CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME

PAGE

AUTHOR'S PREFACE ...••• 9 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE ..... 19

I. THE MONARCHY. 1789-1792.

CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY , . . . -35 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES . 55

CHAPTER I.

DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN IDEAS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION . . . . . .79

I. No Republican Party in France. Monarchical opinions of Montescjujeu, Voltaire, d'Argcnson, Diderot, d'Holbach, Helvetius, Rousseau, and Mably, among the illustrious dead: of RayiiaC Condorcet, Mirabeau, Sieyes, d'An-

CONTENTS

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traigues, La Fayette, and CamiUe Desmoulins, among the celebrated and influential living.—II. Certain writers aim at the introduction of republican institutions under the Monarchy.—III. Increasing weakness of the Monarchy : the opposition of Parliament.—IV. Parliament prevents the absolute Monarchy from reforming itself, and opposes the establishment of Provincial Assemblies.—V. English and American influence.—VI. How far are the writers of the period democratic ?—VII. The democratic and republican states of mind.

CHAPTER II.

DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN IDEAS AT THE OUTSET OF THE REVOLUTION . . . . .127

I. Convocation of the Estates-General. The Ca?iicrs.—ll. Formation of the National Assembly.—III. The taking of the Bastille and the municipal revolution.—IV. The Declaration of Rights.—V. Logical consequences of the Declaration.

CHAPTER III.

THE MIDDLE CLASS AND THE PEOPLE (" BOURGEOISIE " AND DEMOCRACY) . . . . .161

I. Neither all the logical social consequences nor all the logical political consequences ensue from the Dcctaration of Rights* At this period there arc neither Socialists nor Republicans.—II. The organisation of the* Monarchy.— III. The organisation of the bourgeoisie as the prtviit-gcc! middle class. The rule of the property-holders.—IV. The Democratic movement.—V. The application of the rule of the property-holders.—VI, The claims of the Democrats arc emphasised.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV.

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FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND BIRTH OF

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (1790, 1791). 312

I. The Democratic Party.—II. Federation.—III. The first Republican Party: Mme. Robert, her paper and her salon. —IV. First manifestations of Socialism.—V. Feminism.—

VI. The campaign against the rule of the bourgeoisie.—

VII. Signs of the times ; Republicanism from December, 1790, to June, 1791.—VIII. Humanitarian politics.—IX. Summary.

CHAPTER V.

THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES AND THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT (JUNE SI-JULY 17, 1791) 260

I. The character of Louis XVI. Historic importance of the flight to Varennes.—II. The attitude of the Constituent Assembly.—III. The attitude of Paris. The people ; the sections; the clubs; the press.—IV. The King's return acts as a check on the Republican Party.—V. Polemics on the question: "Republic or Monarchy?"—VI. The Republican movement in the provinces.—VII. The Democrats and the affair of the Champ de Mars.

CHAPTER VI.

THE REPUBLICANS AND THE DEMOCRATS AFTER THE

AFFAIR OF THE CHAMP DE MARS . . • 3 I 5

I. Scission and reaction after July i7th.—II. Aggravation of the bourgeois system.—III. The Assembly closes every legitimate outlet for Democracy and Republicanism.— IV. Restoration of the royal power.

CHAPTER VII.

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FROM THE MEETING OF THE SECOND ASSEMBLY TO JUNE 20, 1792 . . . . , -338

I. Elections to the Legislative Assembly and temporary abdication of the Democratic and Republican parties.—II. First acts and policy of the Assembly.—III. Public opinion.—IV. The King's policy. Declaration of war with Austria. Quarrel between the Assembly and the King.—V. Anti-republican politics of Robespierre.— VI. The day of June 20, 1792.—VII. Its consequences.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

IN this Political History of the French Revolution, I propose to show how the principles of the Declaration of Rights were, between 1789 and 1804, put into operation by the institutions of the time ; or interpreted by speeches, by the press, by the policies of the various political parties, and by the manifestations of public opinion. Two of these prijiciples, the principle of the equality of rights, and the principle of national sovereignty, were those most often invoked in the elaboration of the new state politic. They are, historically, the essential principles of the Revolution ; variously conceived, differently applied, according to thes period. The chief object of this book is the narration of the vicissitudes which these two principles underwent.

In other words, I wish to write the political history of the Revolution from the point of view of the origin and the development of Democracy and Republicanism.

Democracy is the logical consequence of the principle of equality. Republicanism is the logical consequence of the principle of national sovereignty. These two consequences did not ensue at once. In place of Democracy, the men of 1789 founded a middle-class government, a suffrage of property-owners. In place of the Republic, they organised a limited monarchy. Not until August 10, 1792, did the French form themselves into a Democracy by establishing universal suffrage. Not until September 22nd did they abolish the Monarchy and create the Republic. The republi-

can form of government lasted, we may say, until 1804—that is, until the time when the government of the Republic was confided to an Emperor. Democracy, however, was suppressed in 1795, by the constitution of the year III, or, if not suppressed, at least profoundly modified by a combination of universal suffrage and suffrage with a property qualification. To begin with the people as a whole was required to surrender its rights in favour of one class —the middle class, the bourgeoisie; this bourgeois regime was the period of the Directoire. Then the entire people was required to abdicate its rights in favour of one man, Napoleon. Bonaparte, and this plebiscitary republic was the period of the Consulate. The history of Democracy and the Republic during the Revolution falls naturally under four headings :

1. From 1789 to 1792 the period of the origins

of Democracy and the Republic—that is, of the formation of the Democratic and Republican parties under a constitutional monarchy by a property-owners' suffrage.

2. From 1792 to 1795 was tf 16 period of the

Democratic Republic.

3. From 1795 to 1799 was ^ period of the

Bourgeois Republic.

4. From 1799 to 1809 was the period of the

Plebiscitary Republic.

These transformations of the French state politic manifest themselves in a multitude of facts, in a great complexity of circumstance. " We have lived six centuries in as many years," said Boissy d'Anglas, in 1795. F° r > in fact, as it proved impossible to reform the old state of affairs pacifically and slowly, a sudden and violent revolution was inevitable, and the work of destruction, of change, and of reconstruction was done in haste, almost at a blow ; work which must, had matters followed a normal course, according to

precedents, domestic and foreign, have demanded very many years for its consummation. Many as were the facts, short as was the time, the complexity of circumstance entailed a still greater confusion. This complexity arose from the fact that the Revolution, while at work upon domestic organisation, had to sustain a perpetual foreign war ; a war against almost the whole of Europe ; a hazardous war, full of sudden and unforeseen vicissitudes ; and, simultaneously, to cope with intermittent civil war as well. These conditions of war, domestic and foreign, impressed on the development and application of the principles of 1789 a quality of feverish haste ; of makeshift, contradiction, weakness, violence, especially from 1792 onwards. The attempts to constitute the Democratic Republic were made in a military camp ; * under the stress of victory or defeat; in the fear of a sudden invasion, or the enthusiasm of a victory achieved. Men had at the same time to legislate rationally for the future, for times of peace, and empirically for the present, for war. These two motives became confused, in the minds of men and in reality. In the various reconstructions of the political edifice, there was neither unity of plan, nor continuity of method, nor logical sequence.

Entangled though they be—these hosts of contradictory and concurrent actions and circumstances—we may yet, without much difficulty, contrive to perceive a chronological sequence, successive general periods, and a general trend of events. To extract facts from the mass of things, and recount these facts, is less easy. If no plan, no method be perceptible in the policies of the men of the Revolution, the historian will find it all the more difficult himself to devise a method of selection in dealing with the lights and shadows, the; lives and values, of which he must compose the picture of so complex, so fluent a reality. Yet we do see matters more clearly than those contemporaries who

struggled in the dark ; all ignorant of the issue of things, of the sequence of the drama; who (not unlike ourselves to-day, perhaps) gave weight to matters of no consequence and ignored the significant facts. Certainly the knowledge of results is no infallible touchstone in the selection of facts, for the results are not final; the Revolution lives to-day in another shape and under other conditions ; but we do at least see partial results, periods accomplished, and a development of things, which allow us to distinguish the ephemeral from the lasting, to separate the facts which have had their consequences in our history from those of_no particular significance.

)JThe facts which we should select in order to throw as much light as possible on political evolution are those which have had direct and evident influence upon that evolution/; Political institutions, the rule by property suffrage, and the rule of the Monarchy; universal suffrage; the Constitution of 1793 ; the revolutionary government; the Constitution of the year III ; the Constitution of the year VIII ; the flux of ideas which prepared, established, and modified these institutions ; the parties ; their tendencies and their quarrels ; the great currents of opinion; the revolutions of public feeling ; the elections ; plebiscites ; the revolt of the new spirit against the spirit of the past, of new forces against the forces of the ahcien regime, of the lay mind against the clerical, of the rational principle of free examination against the Catholic principle of authority—in these things more especially consists the political life of France.

Other factors had their influence, but less directly : battles, for example, and the doings of diplomatist and financier. It is indispensable to know something of these, but we may take a general view, and concern ourselves chiefly with results. Thus, the victory of Valmy, becoming known at the moment of the

establishment of the Republic, facilitated that establishment, because it led to the retreat of the Prussians. If we are aware of this result of the famous cannonade, we know as much as will help us to an understanding of contemporary political history, and it would be useless to place before you a picture of Dumouriez* military operations. Tfie Peace of Basle, in 1795, hastened the, establishment in France of a normal domestic government; it is enough to be aware of this effect, without going into the details of the negotiations or the clauses of the treaty. The discounting of paper money and the difficulties of the Stock Exchange brought about material conditions and a state of mind which resulted, in Germinal and Prairial of the year III, in two popular insurrections ; it is not essential, in order to grasp this political result, to enter into the downfall of the Revolutionary finances.

Military, financial, and diplomatic history I leave on one side. I do not wish to disguise the fact that this abstraction may seem dangerous, and I expose myself to the reproach of having falsified history by a process of mutilation. But every attempt at history is necessarily an abstraction:; the retrospective efforts of the mind can only embrace a portion of the immense reality. It is an abstraction, even, to speak only of one period ; and, in respect of that period, to speak only of France ; and, in respect of the Revolution, to speak only of politics. I have tried at least thoroughly to elucidate the facts indispensable to a knowledge of these politics, and, if I had also had to elucidate the facts which have only an indirect bearing on the matter, I should have been forced to give less time and less space to the indispensable facts themselves. No historical work is sufficient to itself or to the reader. This of mine, with the rest, presupposes and demands the reading of others.

This is how I have chosen the facts. Now as to the order, in which I have presented them.

The chronological order seemed necessary, and I have been able to follow it in almost the whole of the first part of this work. For the period from 1789 to 1792 I had only to expose, as they came, the manifestations of the democratic and republican ideas, and to set them against the background of the constitutional monarchy and the bourgeois system 1 . In the case of the three other periods, the democratic, bourgeois, and plebiscitary republics, it would have been difficult to explain at the same time and in the same chronological sequence the political institutions, the conflict of parties, and the vicissitudes of public opinion. This would have been to allow the confusion that exists in reality to enter into the narrative, especially in the case of the democratic republic. I thought it best to present, turn by turn, each of these manifestations of the same political life, as it were, in several parallel chronological series. I know the vicissitudes of public opinion and those of institutions are connected, that they exist in a perpetual relation of reciprocal influence, and whenever necessary I have shown this connection. I have tried to demonstrate that these various phenomena are separate only in my book, not in reality ; that they are different aspects of the same evolutionary process.

In this respect I have not hesitated, when necessary, to repeat myself, and these repetitions will perhaps

my recital a lucidity which is not to be found in the facts, and since we must, in order to perceive their concatenation, consider the facts in groups, and in succession.

If neither my method nor my plan should give full satisfaction, I hope at least that the reader will feel, as regards my "documentation," a security born of .the joature of my subject. I should like here to state

that the reader need not fear that it may have been materially impossible for me to make the acquaintance of all the essential sources. With other subjects it would have been otherwise. For instance, the economic and social history of the Revolution is dispersed over so many sources that it is actually impossible, in one lifetime, to deal with them all, or even with the most important. He who would write this history unaided could only here and there attain the whole truth, and would end by producing only a superficial sketch of the whole, drawn at second or third hand. But in the case of political history, if it be reduced to the facts I have chosen, it is possible for a man, in the course of twenty years, to read the laws of the Revolution, the principal journals, correspondences, deliberations, speeches, election papers, and the biographies of those who played a part in the political life of the time. It is a little over twenty years since I began this course of research. I began, in 1879, by studying the speeches of the orators, and for the last fourteen years, in the course of my lectures at the Sorbonne, I have studied the institutions, the parties^ and the lives of the prominent actors. I have thus had the time necessary to explore the sources of my subject. If the form of this book smacks of improvisation, at least my researches have been lengthy, and I believe on the whole complete. I do not think I have overlooked a single important source, nor have I made a single assertion that is not directly drawn from these sources.

