ever. The new ones would be man-made. This was the great change. The actual government rested in the hands of the educated, well-to-do citizen classes, very much as it had done in Louis xiv.’s time. The poor were not in any very different position. Money ruled instead of birth, that was all. A man who had no money found himself pretty much where he was before, though some of the annoyances were removed, and he was free from the insult of God-made inferiority. In the new system, any man who might become rich might become a ruler. So a modern commercial or industrial state, be it kingdom or republic, was established.
The difference lies in this, that if a man had ability to make money, he might ultimately govern the republic. Henceforth there was to be no superiority of one man over another: only the superiority of the money-maker. Prosperity was the only clue to life.