It only remains to speak of these sources.

I will not enumerate them in the form of a bibliographical list; they will be indicated, for the greater: part, either in the text or in the notes.

Briefly, these sources are as follows :

The laws, in their authentic and official form, are to be found in the Baudoin Collection, in the Louvre,;

in the Bulletin des Lois, in the procte-verbaux of the legislative assemblies, and also, singly, in special impressions These various collections complete one another. But examples are so rare' that one cannot have them to hand in one's own study. I have, therefore, for daily use, relied on the impression published by Duvergier, after having assured myself, by a large number of verifications, that this reprint is faithful. But Duvergier gives only a portion of the laws. I have found those which he does not give in the official texts already mentioned, which, excepting the Baudoin Collection, are to be found in the Bibliothfcque Nationale. I have taken good care not to go to the journals for these laws, for all, including the Monitettr, reproduce them incorrectly.

Decrees of the Government, of the Committee of Public Safety, of the executive Directory, and of the Consuls, ministerial decisions, &c., have been taken from the official texts, from the register and the minutes of the Committee of Public Safety (which I have recently published), from the Bulletin of the Convention, from the papers of the Executive Directory (unpublished, in the National Archives), from the Ridflctear, the organ of the Directory, and from the Moidteur, the organ of the Consular Government.

Facts as to elections and popular votes I have taken from the proch-verbaux> chiefly unpublished, in the Archives.

With regard to political laws and institutions, this choice of sources imposed itself ; there was no room' for hesitation. In the case of the history of the Assemblies, the parties, and public opinion, the choice was not so simple.

One usually has recourse to memoirs in order to study party life and opinion. But not only are there very few memoirs which may be taken as absolutely authentic : there are still fewer whose authors have

not thought more of the figure they cut than of the truth. Written after the event, mostly under the Restoration, they have one very serious failing in <x>mmon: I mean the distortion of memory which disfigures almost every page. I have only made use of memoirs as an exception, to confirm other testimony rather than to contradict it; and as I have never used them without indicating my source, the reader is warned that in such cases the information is doubtful or accessory.

For such testimony to be credible it is not enough that it should come from a contemporary ; it must have been given at the time of the event to which it relates, or very soon after, in the plenitude of memory.

To memoirs I prefer letters and the journals. Letters are so rare that I was not embarrassed in my choice. But the journals are very numerous. I have chosen, for preference, those which were obviously influential, those which were the organs of a party or a prominent individual : such as the Mercure Nationale, the organ of the young Republican party ; or the Dtfenseur de la Constitution, the organ of Robespierre.

The journals are not only the interpreters of opinion ; they also give accounts of the debates in the Assemblies ; and they are alone in giving detailed accounts. There were at that time no official reports, either verbatim or in summary. There is an official prods-verbal , but so short and dry that it gives no idea of the conflicts of the tribune. I have used the prods-verbal to determine the order of the debates, and as a frame to be filled in, and I have then had recourse to the accounts in the journals, especially in the Journal des Dtbats et des Dicrets and the Moniteur, as regards the Revolution -from 1790 onwards, and for certain periods the Point du Jour, the Journal logographique, and the Rtpubli-cain franfais have been used. There was no short-

VOL. i. 2

hand in those days. Sometimes the journalist gives a speech from a manuscript left with him by the orator. More often he reconstitutes the debates from notes taken during the session; opinions, from memory. According to the occasion, I have used those accounts which seemed to me to be the clearest, the com-pletest, the most likely. Sometimes I have used several accounts of one debate, indicating when I change from source to source. When I cite no source, I have usually employed the Moniteur.

Many speeches and reports were printed singly by the orators themselves, at the order of the Assembly or without it. I have used these impressions whenever I have met with them. A certain number of these pieces have been reprinted in our times, in the Archives parlementaires. But I have never had recourse to these Archives for the debates in the Assembly. The accounts of the sessions to be found therein are without method, without comment, and without indication of sources ; one does not know how to take them. Althojugh this collection is official in its mode of publication, its accounts of the debates are not official, and are not authentic.

I might say much more concerning my sources, but I have often had occasion to criticise them by a word or two in the footnotes, and the reader will doubtless see, by the use I have made of them, what opinion I hold of their value.

As for the state of mind in which I have written this book, I will say only that I have tried, as far as in me lay, to write a historical work, and not to advance a theory. I should wish my work to be considered as an example of the application of the historical method to the study of a period disfigured by passion and by legend.

A. AULARD.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

I.

M. AULARD, one of the most eminent and untiring students of the French Revolution, and Director of the well-known periodical devoted to Revolutionary history, La Revolution fratifaise (in which so much of his work appears), has here, as he tells us, as the result of twenty years of research, given us only one special aspect of a period.

" No historical work," he says, " is sufficient to itself or to the reader. This of mine presupposes and demands the reading of others."

To many readers of this book the history of the French Revolution will be thoroughly familiar. But in order to increase its interest for those who have not the leisure or the inclination to read other histories together with M. Aulard's, and have not a knowledge or a memory of the period sufficient to 'dispense with such reading, it will be well to preface the author's text with a brief sketch of the events leading up to the Revolution, a few remarks on the causes and the nature of the Revolution, and a chronological summary of the chief events of the period covered by this book. Again, for the 'general reader only, I have also added some explanatory notes and brief biographical sketches of the principal figures of the time.

Louis XVI was unfortunate in succeeding to the throne after two wholly unsatisfactory reigns ; unhappy, too, in that his succession had been anticipated as the only chance of better things. He was not the man for the times. As we know, he meant well, but he did not well know what he should mean.

Slow, good, slightly stupid, adoring a masterful and worldly wife, Louis XVI was the man to whom France looked, in the spring of 1774, for the salvation she so sorely needed.

The reign of Louis XIV saw arbitrary monarchy definitely established. Many of the nobles, shorn of their ancient power, had to live at Court to live at all; and so, being strong in numbers, had largely to fill sinecures (to the utter prejudice of merit), save those who still, by the exaction of their feudal rights, were able to draw blood from a stone or a living from a starving country. Nobles, Protestants, Parliaments, liberty of life, liberty of conscience, all went down before Louis XIV. Under his heir the bleeding of France continued; warfare under Louis XIV, warfare and debauchery under Louis XV ; warfare not against enemies only, but against the intellect and its liberty. Of the state of France in 1774, of the state in which it lingered until 1789, I shall say a few words later. Here it is enough to say that France was a starving nation, on the verge of bankruptcy from the simplest causes. The crowd of nobles to be kept in feudal state ; of courtiers, of younger sons, to be found sinecures, commissions, or offices ; the hosts of lawyers, and, not least, the Church, were more than one poor country, partly cultivated by obsolete methods, could possibly perpetually support. Yet support them, for a time, she did, and to do so contracted debts. The matter was no more complex than this. Proper taxation, better cultivation; it sounds an easy reform', but led to the Revolution and the Terror.

Let us remember that the Middle Ages were hardly over. Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu had secularised the faculty of reason ; but if some few of the upper classes reasoned and honoured philosophers, it was largely as a fashion. The Latin is apt to separate his theoretical principles from his prejudices ; only when they coincide, or when he is ridden by a disinterested theory, is he likely to act energetically. Individuals of the middle classes in the cities, and some of the younger nobles, were beginning to think ; even some of the clergy. But the Court did not, could not think. It craved, with the solidarity of common, if fiercely individual, needs. The general mass of the bourgeoisie could not think any more than it can to-day, although it was then the fashion to respect the conclusions of reason, not to laugh at them as eccentric or dfrnodt, as is the modern fashion. As for the people, they; had not as yet learned that thinking was a human function.

It seems easy to-day to understand that a bankrupt France, with a starving peasantry and a vast, unproductive, greedy aristocracy, could only be redeemed by putting the idlers to productive work, giving the peasants more land to till in a better way, and taxing those who had the money to pay. It was not easy then ; in short, it was not at once understood, nor was it ever understood to be the only thing that mattered. People believed that if one could find the right man, the man who really understood finance, all would go merrily"; every man of noble blood—that is, every man, since the peasantry and the bourgeoisie were not yet men—would find for himself and his sons to the third and fourth generation titles, offices, sinecures, corn-missions, with ample pay and security of pay, and a gentleman could live as he should. Even the people believed in such a man ; were he found, their burdens might be lightened J they might even know justice.

Scylla and Charybdis were as nothing to this. On

the one hand, the leeches, demanding richer blood ; on the other, the patient, crying for fewer leeches. Who should perceive the paradox? who solve the problem? Not Louis; but he always hoped that others could.

The history of Louis' reign is a tale of physicians, called in, one after another, sometimes in consultation, to attend to this case of a dying patient and the hungry leeches. Surely the right man must be found !

Maurepas was the first: a pleasant, worldly pld gentleman of seventy-three. Under Louis XV he had not done well, having opposed the Well-Beloved's harem. Out of favour so long, whatever more natural than that he should care not greatly for anything but to warm himself in the kingly smile? He could not last long: while he lasted, should he not be master? Therefore, for ministers, rising men ; risen not high enough for rivalry ; low enough to seek his favour and support. As for the country—Louis must not be perplexed, the Court must be fed, the country must pay : if not now, then after a good year or so.

Old M. Maurepas was honest in this—he knew his limitations. Presiding over the Council, his apartments communicating with the King's, he chose for the actual direction of affairs Turgot, Malesherbes, and Necker; and his choice in one case might have saved France. He repented—in time.

Malesherbes had the law in his blood, but he also had a heart. He wished to give each his rights. Men should think and worship as they chose ; if accused, a man ^ might even defend himself. Torture should be abolished. Personal security should be established by abolishing lettres de cachet; no more should casual enemies, inconvenient creditors, superfluous husbands, or rebellious sons be cast into prison without trial, without accusation, there to be left, and, usually, forgotten.

Turgot—who worked in conjunction with Malesherbes —was the man for France; the man who should have saved her, preventing the Revolution. Maurepas, in him, got more than he looked for. He was a thinker, a statesman, an economist, a humane man. The amelioration of the condition of the people seemed to him more important than junketings at Court. He proposed to carry on the Government by taxing those who could pay : the nobles and clergy. Statute labour should be abolished, that the peasant might give all his energies to cultivation. Internal duties should be abolished, that food might be cheap. Provincial assemblies should accustom the people to self-government, and prepare for the restoration of the Estates-General, which would have the power and, he hoped, the will, to tax all in proportion.

He would have taxed the peasants at once less cruelly, have decreased feudal dues. Consequently the nobles were against him. He would have decreased the work of the lawyers;; he would have repealed unjust decrees'; so the Parliaments were his enemies. He was a good and able man, and jLouis became aware of it and trusted him. So Maurepas became afraid of him. He abrogated the Corn Laws, would have broken the ring by which landowners produced and fattened on years of famine. The proposal to tax the clergy, the nobles, the Parliament, to bleed them as though they were peasants, was the end of Turgot. The Court and Maurepas had their way'; Louis dismissed the man who might have saved him and with him France. But he did so unwillingly. "Only you and I care anything about the people," he said.

Clugny^ followed, then Necker. Necker was a banker;- 'an administrator, not a statesman. His raison d'etre was to feed the Court. It is to his credit thai he exacted, before feeding; it, fresh liberties for

the people. For he, too, was a reformer at heart, moderate and cautious ; but his business, after all, was that of magician; he must fill the royal purse.

France was unwilling to be bled ; he was unwilling to bleed her. A banker, he negotiated loans. To do so he must publish accounts ; to pay them he must establish a publicly administered revenue. His accounts were published; meanwhile he counselled economy. Economy was too much for the courtiers, so Necker followed Turgot. And Maurepas shortly died.

The Court had so far managed Louis through this amiable old man, whose rooms communicated with his King's, Now the Queen took his place ; henceforth the Court must act through her. It is reported that she could not understand thfe popular distress where bread was unobtainable, when brioche was so much more palatable. Whether innocence or ignorance or irony prompted the remark, she was a poor adviser for a dull man. So far the ministers had intended reforms, had preached economy, and had fallen before the Court. Henceforth the Court appoints its own men, and the deluge approaches fast.

Calonne, third after Necker, affected the purse of a Fortunatus. In him the Court had a man after its heart. No more scrimping; they would spend as they chose. No promises; actual hard cash ; pensions for the nobles, pay for the officers, ffites for the Queen. Loan after loan was raised, and the interest was paid.

Alas I the Golden Age did not, could not, last long. The credit of the Government came to an end ; no one would invest in further loans. So even Calonne had to fall back on taxation.

The people this time would not pay 1 ; times were Had. The nobles could ; but there was no power in the State to make them do so.

Calonne decided that it was time to shift the responsibility. He convoked the Notables'; they gathered at Versailles in February, 1787. He was going to ask, who had always given.

Let the actual state of things be put before these, the heads of the country : they can put their heads together ; and, being what they are, what they commend will be effected. Here was a way of shifting the blame.

Calonne, in his opening speech, disclosed an enormous deficit; was blamed for it, justly and ungratefully ; tried to blame others ; and recommended a tax on land, payable by all alike. The Notables had come with an appetite ; to share in the spoils, not to provide them. Calonne was dismissed, and married a rich widow ; he. had not feathered his own nest.

Brienne, Archbishop of Sens, his opponent, was chosen to succeed him, Brienne, having found the Notables follow his lead against Calonne, believed himself indeed their leader. But where to lead? for he had no plan. Office was his ambition'; but how to keep it?

Meanwhile the Notables did something; they sanctioned the establishment of provincial assemblies —necessary for the peaceful imposition of taxes; regulated the corn trade, abolished compulsory statute labour, passed a Stamp Act, and dissolved. Going each to his own place, the Notables did one thing : made known throughout France the perilous state of the Government and the miserable state of the people.

Parliament (the Court in Paris which registered decrees before they could become law) saw a chance in these days of increasing its powers. Brienne required the registration of the Stamp Act and a demand for territorial subsidies. Parliament was obdurate. Louis banished it to Troyes, of which it soon grew tired.

Returning, having surrendered, it suffered a " bed of justice," a visit from the King. For already matters were so desperate with Brienne that he saw nothing for it but further loans. To force the Parliament to register his edicts, the " bed of justice " was announced. As a bribe Louis promised to publish yearly accounts, to convoke the Estates-General within five years, and to allow Protestant members to resume their avocations. It was not enough; Parliament refused the loans.

Members were banished ; the royal Due d'0rl£ans among them. Parliament passed a decree protesting the illegality of lettres de cachet; as for the banished members, they must return. Louis annulled the decree. Parliament declared itself incompetent to tax ; it demanded the Estates-General. Further, it decreed its members inviolable, and any body that might seek to usurp its functions incompetent.

Brienne sought Lanvignon, and took his advice. The entire magistracy of France was exiled in a day, and a plenary court was to take its place.

He reckoned without the people. Brittany, B£arn, Dauphin^, Flanders, Languedoc, Provence, protested and were ready to rise ; nobles, clergy, bourgeois, people : all France protested. The plenary court could not be formed, would not have been allowed to meet.

Brienne summoned an assembly of the clergy. They also protested against his plenary court. Let the Estates-General be summoned. They alone could repair the finances and settle the struggle for power.

Foiled on all hands, Brienne gave way, and spoke the word that started the Revolution. On August 8,

1788, the Estates-General were convoked for May,

1789. Necker was recalled, Parliament sat once more, and France busied herself with preparing for the elections.

II.

The condition of France was briefly this : that she was insolvent, enormously in debt, and hopelessly unproductive.

Only a portion of her lands was under cultivation, and that of the poorest kind ; indeed, the conditions made cultivation almost impossible. And her crops were almost her sole source of wealth. Manufactures were few, the export trade small; as for internal commerce, the internal tariffs reduced it to the absolute minimum. Her crops, raised on exhausted soil by half-starved peasants, had supported for years an enormous number of more or less idle clergy, nobles, officers, and lawyers. The aristocracy increased by the process of breeding, and the feudal dues were increased ; as the lesser nobles and the gentry more and more became sycophants of the Court, dependent on the army, the law, and the Court itself (a state of things brought about by the suppression of their once unlimited power), heavier taxes had to be imposed. Too large a proportion of the population was resolved to live in luxury, and, if possible, in idleness. The peasant was taxed until he barely, lived ; the only means of raising money was to tax him further, since the nobles and clergy were privileged, and could not be forced to pay taxes ; so not infrequently he died. No one thought of relaxing his burdens to enable him to pay more to the Government; few thought of taxing those who drew their wealth from him;—the nobles and clergy. Bankruptcy and revolution, or the reduction or taxation of the clergy and aristocracy, were inevitable ; yet few seem 1 to have realised as much.

The actual condition of the people can best be realised by an inspection of the curious documents known as cahiers —" quires of complaints and grievances." The theory of the Estates was this : it was

a conference between the King and his people : the people laid their troubles before the King, who made them comfortable promises ; the King laid his troubles before the people, that is, told them how much money he required; and the people, in their three Estates, retired and discussed the ways and means of raising the money. When the Court had obtained what it wanted, the Estates were dissolved.

The people brought their troubles to the King in all good faith. A hope was aroused in France such as the people had never known.

An examination of the cahiers of the Third Estate reveals an amazing state of affairs.

I do not propose here to attempt to give a complete picture of the peasant's life ; there is space to touch only on a few, a very few, of his grievances : they are, in all conscience, enough.

First, let us take his tenure of land. The peasant owned his land, as a rule, on a fief from his seigneur.

To begin with, he must work so many days in the year for his seigneur, who could enforce the cultivation of his fief.

Secondly, he paid all manner of feudal dues. These dues were usually in kind, not invariably excessive. But there was often a multiplicity of these dues, and they were usually excessive ; and the seigneur, if short of money, would sell one or more dues, or perhaps the entire fief, to a money-lender or townsman ,• so that some peasants had to satisfy several masters at once.

The peasant could not plant what crops he pleased ; so the rotation of crops was impossible, and the soil was impoverished.

The seigneur had the right of keeping vast flocks of pigeons. These fed on the peasant's crops. The peasant must not scare them away. He had the right to graze his cattle and horses on the peasant's hay.

The peasant must give notice when he wished to

get his crops in. While waiting for the notice to expire, a storm might destroy his grapes or grain.

The seigneur's domains often abounded with game : wild boars, deer, birds of all kinds, to say nothing of wolves, foxes, and rabbits. The peasant must never kill them, never drive them off his fields ; must let them eat, trample his crops, kill his flocks and his poultry. The seigneur can ride with all the hunt through the peasant's standing corn.

The peasant can get his corn ground only at the seigneur's mills. These may be miles away, in on!e case " across six fords." If the water be too low, he must wait three days for the rain to fall before he may go elsewhere. He may not even crush a handful of corn at home between two stones.

He must take his grapes to the seigneur's vats, his olives to the seigneur's press. Apparatus and helpers are often so indifferent that the products are ruined. To mill and press and vat he pays a heavy toll.

Of extra dues and exactions, some dated back six hundred years. Sometimes there were titles ; if there were none, and the seigneur wished to " revive " a due, a notary could always be found to fabricate a title.

Merchants who bought such titles—often out of a kind of snobbery—would farm them out or employ collectors. Impositions led to litigation and perpetual bitterness.

"Often the seigneur had rights of justice. These he would farm out; the fanner, lived by the fines inflicted.

For any offence against the seigneur—for snaring a rabbit or scaring doves—the peasant was punished with mediaeval brutality. Breaking on the wheel and branding and the lash were common punishments, and the galleys were always full.

Of the taxes, perhaps the most iniquitous was the salt tax or gabelle. It was anything but uniform. And lest a man should try to evade it by going without

salt, the law compelled him, on pain of death or mutilation, to buy enormous amounts of salt each year. But he must not use table salt for salting pork or beef; he must buy different salt at a different price, and have a written statement made out of the purpose for which he required it.

In some parts he was forced to buy salt for fourteen, persons (one supposes on the supposition that he might have fourteen children). In some places every person over seven had to buy seven pounds of salt yearly. None but the farmers of the tax might sell salt, and they kept about half their takings for themselves. In some places salt was really scarce, and no allowance was made for children. Smuggling went on everywhere ; thousands were hanged or otherwise punished every year.

The chief property tax was the tattle. It was assessed in an arbitrary manner, according to the supposed capacity of a district.

At the least sign of prosperity the tattle was increased. Thus the cultivators of the land were kept to one dead level of poverty; could put nothing by; starved perforce in bad years, living on fern, beech-leaves, and nettles ; and no one had any incentive to take up or cultivate more land, as if he gained more he would pay more. Whatever he did, the probability was that he would still be kept at starvation level. Worst of all, if otherwise unable to pay his tax the peasant had his cattle taken away from him ; so that a very large proportion of the peasantry were utterly unable to manure their fields.

From time to time, Protestants were shot, on principle or out of high spirits, or driven out of the country. The peasant absolutely unable to pay his faille, or to buy large quantities of salt at a fancy price, was evicted, and his hut or house pulled down.

Justice was administered by men who gained by persecution in place of drawing salaries. ^

As for education: degrees could often be bought, and examinations were a farce. Secondary education hardly existed ; the Kingdom of Navarre " had no house of public education. 1 ' Royal edicts of 1695 and 1724 had prescribed the establishment of primary schools in every parish; but in 1789 there was no primary instruction whatever in a very large proportion of the communes. 1

Ignorant, hopeless, overburdened, with the weight of the whole nation on his shoulders ; clad often in only a rough woollen kilt with a leather girdle ; a mere slave, put into the world to fatten his masters ; his nerves harassed continually by every kind of tyranny j forced to work, under the whip, on the public roads or in his seigneur's fields ; exasperated by the failure or destruction of his crops, by the perpetual disappointment of such miserable hopes as he might foolishly conceive ; subject to famine ; dying of starvation or lingering on a diet of mildewed grain or leaves or nettles : it is no wonder that the peasant saw, in the Estates-General, which so generously represented his own order, and was convoked by the blessed King himself to put an end to the woes of France—it is no wonder that in the Estates he saw the millennium ; no wonder, when time went by and nothing was done, when famine returned, and the saviours of France were squabbling over forms of government, when the nobles were urging the King to render the Estates useless, and some (men said) were intriguing with Austria, that he finally lost all patience ; and fell, with his fellows, upon his tyrant's chiteau with pike and torch, destroying, with his hated enemy's home, the feudal system itse.lf.

x See France d'aprls les Cahiers de ij&fy

III.

Had the Estates been able at once to arrange a system of fair and graduated taxation, to lessen the burden of the peasants, and create incentives to better and more extensive cultivation, the Revolution, as we know it, might have been averted. But the Estates could do nothing until their powers were settled and verified. The deputies being mostly of independent means, drawing eighteen francs a day, conscious of playing a historical part, with theories to advance, obsessed by fixed ideas, the verification of powers became a struggle of parties, each claiming, not merely the executive power, but its exclusive exercise. Moreover, the King, for a time the nobles as a whole, and always the Court, instead of submitting to the inevitable, and giving their attention to raising money and alleviating distress, must needs fight for their own privileges, not perceiving these to be based inevitably on the common weal; until the impatient people broke bounds and became the masters ; finally mastering their very leaders, and so precipitating the Terror.

BERNARD MIALL.

THE MONARCHY 1789—1792

A CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY OF EVENTS FROM JANUARY, 1789, TO JULY, 1792

BY THE TRANSLATOR

1789

JANUARY. THE elections to the Estates-General begin. There are

• nearly five million electors.

APRIL. In Paris the elections are delayed by the Court party; also a tax of six francs is made a qualification of the suffrage. The districts refuse the presidents nominated by the King.

27. The employees of a paper-maker, Reveillon, burn his effigy. He has spoken of lowering wages, and is to be decorated.

28. The mob demand Reveillon's head of the electors sitting at the Archbishop's palace. They burn his house, and the Guards fire upon them. Many are killed. The riot does not become general. It is thought to be instigated by the Court, in the hope that it would become general, and thus excuse repressive measures. It is desired to frighten Paris, which is regarded as being too democratic. The elections of the deputies for Paris are not completed till May 2oth.

MAY 3. The deputies arrive at Versailles. The King offends them at the outset by making them enter his reception-room according to precedence—that is, by orders, not province by province.

4. Procession of the Estates.

5. Opening 'of the Estates-General. Speeches are delivered by the King, the Keeper of the Seals, and Necker. It is evident that the Court is preoccupied exclusively with money matters and taxation.

6. The Third Estate takes possession of the large hall, and waits for the other two orders to join it. It insists that all three orders shall vote together. A decree is passed by the Council suppressing Mirabeau's Journal of the Estates-General ; another forbids the publication of any periodical without permission. This amounts to a Censorship.

MAY 7. Some members of the Third Estate invite the other orders to join them. The nobility form themselves into an assembly. The clergy wait. 12. Conferences to bring about union. 27. The clergy are invited to join the Third Estate. JUNE 10, The nobles and clergy are summoned for the last time. Ten of the clergy go over.

15. Sieyes proposes that the Third Estate shall declare itself the Assembly of the known and acknowledged representatives of the French Nation. .

16. Sieyes proposes the title of National Assembly.

17. The title is adopted; the Assembly assumes the right of taxation.

20. The great hall is closed by the King's orders on the pretext of making ready for the Royal Session on the 22nd. The Assembly goes to the Tennis Court and takes an oath , not to separate until it shall have established a Constitution. The clergy begin to join the Assembly.

23. The Royal Session is held : a day late. The King declares that the actions of the Third Estate are null and void, and that the Three Estates are to meet separately. During the coining week the King has to give in, and requests the nobles to join the Assembly.

25. Versailles is full of troops; the Deputies are practically prisoners. The Court hopes to overcome them. The electors of Paris assemble to instruct their deputies. The French Guards, confined to barracks, overpower their guards, and fraternise with the people. On the 23rd the King had refused to change the system of promotion by rank and influence. There is great excitement in the Palais Royal gardens. The Guards refuse to obey orders contrary to those of the Assembly.

26. The King unwillingly grants the union of the Orders.

27. The union of the Three Estates takes place. Great popular excitement.

29. Eleven Guards, sent to the Abbaye for taking the oath, were to be removed to the Bic&re, a prison'and hospital combined, where the treatment of venereal diseases was commenced by a flogging. Four thousand Parisians rush to the Abbaye, break down the doors, and liberate the victims. A body of cavalry sent to cut them down fraternises with them. All proceed to the Palais Royal gardens. JULY 10. The Assembly requests the removal of the troops.

JULY ii. The King refuses to remove the troops. Necker is dismissed. All this time Paris has been restless and suspicious.

12. The news of Keeker's dismissal reaches Paris. Desmoulins rallies the crowd in the Palais Royal; a procession is formed of armed citizens carrying busts of Necker and the Due d'Orleans. They are charged by cavalry, and dispersed. Other conflicts follow. German troops fire on the people in the Tuileries gardens. The people demand arms at the Hotel de Ville. After some delay a portion of the crowd succeeds in finding arms. Some French Guards kill some of the German cavalry.

13. Delegates from Paris entreat the Assembly to form a "citizen guard," and describe the state of Paris. The Assembly sends deputations to the King and to Paris; the first reproaches Louis with Necker's dismissal and insists on the removal of the troops. The Assembly sits all night. Paris is full of a starving population; there is famine in the provinces, and the country-folk are pouring into the city. The electors of Paris decide to arm 60,000 Guards. The roads are full of troops; food cannot be got to Paris without risk and difficulty.

The messengers return from Versailles with the King's unsatisfactory answer. The people march to the Hotel de Ville and offer to defend Paris. Some powder in the Hotel de Ville is distributed. Guns are sought for; 50,000 pikes are made. There is a general feeling that Paris will be attacked by the order of the Court.

14. Guns are found at the Invalides, and the Bastille is attacked and taken, the French Guards helping and bringing their cannon. The Court spend the day in planning an attack upon Paris. Officers arrive from Paris with the news that the Bastille has fallen. Paris is discovered to be on its guard; the attack is given up.

15. Confusion at Versailles. The King at last enters the Assembly and states that he has ordered the troops .away from Paris and Versailles. Versailles is overcome with joy. The news reaches Paris in time to prevent a serious collision between the troops and the people. A hundred deputies take the news to Paris.

16. The Queen wishes the King to fly, and begin a civil war at the head of his troops. The King has been closeted with his ministers all night. The King is told that Paris expects him, and writes inviting Necker to return.

JULY 17. The King, surrounded by deputies, reaches Paris. He is received at the Hotel de Ville. His speechless and his somewhat sullen behaviour disappoints the people. He returns to Versailles. His brother and many of the greater princes and nobles take to flight.

20. Discussion in the Assembly as to the administration of Paris.

AUGUST. About this time bands of armed men—"brigands"—are prowling about the country. It is said that they are paid enemies of the Revolution, destroying the crops in order to starve the people. There is no order, no security in the provinces. The people begin to arm themselves. In a week's time the Assembly is told that three millions of peasants are in arms. Once in arms, the people feel their power. The towns arm, and take their local bastilles. Seigneurs who have behaved with more than usual brutality are attacked in their chateaux and killed. Then, marching on the chateaux everywhere, the people demand arms, burning title-deeds and feudal instruments, in hundreds of cases burning the chateaux too.

(What was done by "brigands" and what by domiciled peasants it would be hard to say. For a long time the people had grown impatient; the Assembly, from which they had hoped so much, seemed to waste its time in talking politics, and the King seemed to be their enemy. They now refused to pay taxes, burned the Custom barriers, pillaged the markets, and forced the municipalities to fix maximum prices for bread.) Now all the old machinery of government becomes utterly disorganised, and the chateaux are going up in smoke and flames. 4. The Assembly, emboldened by the provincial revolution, and the practical abolition of feudal rights, abolishes them in theory. During the preceding days the more liberal of the nobles have decided to abandon such rights. Equality before the law and individual liberty are established by decree. 6. The estates of the Church are claimed as national property

by Buzot.

Br-ii. The estates of the Church and the tithes are respectively confiscated and abolished, provision being made for the cures by maintaining tithes as a temporary measure.

All this time, and until September, Paris is without real municipal government, police, or justice. The city is starving as though in a state of siege. Purchases are made

by force of arms. In the meantime the Assembly is discussing the royal veto. The Palais Royal wishes to send deputations to Versailles: Loustallot wishes first to refer the question of the veto to the people of Paris. A deputation goes to the Hotel de Ville, and is refused a hearing.

Meanwhile the Court'is conspiring to remove the King to safety and to begin a civil war. The Assembly does nothing of note, and is undecided in its behaviour. SEPT. 12. It is at last decided that the decrees of August 4th must be presented for the King's sanction. It is reported that the King intends to oppose them.

13. Mirabeau and others, fearing the King will refuse his sanction, wish to dispense with the veto.

IS- The King gives an unsatisfactory reply, criticising, but not sanctioning, the decrees.

21. The King says he will order the publication of the decrees, and hopes the Assembly mil decree such laws as he can sanction.

24. Necker presents a financial statement to the Assembly. Two loans which had been decided upon of 113 millions produce only 12 millions. The nation has no credit. Necker suggests that every one should sacrifice 25 per cent, of his income.

OCT. T. Banquets are held at Versailles. Starvation continues in Paris. The news of the banquets brings the discontent to a head.

5. Ten thousand women, clamouring for bread, go first to the Hotel de Ville, thence to Versailles. The people of Paris follow in their thousands. The National Guards follow, carrying La Fayette with them. They invade the Assembly. Deputations go to the King. He at last accepts the decrees.

6. The next day the people invade the chateau, and force the King to return to Paris with them. The King has been forced to promise food, and bread-carts set out for Paris amid the riots. The common people think the King's presence will end the famine; but the real reason for bringing him in is to prevent his escape and the danger of civil war. The royal family is henceforth in the keeping of La Fayette.

9. On the Qth the King declares his intention of visiting the provinces, thus veiling his intention to escape. About this time the Jacobins begin to grow powerful The Assembly henceforth meets first in the Archbishop's palace, then in the riding-hall near the Tuileries.

In the following months, moved by the state of the finances, fear of the Court, desire to stand well with the people, and the original theories and ideals with which the deputies came to Paris, the Assembly is employed in completing the Constitution, on the work of general reform, and in establishing a federated government whose principles shall be uniformity, local self-government, and popular sovereignty. France is now divided into 83 departments and 374 districts; and the appropriate administrative bodies are created. The communes are all unaltered, and are placed under the direction of municipalities. The qualifications of the suffrage are decided upon. The Parliaments are abolished and courts of law established; internal Customs are removed. The external tariff is modified. The old taxes are to remain in force till others are voted (a task which should have been the first work of the Assembly). Besides selling Church property, the Assembly suppresses monasteries and convents, the inmates being pensioned. A "Civil Constitution of the Clergy" is promulgated, to come into force in the summer "bf 1790. OCT. 8-10. The debate begins on the confiscation of Church property.

14. Some of the clergy of Brittany threaten rebellion.

18. The municipalities make them take back their words.

22. The decree of the "three days' labour " is issued.

24. The clergy of Toulouse threaten civil war. Meanwhile the wealthy clergy of Belgium, Brabant, and Flanders are raising an army.

Nov. 3. The Assembly decrees that the estates of the clergy are at the disposal of the nation and that the clergy, as an order, no longer exist.

STAlaw is passed, stating that "such tribunals as do not register within three days shall be prosecuted for illegal behaviour." This is necessary as the old courts are sitting in many cases, and are guilty of barbarous atrocities. The Parliaments are given " an indefinite vacation." DEC. Of those that dare to resist the Parliament of Brittany is most obstinate, as the reactionary nobles are gathering at St Malo. However, the people of Rennes, Vannes, and St. Malo send word to the Assembly that they have discovered the traitors. The Parliaments of Brittany and Bordeaux are summoned to the Bar.

22. The Parliaments are suppressed.

The work of organising a system of justice is begun.

The Parliament of Brittany argues for the divorce of Brittany from France.

The -Parliaments in general, being unable to defend themselves, speak in defence of provincial Estates.

The municipalities everywhere demand the sole rights of the people.

1790

JAN. ii. On this day the Parliament of Brittany is interdicted from all public functions until it shall request to be allowed to take the oath.

Confederation is now making rapid strides. At first this federation is of a provincial nature. In January the representatives of 150,000 National Guards of Brittany and Anjou meet at Pontivy, in uniform, and establish a system of confederation.

As such associations are formed, they become associated also with I each other. In the winter Dijon calls upon the municipalities of Burgundy to hasten to the assistance of starving 'Lyon, and to unite with Franche-Comte. In all this there is nothing of .the parochial spirit later stigmatised as Federalism. The federations begin by looking to Paris as their head.

FEB. In this month there are disturbances and riots here and there. Beggars spread abroad in bands. The feudal riots begin again; there is a reign of terror for the nobles, the decrees of August 4th not being executed quickly enough to satisfy the peasants. The National Guards as a rule protect the nobles, and the risings are checked.

All this time plots and conspiracies have been carried on in the Tuileries. Various schemes are formed, and discovered, for getting the King to Metz, where the imigri nobles are maintaining an army. The Tuileries are watched night and day, so that by December the King is really a prisoner. Mirabeau advises him to retire to Rouen, and to head the Revolution. Marie Antoinette's advice is uniformly disloyal; she is, in fact, a mere agent for Austria, and the creature of her own passion for revenge.

The Impartials Club is founded, with the object of restoring power to the Kings and to preserve Church property. 4. On the 4th the King repairs to the Assembly and compliments it on its reforms, and declares himself above all

the friend of the Constitution. The Assembly becomes delirious, and escorts him to the Tuileries, where it is received by the Queen in the presence of the Dauphin. " I will teach him to cherish liberty," she says. Shortly after this her brother, the Emperor, declares in a manifesto that he too is the friend of liberty.

The Assembly returns, and swears fidelity to the Constitution which as yet does not exist. FEB. 5-15. A succession of fetes takes place throughout the country.

People flock to take the oath.

18. Favras, an agent of Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, who had undertaken to carry off the King, is hanged. Monsieur denies all knowledge of him. Favras accuses nobody. This is the first time a noble has been hanged. MARCH. Federation continues. In March, Brittany demands that France shall send one man in every thousand to Paris. Ineffectual attempts are made to cause collisions between soldiery and people.

At Easter the clergy attempt to turn the people against the Assembly.

APRIL. The King is keeping up enormous establishments at Treves and Turin; Artois, Conde, Lambesc, and all the bnigri nobles are paid huge pensions. But the pensions of the widows of poor officers are often unpaid or postponed. The Assembly passes a decree early in the year prohibiting this payment of emigrants. The King "forgets" to sanction it and disobeys it. Cannes, reporter of the Committee of Finances, reports that he cannot discover the application of a sum of 60,000,000 francs. Thereupon the Assembly decrees that the Keeper of the Seals must acquaint them of the refusal or sanction of every decree within eight days. * T. Cannes replies to the protests aroused by this enactment by printing the Red Book. This is a record of the utter corruption of the aristocracy and the weakness of royalty. It justifies the Revolution in the mind of all liberal France. Ecclesiastical estates are now being sold. The municipalities, led by that of Paris, buy one half, to sell again; this property serves as security for paper money. Each note has a lot of land assigned to it; hence the notes are called assignats.

Dom Gerle suggests that the Assembly shall decree the Catholic religion to be the religion of the nation. This places the Assembly in an awkward position. The clergy want the Assembly to refuse, so that they can protest to

the King and rouse all Catholics. Mirabeau, with adroit eloquence, saves the situation, recalling the massacres of St. Bartholomew's Day. The King makes it known that he will receive no such protest. The Catholics attempt to set the Catholic population against the Protestants. APRIL 18. Religious riots in Toulouse.

Protestants form armed confederations. Catholic plots and confederations are formed all over the country. MAY 10. An inventory of the property of the religious communities has been ordered. At Montauban the Catholics take advantage of the execution of this decree to fire on the magistrates, the Guards, and the Protestants. All the south is in a ferment. There is a counter-revolution at Nimes. The bishops try to turn the cures, who receive ;£8o a year from the Assembly, against the Government and the Civil Constitution. 30. A great Federal meeting takes place at Lyons, the National

Guard alone sending 50,000 men.

JUNE 13. Froment tries to incite the Catholics of Nunes to a disgraceful massacre of Protestants and revolutionists. The affair fizzles out after some bloodshed, only a sixth of the men he has organised following him. In return, the soldiery and the people turn upon Fromenf s men and exterminate them. At Aries and Avignon attempted risings end in the victory of the Revolution. Throughout the country the army shows itself loyal to the people. The King forces Bouille to take the oath of fidelity to the Revolution.

All this time France has been forestalling the law by spontaneously organising local government and a system of federation.

In May a great Federal meeting is held in Lyons; the Mayor and commune of Paris now request the Assembly to convoke a general Confederation, which is granted; although the Jacobins fear the King may gain by it. The expenses are to be defrayed by the various districts. Hospitality is universal when the time comes. In this month, moved by the universal enthusiasm, the Assembly .abolishes titles of nobility. 19, The " deputies of the human race," headed by Clootz,

demand a part in the Confederation fete. JULY. The great meeting is to take place in the Champ de Mars, which is turned into a huge amphitheatre. The people themselves do most of the work, the men sent by the

municipality being sulky, or perhaps bribed. Bands of delegates—largely army and navy veterans—arrive, singing the fa ira. All Paris strives to take them in. JULY 14. Many people camp out .all night on -the Champ de Mars to ensure being present at the ceremony. It is wretchedly wet. 160,000 are seated; 150,000 stand; in the field itself are 50,000 Federal delegates; of whom 14,000 National Guards and delegates from the army and navy are to perform evolutions. The hills of Chaillot and Passy are crowded. To keep warm, the first arrivals begin to dance the farandole in rondos of provinces. The King and Queen come with La Fayette; 200 priests approach the altar; 1,200 musicians play; 40 cannon are fired. The people swear the oath of fidelity.

27. The Assembly, learning that Louis has granted the Austrians passage across French territory in order to crush the revolution in Belgium, refuses it; and 30,000 National Guards immediately march to oppose it effectually.

Europe forms an alliance against the Revolution, firstly against that of Brabant

The Federation not having alleviated the tendency to force the poorer classes out of the State, the Jacobin societies begin to spread. In two years 2400 clubs have been formed. This begins to give the Revolution another .character. So far, no great revolution had ever been effected with so little bloodshed.

During the spring and summer soldiers have been attempting to obtain their arrears of pay, stolen by their officers. The officers employ bullies, skilled fencers, to insult them and kill the most persistent in duels. The officers are everywhere disloyal to the army and the Government.

AUGUST. At Nancy the King's regiment asks its officers to settle accounts, and is paid. A Swiss regiment sends two envoys to the King's regiment asking for information. Their officers, Swiss patricians, feudal lords, &c., having power of life and death over their men, flog the envoys in open parade before the French officers.

This Swiss regiment is popular in the army. On July 14, 1789, it had refused to fire on the people, thus paralysing Besenval, and leaving Paris free to march on the Bastille. The French promenade the two Swiss envoys around the town and force their officers to pay them a heavy indemnity.

The officers improperly kept the cash-boxes of the regiments at the treasurer's. The men take them back to quarters. They are nearly empty. The men force the officers to pay their arrears.

These disturbances are discussed in the Assembly. Mirabeau very sensibly advocates dissolving the Army and reconstituting it. La Fayette mistakenly causes a decree to be passed stating that the King should appoint inspectors of accounts from among the officers. He also frightens the Jacobins with tales of a military insurrection. Bouille is put in command of the eastern regiments. An officer from Besangon, a bully and duellist, is sent to Nancy as inspector. Letters from the soldiers at Nancy to the Assembly are intercepted. A false accusation against the soldiers on the part of the municipality of Nancy is read in the Assembly. They are commanded, by decree, to declare their errors to their commanders.

AUG. 26. Malseigne, the inspector, arrives at Nancy with the decree. He begins by insulting the Swiss, and has to fight his way out. Bouille commands the Swiss to evacuate Nancy. They refuse. He selects nearly five thousand troops, chiefly Germans, with seven hundred royalist National Guards. Two thousand loyal Guards rush into the town. Malseigne takes refuge with some carbineers, who give him up. Bouille writes to the Assembly for two deputies to assist him, but does not wait for them. 31. Three deputations advance to meet Bouille outside Nancy, -to ask his conditions. He commands the regiments to march out, give up Malseigne, and be judged by the Assembly. The French regiments obey. The Swiss remain, knowing that their own brutal officers will be allowed to judge them. Some Guards go to their help. Bouille enters the town under the fire of the poorer inhabitants. Half the Swiss are killed at once; of the rest twenty-one are hanged by their officers, one is broken on the wheel, fifty are sent to the galleys at Brest

On the same day the Assembly agrees, too late, to give impartial justice.

However, it publicly thanks Bouille' on his return to Paris. Louis refers to the slaughter as "an afflicting but necessary affair." He recommends Bouill6 to " continue." Loustallot dies a few days later—it has always been said, of grief.

The Nancy massacre causes the municipalities and the

National Guard to be suspected of being aristocratic in their sympathies, and gives a great impetus to Jacobinism, It was mistakenly said that the Guards had sided with Bpuille. There are reactionary conspiracies to cause division among the Guards.

SEPT. 2. Paris hears of the Nancy massacre. 40,000 men surround the Tuileries and demand the retirement of the War Minister, Latour-Dupin. Necker escapes from Paris, flies next day. The Assembly takes over the Treasury.

Everywhere the nobles have been provoking the people and the Guards. At Labors two brothers, after killing several people in the streets who wished to arrest them, shut themselves up in their house and fire on the crowd, killing many, till their house is burned. In the Assembly a noble threatens Mirabeau with his cane. A bully follows Charles de Lancette for two days, trying to provoke a duel. Being accused of cowardice by the entire Right, he fights the Due de Castries, and is wounded. The Due's house is methodically dismantled by the people, a sentry being placed over the King's portrait. La Fayette has to look on. From this day the vengeance of the people becomes a factor to be feared and reckoned with. Now follows a period of uneasy tranquillity. Many foreigners come to Paris as to a spectacle. But in secret Louis is denouncing France to Europe, and the Jacobins are becoming powerfully organised in opposition to the nobles and clergy. Paris is all day a mass of meetings. OCT. 30. The Bishops publishing their Exposition de principes, an attempt to terrorise the loyal clergy, the Jacobins decide to run a journal, publishing extracts from the correspondence of the main society with the provincial branches, which will make public a vast number of accusations against the nobles and clergy. They choose for editor Choderlos de Laclos, the agent of the Due d'Orleans. This arrangement is due to the fact that they need money; Orleans supplies it. During this period Robespierre, who has been rather despised in the Assembly for his academical and didactic dulness, begins to gain his prodigious ascendancy over the Jacobins. The Cordeliers are also gaining in influence. Among them are Danton, Desmoulins, and Marat. They gain an enormous influence over the proletariat and the mob pure and simple.

Nov. 19. Mirabeau opposes Robespierre's proposal that only active citizens shall form the National Guard.

Nov. 27. Priests are ordered to take the oath of the Constitution

within a week.

DEC. In this month Marat proposes to form an organisation of spies to watch the Government. Failing, he becomes an inquisition in himself. He begins to accustom the mob to the ideas of blood and blind vengeance.

1791

JAN. 4. The clergy in the Assembly are put to the test of the oath. Many refuse.

At the beginning of this year the effects of the error of antagonising the proletariat by shutting them off from citizenship and excluding them from the defence of their country, thus abandoning them to Marat and other firebrands, begin to be felt. The Reign of Terror might already be foretold. The Jacobins manage, by violence and calumny, to destroy the Club of the Friends of the Monarchical Constitution.

FEB. The King's aunts, at the end of this month, wish to emigrate, finding it difficult to keep their chaplains. The Kong recommends them to go to Rome. First Mirabeau and then all Paris becomes alarmed; their departure would increase the power of the imigrhs. However, the Assembly allows them to proceed.

28. The men of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine turn out to demolish the Castle (prison) of Vincennes. La Fayette and the Assembly are warned. A body of nobles guards the King with daggers and sword-sticks (quite fatuously), giving the day the name of the Day of Poignards. La Fayette and Santerre turn out; Santerre will not fire on the people. La Fayette makes a few arrests and saves the day. MARCH. This is a time of suspicion and unfruitful commotion. The question as to whether passive citizens shall bear arms is revived—this time practically by the municipality nd people, who set to work at their forges.

The party of the Left is slowly gaining in power and provincial repute. Robespierre is Public Accuser in the new Courts.

The King still meditates flight as his best means of action and reaction. Many of the Departments would further his flight, but not to Metz : they will not fight for Imigrts, only for Louis as head of the Revolution. Mirabeau is much with the King. Had he lived it is impossible to

guess what the course of the Revolution might have been.

But he sickens, is worn out with quackery and real illness,

APRIL, and finally, after a battle with the Jacobins, and an attempt

to obtain fair treatment for tmigris, he takes to his bed

2. and dies, apparently of colic or appendicitis—of course, incorrectly treated.

4. Mirabeau's funeral takes place, the greatest public funeral ever seen in France until that of Napoleon.

7. Robespierre, who assumes an imperious attitude now that Mirabeau is dead, and who has his Jacobins behind him, obtains- the passage of a decree to the effect that no member of the Assembly shall be raised to the Ministry until four years after the Assembly is dissolved.

Five weeks later he is responsible for another decree to the effect that members of the Assembly shall not be elected for the following Assembly. For some reason the Assembly quietly passes this decree also, although the two decrees together ensure that France shall for some years be entirely in inexperienced hands, and also that ministers shall as far as possible deal with strangers in their subsequent Governments; that her greatest men (most of whom were elected to the first Assembly) shall be thrust aside for two or four years, and that the elections will be at the mercy of the factions. These decrees hardly affect Robespierre, whose power derives increasingly from the Jacobins.

At the time of Mirabeau's death the party in favour of the new Constitution found themselves in a dilemma. Taxes were refused; municipalities did what they chose; granaries were pillaged; there was no discipline in the army; the clubs were usurping all authority; in short, the executive was almost inoperative. It had been necessary to render it weak; it was equally essential now, if the Constitution were to be stable, to render it strong. Meanwhile the Imigrts at Basle, Coblentz, and elsewhere threaten all the terrors of reaction. The King's brother calls upon the Powers of Europe to restore Louis's authority. In the midst of these conditions the primary assemblies for the election of the Constituent Assembly are already being convoked. It is a critical moment; but the latent stresses are precipitated by the action of the King.

In April the royal carriages were about to start for St. Cloud, but were turned back by the National Guard. It was suspected that other attempts would be made

JUNE. Finally, on the night of June 20th, all preparations were completed. Bouille was to receive the King and then to march on Paris. The King, his sister, the Queen, the two children, and their governess, drove out of Paris in a hackney-coach to the rendezvous, where a large travelling-carriage awaited them, with three soldiers dressed as couriers. Louis was disguised as a valet

The story of the attempted escape need not be re-told here in detail. It is enough to say that the troops—some Austrian—posted along the road excite suspicion; at Chalons all guess what is afoot Sainte-Menehould is passed with difficulty; and an ex-dragoon, one Drouet, rides to Varennes to intercept the party. Through a blunder of Louis 1 , Drouet is in time. Drouet rouses the mayor and a few guards, and scares off the few hussars in the town: the mayor, a grocer by trade, invites the royal family to enter his house. The King makes futile attempts to "order his carriage." All the roads are in a turmoil. Bouille arrives too late; the King is being taken back to Paris. 21. Intense alarm prevails in Paris when the King's flight is known. An immediate invasion is feared, an invasion and civil war in one, for the hnigrfe are gathered on the frontier, and royalists are expected to rise throughout France.

Louis has not only betrayed his country; he has left a document proving that he can never be trusted to rule according to the Constitution.

The Assembly does all that is necessary, and Paris remains quiet.

25. Louis re-enters Paris, escorted by three deputies. He is provisionally suspended. Some desire to maintain him on the throne with better advisers ; some consider that he has abdicated; and a Republic is at last openly advocated. The Centre joins Lameth's party in an attempt to preserve the throne. It is finally decreed that the King shall be considered as having abdicated if he retract his oath or make war on France, but not otherwise. The Republicans thereupon draw up a petition denying the sufficiency of the Assembly, stating that the matter should be put before JULY 17. the nation. This is carried by an immense crowd to the Champ de Mars. La Fayette disperses the crowd, but it returns in greater numbers. Two men found under the altar, supposed spies, are killed. The mayor shows the red flag and orders tfre multitude to disperse. Stones are

VOL. I. 4

thrown; the Guard fires, many are killed; the crowd scatters. AUG. 27. Declaration of Pilnitz.

The Assembly nears its term of office. Taxes, criminal law, public and constitutional affairs have all been dealt with. It seems desirable to draw up the complete Constitution. The Constitution when completed is presented to Louis, the suspension being interrupted. SEPT. 14. He accepts and engages to maintain it. At the end of the

. 30. month the Assembly dissolves.

|PCT. i. The Legislative Assembly meets; 400 of the deputies are advocates. Vergniaud, Condorcet, Brissot, and Carnot are perhaps the most eminent members.

In Avignon (still Papal) the Papal nobles had set up gibbets. June saw a rising of the people; four aristocrats were hanged, one on each of four gibbets. Emigration followed. The Papal Legate leaves and returns. Petitions for union with France are sent to the Assembly. Carpentras and Avignon are at war. Jourdan, a dyer, with thousands of " Brigands of Avignon," besieges Carpentras. Finally on September I4th the Assembly annexes Avignon and the Comtat. 16. On October i6th, however, one 1'Escuyer goes to the Cordeliers' Church to warn the Papal party to keep the peace. A statue of the Virgin is said to have wept blood, and Papal placards are seen posted about. L'Escuyer is stabbed to death, chiefly by the scissors of female worshippers. The municipality fills the dungeons with aristocrats.

17-18. Jourdan establishes a court-martial and massacres the prisoners. In November the Assembly sends Commissioners and troops; Jourdan escapes being cut down; 130 bodies of adults and children are found in a Papal oubliette ; finally there is an amnesty.

Meanwhile there is a great deal of unrest in the country, what with aristocrats in the south, priests everywhere, patriot municipalities, and ambitious departmental directories. The autumn passes with nothing notable done; there are intrigues at the Tuileries, and Orleans is so grossly insulted as finally to break with Louis altogether. There are rumours of war; Coblentz is a little Court in itself, so many are the tmigrts waiting there to invade France. 28. Monsieur, Louis' brother, is invited to return within two

months, under heavy penalties. Nov. 4. Petion is elected Mayor of Paris.

Nov. 9. All tmigrls are declared suspect, and, unless they return by January ist, outlawed. Other severe decrees are passed: the King vetoes all but the first. Decrees for putting France into a state of defence have also been vetoed.

2g. The King is requested to demand that the German and emigrant forces shall be dispersed under pain of war.

In a few days he states that the Elector of Treves and other princes will see to it that all gatherings and hostile acts on the part of tmigrh in their dominions must cease before January 2$th; if they ignore his wishes he must declare war.

DEC. 6. Narbonne is appointed Minister of War; 150,000 men are requisitioned; 20,000,000 francs are voted. Three armies are formed, under Rochambeau, Luckner, and La Fayette. Monsieur and Conde are impeached. The Elector of Treves engages to disperse the hnigrte. He makes but a pretence of so doing. Austria will support him, and posts 50,000 men in Holland, 6,000 in Breisgau, and marches up 30,000 more.

1702

The Assembly requires the Emperor to give, before February loth, a precise statement of his intentions. Incapable ministers are impeached. The King has to select a Girondist ministry (in March). The kmperor finaUygives a wholly unsatisfactory reply: the Monarchy is to be OH, established on the basis of the royal stance of June 23,1759, the property of the Church is to be restored, Alsace to-be' given back to the German princes and Avignon to the Pope. War is now inevitable.

APRIL 20. Louis repairs to the Assembly with his foreign minister, Dumouriez, who explains the situation with regard to Austria. Louis then, by the terms of the Constitution, proposes war to the Assembly. On his withdrawal^var i&»4gcordingly declared, to the great joy of the couSry, which at once begins to volunteer. Rochambeau has the northern army, his frontier being from Dunkirk to Philippe-ville; La Fayette the Centre, his frontier stretching to Weissemburg; Luckner has the army on the Rhine, his frontier running from Weissemburg to Basle. The" Alps and Pyrenees, not yet. in danger, are confided to Montesquieu. Dumouriez determines to begin by, invading Belgium.

He thinks the Brabant patriots will join him. Dillon and Biron are to march on Tournai and Mons respectively; La Fayette is to march from Metz to Stenai, Sedan, and Namur. APRIL 28. The columns are weak, the men undisciplined. Dillon has just crossed the frontier and come into action when his troops stampede, carry him off, and kill him. Biron's men also retire in panic. La Fayette hears of this at Bouvines, and, seeing that the invasion has failed, retires. Rochambeau resigns, complaining that he receives commands instead of being free to issue them. The frontier from the sea to the Jura is now divided between La Fayette and Luckner.

These checks are imputed to Dumouriez' unskilfulness. A split occurs between the Gironde and the Feuillants. The Jacobins accuse the counter-revolutionaries. The latter hope to see the ancien rtgime restored. JUNE 8. The Assembly votes the formation of an armed camp before Paris.

9. There is a skirmish at Maubeuge.

Louis, for some time urged to employ constitutional priests, in order to put an end to religious agitation, cannot work

13. harmoniously with his ministers. On the i3th he dismisses them on Dumouriez 1 advice. On the iQth he vetoes two decrees, those concerning the non-juring priests and the Federal camp.

On the 2oth the people are greatly agitated; under the pretext of celebrating the anniversary of the Oath of the Tennis Court, 8,000 men march to the hall of the Assembly, asking permission to present a petition. They are introduced. They complain of the inactivity of the armies, and of the presence of traitors; if the executive be at fault it must be destroyed. The procession, now numbering 30,000 —men, Guards, women, children—defiles through the Hall and proceeds to the Tuileries. The mob breaks in ; Louis confronts them, and has to sit for hours on a balcony above the people. He refuses to sanction the decrees, but adroitly seizes and wears a red bonnet. Many deputies hurry to protect him. At last Petion disperses the people. This procession is known as that of the "Black Breeches." The popular party arouses by this action the hostility of the constitutionalists. Rochefoucauld wishes Louis to go to Rouen, where the troops are loyalist. La Fayette wishes him to lead the army. But Louis, expecting help from Europe, treats with no one.

JUNE 28. La Fayette, leaving his army to come to Paris, demands the punishment of the "Black Breeches" and the destruction of the Jacobin party. He hopes to effect this with the aid of the National Guards. He meets with no encouragement and returns to his army, having lost much of his popularity. Vergniaud, realising the danger of France, advises deposition.

JULY 5, The Assembly declares France in danger; all citizens having served in the National Guard are called out and all able-bodied men; guns and pikes are served out, and volunteers enrolled.

6. Petion is suspended on account of his action on June 20th.

7. The Bishop of Lyons, Lamourette, calls on all parties to swear a fraternal oath and unite as brothers in the face of danger. All swear and embrace, exchanging the historic " Kiss of Lamourette."

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

BY THE TRANSLATOR

Brissot, Jean Pierre, was born at Chartres in 1754, and, like many actors in the Revolution, was educated for the bar. However, like others, he abandoned the legal profession for that of letters. His first books were a Theory of Criminal Law and a Bibliothlque des Lois Criminelles. He was for four months imprisoned in the Bastille as the supposed author of an attack on Marie Antoinette; he was liberated through the influence of the Due d'Orleans. Later on h6 nearly renewed his acquaintance with the Bastille, but escaped in time to England, later still visiting America.

At the outset of the Revolution he had a very wide reputation as a jurist. He was a deputy for Paris in the National Assembly, where he wielded considerable influence. His journal, the Patriote Franfais, was the organ of the early Republican party. Brissot became the leader of the Girondists. He did not wish for the King's death, although a republican; but he voted for it, intending that an appeal to the nation should save him. When his party in the Convention, the only party with high ideals and principles, was attacked and destroyed by the Jacobins, the latter affected to believe that Brissot had been bought by the Court; a ridiculous accusation, but any weapon would serve. Brissot died, with twenty of his party, on October 31, 1793.

Condorcet was born in 1743, the child of a cavalry officer stationed near St. Quentin, in Aisne. The oppressive clerical and aristocratic exclusiveness of his early surroundings was so intense as naturally to react on an original mind, with the result of making him the inveterate enemy of privilege and religion. Educated by Jesuits at Rheims, then at the College of Navarre in Paris, he was a brilliant scholar, and an essay on the integral calculus, written at the age of twenty-two, gained him a seat in the Academy, of which, twelve years later, he became permanent secretary.

He contributed largely to the Encyclopedic, and at the outbreak of the

Revolution made a rapid reputation as a writer and speaker. He was elected deputy to the Legislative Assembly of 1791, becoming president in 1792. He voted against Louis' death, but in favour of the severest punishment.

In the Convention he voted, as a rule, with the Girondists. ^Accused by the extreme Left, he hid for eight months, but on changing his refuge was arrested; next day he was dead, whether by suicide was never known with absolute certainty. Condorcet first applied the calculus of probabilities to matters of jurisprudence and political science. He based all virtue on moral sympathy. In his Perfectibiliti du Genre Humain, written during his period of hiding in Mme. Vernef s lodging-house, he advocates equality of civil rights for both sexes, and claims that the human race is indefinitely perfectible. It is said he was finally tempted out by the fine April weather, and was captured when exhausted and footsore, having been shut out at night by the friends to whom he went from Vernet's. Lamartine declares that he always carried poison.

Couthon was born in the Auvergne in 1756; he became an advocate. He was a cripple, his legs being useless. He was deputy for Puy de Dome in the Convention.

He has been represented as being, like Marat, always innately ferocious. Here, it would seem, he has been wronged, at least on one occasion; when sent to Lyons to suppress the insurrection there, he attempted to prevent useless and ferocious bloodshed, and withdrew before the death-sentence was passed on the prisoners, for which he was denounced. Later on he became more uncompromising.

He was a violent enemy of the Church and the Monarchy; voted for Louis' death; attached himself to Robespierre, and was one of the Committee of Public Safety. He was given to raving against England, and Pitt's supposed habit of buying all the enemies of France../

He^fell and was executed with Robespierre.

Danton was born at Arcis-sur-Aube in 1759. With Marat and Desmoulins he formed the Cordeliers' Club.

Danton was the typical demagogue, the hero of the mob, because a man of the people, and a superb, perhaps unconscious, actor. Claretic calls him "a sort of middle-class Mirabeau, equally powerful, but neither dissolute nor venal." As to his lack of venality, accounts differ; if he did take money from the Court he gave nothing for it.

Like Mirabeau, he was a man of powerful physique, black-browed, Bashan-voiced, but extremely ill-favoured, with very small eyes and a

skin terribly disfigured by smallpox; unlike Mirabeau, he lashed the people into fury, remaining calm himself. The son of a farmer, he was an unsuccessful advocate at the Chatelet in 1787. Mirabeau, "discovered" him, as we say; by 1792 he was a popular leader and Minister of Justice. Force was his god. He had no definite policy ; he was an opportunist without rigid principles, and without too much compassion. He was of the people and with them, but only if he could lead them. Lamartine—who is not unprejudiced—says he sold himself every day to any and every party. However this may be, he was a factor for evil in so far as he was in favour of revolution for its own sake; but in directing its forces into the channels of defence he was undoubtedly the saviour of France. Intellect and audacity he had; but he was also subject to panic. But with all his dangerous qualities he was not by any means a monster. Although he admitted the necessity of the prison massacres, or at least condoned them, he had no part in them. Later, when he had succeeded in crushing the Girondists, he tried strenuously to stem the tide of blood; but the forces he had evoked were too much for him. " I prefer being guillotined to guillotining," he said, during an absence from Paris, after a quarrel with Robespierre and the Mountain. Marriage and experience seem to have humanised him; it is likely that he would have preferred to withdraw from public life once the Terror was established. Summoned to Paris, he was arrested. " They dare not," he said, when told that a warrant was made out. "I leave the whole affair in a frightful mess. . . . None of them understands government. Robespierre will follow me. . . . Better to catch fish than to meddle with the government of men."

He made no effort to escape. Brought before Fouquier-Tinville, with Desmoulins and others, his defence was superb in audacity; it so moved the people that a decree was passed to shut his mouth; " those who had insulted justice must not speak." At the scaffold he broke down for a moment at the thought of his wife. "No weakness, Danton 1" he said; then, turning to the headsman, bade him show his head to the people. " It is worth showing," he said. " He played the great man," says Lamartine, « but was not one." None the less, he was a giant. He was temperamental, not intellectual; enthusiastic, not virtuous; like the Caesar of Brutus, ambitious.

Desmoulins, Canaille, was born in Picardy in 1760. He was a fellow-student with Robespierre in Paris ; but owing to a stammer he did not practise law. In 1788 he began to write pamphlets. In 1789 he was present at the taking of the Bastille, having become famous two days earlier by haranguing the Palais Royal crowd, and leading forth the procession of the Green Cockades.

A singularly brilliant writer, he was without rival as a polemical journalist. Satire, invective, logic, irony, sarcasm, grace—he was the unrivalled master of them all.

A member of the Convention, he voted for Louis' death. With Danton, he attacked the Girondists; with Danton, he quarrelled with the Mountain on account of its ferocity. He published the Vieux Cordelier m the hope of checking useless bloodshed. Robespierre was still friendly with him, but now became alarmed. He was arrested with Danton, and died on the scaffold with him.

Diderot, famous chiefly as the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedic, was one of the great influences of the century, and a man of astounding versatility and energy. He was hardly an artist, having no love of brevity, little sense of form, little literary conscience, so that few of his individual works have lived. To appreciate his greatness and his influence on his times (apart from the Encyclopedic] one would have to read the entire mass of his work; even so, a friend of his stated that he who had only read his work could not appreciate the half of him. Much of his influence was felt in correspondence and conversation.

A careless, prolific, versatile man of letters, who wrote for friends as well as for himself, much of his work being lost in anonymity, or under other names, he was a novelist, dramatist, dramatic critic, one of the first art critics, a literary critic, a philosopher, and the forerunner of the Romanticists and Naturalists. He was an atheist, or perhaps a pantheist; a lover of truth above all, but, after the manner of his time, not free from sentimentality and cant. Unequal in level, his work is full of original ideas, astonishing psychological insight, and a humour all his own.

His people had been cutlers for two hundred years, at Langus, in Champagne, where he was born. Trained at a Jesuit school, he was intended for the Church, but later seems to have had the alternative, while studying in Paris, of medicine or the law, an alternative which he refused, with the result that his father left him to his own resources. He taught, and did literary hack-work, and at thirty-two married a seamstress. He was reconciled to his father after the birth of a son, and his wife and child went to live at Langus. He promptly formed other ties, his attachment to Mile. Voland lasting till her death. Meanwhile, his opinions were getting him into trouble. The Parliament of Paris ordered his Pensees Philosophiques to be burned (1746); his Lettres sur Us Aveugles earned him three years in prison.

On his re-emerging into the world, Le Breton, a bookseller, offered him the opportunity of his life: the direction, at a regular salary, of the

famous Encydopidie Frarqais, a task which occupied him for twenty years.

In his old age he was threatened with the loss of his library; but Catherine II. of Russia purchased it, left it in his hands, and paid him a salary as caretaker. He paid her a visit of five months in 1773, returning via the Hague, where he spent four months. Only one of his four children was left him. He spent his last years in educating her, in study, and in giving advice -and help to those who needed it, dying suddenly in 1784.

One of the best known of his works is La Rdigieuse—vthzk we should now call a study of sexual perversion, seen by innocent eyes, written to expose certain evils of the religious life. Apart from the unsavoury subject, the story—supposed to be told by a young girl of good family—is a good example of Diderof s qualities: psychological insight, a true dramatic sense—the narration being admirably in character—and a certain dry, delicate humour. A good friend, a charming companion, a giant in output, a marvellous conversationalist, he was one of the great influences of the century. His letters give a vivid picture of life in the philosophical salons, notably that of d'Holbach.

Fayette, La, Marquis de, was born at Chavaignac, in Auvergne, in 1757. At sixteen he married the daughter of the Due d'Ayen. At the age of twenty he fitted out two vessels with arms and provisions and sailed for America, arriving at Boston. He was employed by Washington throughout the War of Independence. On his return to France he was the popular idol. Louis created him a general. He took into the Assembly his prestige as commander of the National Guard, He was witty and courtly, not an orator after the revolutionary style. At the Federation of 1790 his influence was enormous; he was head of the armed nation. His power waned because he could not see that the Republic must rid itself of the throne. On the King's flight Barnave had to defend him against suspicion. .La Fayette himself assumed the responsibility of ordering the King's arrest. He saved himself from death at the hands of the suspicious populace by sheer courage and confidence. He retired from the National Guard shortly after this, and was beaten by Petion in the election of the Mayor of Paris. He was given command of the army of the Centre at the outbreak of the war. He protested against the " Black Breeches " demonstration of June 2oth, but returned to his army foiled. He wished the King to join him; but Louis, hoping for the defeat of his own armies, refused. On the triumph of the Jacobins and the downfall of the Constitution he was arrested on his way to Holland, whence he meant to escape to America, and was years in prison.

His public life was over until 1830, when the new Revolution called him to the fore; once more he commanded the National Guard, and was instrumental in placing Louis Philippe, son of the Due d'Orleans, on the throne. He died in 1834. A certain chivalrous scrupulosity kept him from seizing opportunities that would have led a less honourable man to triumph and dictatorship.

Fr£ron, ifelie Catherine, was born at Quimper in 1718. He was a Professor at the College Louis le Grand. He was a defender of the Church and the Monarchy, and an adversary of the Encyclopaedists. Voltaire ridiculed him in LEcossaise. He died in 1776.

Hubert, Jacques Ren6, was born in Alengon in 1755. He went to Paris as a domestic, and was several times dismissed for dishonesty. Naturally he became a Jacobin, and was made editor of Le Plre Duchesne, which was started by the Jacobins to oust the Constitutional paper of the same name. As editor of this paper he became one of the heroes of the rabble, beating even Marat in the matter of disgusting abuse and ribaldry.

After August xoth he became one of the Revolutionary Council. He was largely responsible for the September prison massacres. He was also one of Marie Antoinette's examiners, a place he filled with peculiar disgrace to himself. He assisted in converting Notre Dame into the Temple of Reason and his followers were known as the Enrages. Robespierre eventually found him in the way and he was executed in March, 1794, with some of his followers.

Robespierre's apparent reason for getting rid of him was this: he proposed secretly a triumvirate, to be composed of Danton, Hebert, and himself. Hebert refused. After this Hebert openly criticised the Committee of Public Safety, thinking himself " in the centre of his commune," with the mob behind him, safe. His wife, a liberated nun, feared Robespierre, and with reason. On the way to the scaffold the mob turned on him and insulted him.

Herbois, Jean Marie Collot d', was born in Paris in 1750. He began life as a provincial play-actor. The Revolution brought him to Paris.

He was one of the most atrocious of all the actors in the Revolution; a coarse, loud-voiced, vindictive, ferocious person, who, like Marat was naturally popular with the lowest elements of Paris.

He first attracted attention by his Almanack de Plre Gerard; Paris returned him to the Convention. He was President of the Convention

in 1793, and a member of the Committee of Public Safety—perhaps, with Billaud-Varennes, the leading spirit.

At Lyons, in November, 1793, where he had formerly been hissed off the stage, he revenged himself by the guillotine and grapeshot.

At length his popularity with the mob became too great; Robespierre became envious, or perhaps disgusted, for the ex-mummer's manners were coarse, and Robespierre's almost priggish; and he was inferior to Robespierre in intellect. At all events, d'Herbois broke into a meeting of the Committee one day, coming from the Jacobins, with the statement that Couthon, Saint-Just, and Robespierre were plotting to form a triumvirate and |to assassinate the other seven members. He pretended that Saint-Just had an unfavourable report in his pocket, attacked him, and had to be dragged off. Saint-Just refused to stay where he was suspected. Those left behind saw that they must pull down Robespierre or lose their heads. As we know, they destroyed Robespierre. Whether d'Herbois' panic was real or part of an adroit plot has never become quite apparent.

In the reaction following the downfall of Robespierre's party Collot d'Herbois was expelled from the Convention, and was banished. He died in Cayenne two years later. He was one of those criminal, violent, ferocious figures made possible by the existence of a central democratic government in a city containing a large population only half-civilised, under imperfect restraint, full of embittered memories and the thirst for revenge; a population one party or another was certain, sooner or later, to have recourse to, in order to defeat or terrorise its enemies, or to carry out its promises to the democracy ; a party sometimes exploited, but always feared by the bourgeois deputies and the intellectuals.

irat, Jean Paul, was one of the innately bloodthirsty figures of the Revolution ; his affection for the guillotine did not spring entirely either from fear or from genuine fanaticism, although increased thereby.

He was born in Neuchatel, in 1743, his father being a physician, a native of Cagliari; his mother, a German Protestant. He studied medicine at Bordeaux: went to Paris, Holland, London (where he practised), and visited Edinburgh. He was made M.D. of St Andrews.

In 1773 he published a Philosophical Essay on Man, in English, which two years later he republished at Amsterdam in a greatly enlarged form. His chief motive in writing the book seems to have been to attack every eminent man of whose reputation he was jealous. His theories are arbitrary and absurd; he attacks Helvetius, Descartes, and Newton; states that the soul depends on the body and resides in

the meninges: that the medium of intercourse between the soul and the body is a nervous fluid, which is not gelatinous because spirit, which stimulates the nerves, does not contain gelatine; and much of equal value. Franklin was another whose reputation he attacked. It is said that to confute him Marat produced a sample of resin which conducted electricity. Charles discovered that it contained a wire or needle !—whereupon Marat drew his sword; Charles broke it, and a scuffle ensued. It seems that Marat was incapable of understanding many of the theories he attacked. He seems to have been a gigantic egoist, a true megalomaniac; convinced that he should cut a great figure of some sort in the world, but without the talent or character for such a part.

Other works of his were The Chains of Slavery, Plan de Legislation Criminelle, Nouvelles Decouvertes sur la Lumiere, and Medicine Galante, an essay in pornography.

He was twenty when Rousseau retired to Neuchatel. Marat's mother seems to have been partly responsible for the idea that he was to become a great man. The excitement and enthusiasm with which Rousseau was welcomed confirmed his ambition. According to Mtichelet, he became Rousseau's ape; certainly he became his disciple.

In 1772 he seems to have been teaching French in Edinburgh, to which city he returned in 1775. In 1777 he was made brevet-physician to the guards—or some say to the stables—of the Comte d'Artois, a post he held till 1786. His scientific work during this time attracted the passing attention of Franklin and Goethe.

At the outbreak of the Revolution he established his paper JJAmi du Peuple. From the first it was full of scandal and personalities. He soon began a series of denunciations; almost every one, in his eyes, was a traitor, therefore to be killed by any good patriot. At last he used to publish lists of persons in each number, stating that it was the duty of the people to assassinate them. Sometimes the hint was taken* La Fayette's police tried to find his press. Twice he hid in London, once in the sewers of Paris. He attributed a loathsome disease which he contracted to the latter adventure, but it probably had another cause. He married one Simonne Evrard, and had ?m intrigue with the deserted wife of a dissipated and diseased noble

His monotonous violence always found a public, in the violent and unoccupied mobs of Paris. The number of heads which he thought should be cut off to save France advanced from 600 to 270,000.

His activity was increased by the necessity of living a confined life, in hiding from the police, though he does not seem to have been in much real danger.

He was largely responsible for the execrable massacres of Septem-

her. He was elected a member of the Convention. His following was the more blackguardly section of the mob : he never had a party in the Convention. When the Republic was established the Ami du Peuple became the Journal de la R&publique francaise. After Louis' execution he furiously attacked the Girondins. Their accusation of Marat failed. The charge was one of inciting to rebellion. He soon had his revenge. Accused of plotting to make the departments independent of the capital—in short, of Federalism—and of inciting to civil war, thirty-one of the Girondist deputies were arrested in June. Marat was clamouring for a dictatorship—there were certainly very good reasons for a strong central government—and prepared to hunt down such Girondists as had fled to the country. A young girl of noble birth—Charlotte d'Annans, then Charlotte Corday—came up to Paris from Caen, purchased a large sheath-knife, drove to Marafs house, where he was writing, lying in a bath, insisted on seeing him, pretending to be anxious to betray the Girondists in Caen, and stabbed him to the heart. "I killed one man," she said, "to save a hundred thousand, a villain to save innocents, a savage wild beast to give repose to my country. I was a Republican before the Revolution." She died cheerfully, having avenged the fall of the party she revered —the only body of men then remaining capable of founding a civilised government. Marat's body was buried in the Pantheon, to be thrown out fifteen months later.

In appearance Marat was short, squat, and ugly, with a wide, bony, flat-nosed face. He possessed undoubted industry, disinterestedness of a kind, though he gratified many personal hatreds, and unflagging ardour; but he had no very definite policy, except to be the idol of the scum of Paris—the cheapest method of obtaining power, which was what he mostly cared for. He hated every eminent man who really deserved his reputation. He was probably insane in some respects. His disease and his unnatural life aggravated his lust of revenge and of personal prominence. His only rival in foul-mouthed violence was Hebert, who surpassed him in his Pin Duchesne. He undoubtedly was largely responsible for the worst features of the Terror, and increased the pepper of the mob.

^Mirabeau was the son of a Provencal family, originally refugees from Florence. His father was known as the Friend of Man, and certainly had a very lively sympathy for the victims of the feudal system, whose condition he very graphically describes. But as a father the old Marquis was impossible. Most of Mirabeau's youth he spent in various prisons, committed by his father, who used no less than sixty letlres de cachet on those who incurred his wrath. Released, by his father, to marry an heiress, he was soon back in

prison at Pontarlier, where he wrote his Lettres a Sophie. Released again, he carried off an old man's wife, and fled to Holland. There however, he was seized again, and the lovers were both immured, he in Vincennes, the woman in a convent.

In prison he became a writer. At length, liberated before the assembly of the Estates, he was returned as deputy for Aix.

A true man of the South, with something of the Roman in him and something of the factious, bitter, mediaeval Florentine; a man of gigantic physique, though half broken by excess and prison ; a volcano of energy; thick-set, beetle-browed, short-headed, he was truly an astonishing figure, and for the brief two years before his death was perhaps the greatest man in France.

His greatness was that of character, of personality, of energy, of what is called magnetism. Emotionally he was gigantic, intellectually he was not a giant. He was an orator : he carried away, not only his hearers, but himself. He was what Lamartine calls "a volunteer of democracy." He spoke, not as one of the people, but rather as one destined to be then- benefactor and saviour.

He took pay from the King, and did his utmost to uphold the throne; probably from conviction. But he was the first to oppose the King if the latter offered to derogate from Mirabeau's conception of him as "deputy of the nation." A man of unimpeachable sincerity, his venality, so called, was probably no more than necessity. He was idolised by the people of Paris and immensely popular in the Assembly. Freed by his father's death, he made the Revolution his life-work. As regards the King, his idea was that Louis, by coming, over to the Revolution, should safeguard both it and himself, a thoroughly sound and statesmanlike conception. The last thing he did was to protest against the proposal to stop emigration by confiscating the property of the Emigres. He died, worn out, on March 2, 1791. All Paris followed his body; all France mourned. Henceforth the Revolution guided men, instead of being itself directed.

Montesquieu died in 1755, thirty-four years before the Revolution ; his magnum opus, De I'Esprit des Lois, was published in Geneva in 1748. Born in 1689, Charles dc Secondat, Baron de la Brcde (son of Jaques, second son of the Baron de Montesquieu), became Councillor of the Parliament of Bordeaux at the age of twenty-five; two years later he was President. He was an earnest student of natural science, and a disciple of Newton; he read papers before the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences which show a wide interest in science and an original mind. Owing to defective sight, however, he had to abandon technical research.

In 1726 he sold his appointment in order to settle in Paris. Between

1726 and 1729 he travelled and studied in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Holland. In Holland he met Lord Chesterfield and went to England in his company. Here he studied the English Constitution, frequenting the best political society. The remainder of his life was spent between society and his study, partly in Paris and partly in Bordeaux, The title of Montesquieu he assumed in 1716, upon succeeding to his uncle's estates.

His principal literary works are: Discours Acadtmique; various scientific papers; Lettres Persanes, a satire on French morals and manners, cast in the form of letters interchanged between two Persian travellers in France and their friends at home. This book contains a great deal of original thought, and the nucleus of his later ideas on government, &c. Montesquieu was perhaps the first writer to insist on the significance of climate in matters of religion and government.

Considerations sur les Causes de la Grandeur des Remains et de leur Decadence (1734): a history of the political evolution of Rome from its origins to the fall of Byzantium, the first application of the scientific method to history—a book by no means obsolete in its conclusions.

De I'Esprit des Lois: published in Geneva, 1748. This was his life's work, and it forms the foundation of the scientific and ethnological treatment of law and government. This is a book that has had an immense influence on modern thought. It was read in England even more than in France. It contains a masterly analysis of the principles of the English Constitution, which Montesquieu unreservedly admired, and wished to see established in his own country.

Orleans, Due d'.—Louis-Philippe-Joseph, Due d'Orleans, and father of a future King of France, was a member of the younger branch of the royal house. His is, in some ways, a somewhat enigmatical figure, and it is difficult to decide whether he had real principles, or whether he was merely ambitious and actuated by his enmity towards the Court and a desire to stand well with the people. When the first signs of the Revolution became apparent he was about forty; at twenty he was physically attractive, graceful, a good horseman, and a patron of the arts; but in a few years debauchery and consequent disease played havoc with his looks and his physique.

He married a wealthy and popular heiress, the only daughter of the Due de Penthievre.

The Due de Penthievre was hereditary grand-amiral of France. Louis-Philippe demanded the reversion of the title, but was refused. However, he joined the fleet as a volunteer, and was present at one battle, when he was accused of cowardice, it seems untruly. He

VOL. i. 5

was so continually calumniated by the Court, who hated his democratic leanings, that a just estimate of his character is difficult On the moral side, however, we do know that he was boon companion to the Comte d'Artois; that the Queen feared his influence; that finally, after being accused of introducing the Prince de Lamballe to ladies of pleasure who should have been in hospital, he lived a somewhat retired life, broken by constant visits to England. In England he was intimate with the Prince of Wales, and probably had a considerable influence over him, which, perhaps, was hardly for his good in some ways, though Orleans certainly inclined him towards Liberalism.

The Palais Royal, as the Orleans palace was re-christened, played a part of the greatest importance in the history of the Revolution. Besides allowing all the riff-raff and free-lances of Paris to use the gardens as their Parliament, Orleans made his salon the resort of such men as Buffon, Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Franklin, of Sieyes, Laclos, Raynal, and other advanced thinkers.

Elected to the Estates-General, he left his place among the royal princes and walked among the deputies, thus and otherwise winning his name of Philippe Egalite. Had he been an abler and worse or a better man, there is no doubt whatever that he might, on Louis' removal, have won the crown. Nominated President of the Assembly, he refused the honour. When Necker was dismissed, his bust, with that of the Due, was commandeered from an image-seller's shop in the Palais Royal gardens, and borne through the streets, the result being bloodshed. Whether he lacked courage or ambition, or was really loyal to Louis in a personal way, we can hardly say; certain it is that he never took steps to displace Louis, but hung in the wind, as it were, as though waiting for the people to bear him up to the throne. But the people, not finding him a leader to their taste, never did so.

La Fayette suspected the Due after October $th and 6th, and accused him to the King and Queen, and exacted from him a promise to go to London. This promise he afterwards refused to keep; subsequently in an interview with Louis he agreed to go as a kind of royalist spy. But Mirabeau and his backers again persuaded him to refuse. La Fayette, however, triumphed, and he went. On his return he was nominated Admiral by the King.

His own account of his actions, which may be true, was that residence in England had convinced him of the advantages of a free constitutional government, and that he did his utmost, at considerable cost (he was often exiled from Paris) to bring this about; but that when he found his popularity likely to be a danger to the throne he withdrew as far as possible from the public view. Finally, however,

after suffering the most atrocious insults at the Tuileries, which the King and Queen took no pains to disavow, although they were not in reality responsible for them, he broke with the Girondists and went over to the extreme Left.

Under the Convention his position began to be insecure. He voted for Louis 1 death, probably to save his own head—for no aristocrat, much less a Bourbon, was safe in France—but possibly from a genuine sense of Louis' treachery. But this did not save him; Desmoulins finally denounced him, and he drifted from prison to prison. Four years later he was tried; the trial was a mere form, the accusation hopelessly vague, the conclusion a foregone result. He died bravely, a freethinker to the last, or perhaps till all but the last; for, whether as a form or in sincerity, he knelt to a priest for a moment before ascending the scaffold.

It is probable that at first he had dreams of a crown. Afterwards, to quote Lamartine, " he wished to reconcile himself with the King, touched by his misfortunes ; but the insults of courtiers repulsed him. He sought refuge in extreme opinion, to find himself hated and distrusted by the popular leaders, who would not forgive him his name. Danton deserted him; Robespierre affected to fear him; Marat denounced him. Desmoulins pointed him out to the Terrorists; the Girondists accused him, the Montagnards sent him to the scaffold."

Whether his vote for Louis' death was a matter of conscience or cowardice, who can say ? He seems to have believed fervently in the Revolution, [in himself but little. If he was a dlbauche, he was royal, which in those days meant debauchery or pietism. He was probably a better man than history has painted him.

f»aine, Thomas, who through his influence on the American Revolution exerted a considerable influence on the genius of the French Revolution, and who also took a personal part in the latter, was the son of an English staymaker. He was born in Thetford, Norfolk, England, in 1737. His father had been a Quaker. By 1774 he had tried his hand at staymaking, served as a marine, taught school, acted as exciseman, sold tobacco, and had married twice, losing one wife, divorcing the other. In 1774 he sailed for Philadelphia with letters from Franklin.

His first work, a pamphlet entitled Common Sense, in favour of complete separation and independence, had, according to no less an authority than Washington, a very great influence on American opinion. A year later he published his Crisis. He served as a private at Trenton, and was later made Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs; a post he held only two years, being accused of selling

information. Next he was clerk to the Legislature of Pennsylvania. In 1785 Congress gave him £600 and a farm. In 1787 he was back in England, and in 1791-2 published the Rights of Man, a reply to Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Between one and two million copies were sold. One unfortunate was transported for distributing this book; but Paine, having been elected deputy for Pas-de-Calais to the Convention, escaped to Paris. At Louis' trial he proposed that Louis should find an asylum in America. He voted with the Gironde ; presently offended Robespierre; was imprisoned in 1794, just as he had finished the first part of his Age oj Reason. The second part appeared next year, the third in 1807. This work was deistical, attacking both Atheism and Christianity. Its violence of tone as much as its matter alienated most of his former admirers.

In 1795 he resumed his seat in the Convention. Sickening at French politics, or disappointed with his place in them, he studied and lived quietly for some time, returning to America in 1802. He died in 1809. In 1819 Cobbett removed his remains to England; in 1847 they were lost sight of. He was a man of stupendous ignorance and his language was brutal and violent; but his style was trenchant, pure, and forcible. He was a typical self-made demagogue; his influence was greater than the man. We may note that when sent to Paris to beg help for America, Louis XVI had given to him and Franklin £250,000; yet he was not content with voting for Louis' death, but, his French being imperfect, wrote the Convention a violent and insulting letter on the subject

^Robespierre, Maximilien Marie Isidore.—Robespierre's family was said to be of Irish origin, and for some generations his people had been lawyers. He was born at Arras in 1758. His mother died when he was nine, his father two years later ; the four children were brought up by their mother's father.

Robespierre was a promising boy, distinguishing himself at Arras and at the College Louis-le-Grand, where Desmoulins became his friend and disciple. Admitted to practise at the age of twenty-three, in 1782 he was appointed judge of the Criminal Court by the Bishop of Arras.

We are told that he resigned his place to avoid passing a death-sentence. At first sight this seems remarkable in a man who afterwards became a wholesale murderer.

This inconsistency, and all that was enigmatical in his character, is probably due to the fact that there was no real Robespierre. He was a fanatical worshipper of Rousseau—that is, a subtle and self-conscious sentimentalist; the Robespierre of history is an actor with an eye on

two audiences—one, the people ; the other, the person he supposes to be Robespierre; a pupil of Rousseau's and the modern equivalent of an ancient philosopher-republican. It is doubtful if he was ever spontaneously sincere.

At Arras he was fairly popular ; he had " sensibility" and a taste for verses. He was sent to the Estates-General as a deputy of the Third Estate.

He was absolutely sincere in one way; that is, he absolutely convinced and deluded himself. His deadly earnestness and his " noble " language were derided in the earlier, more genial days of the Revolution, but as soon as the "masses" felt their power—the masses, devoid of humour as usual, and infected with fixed ideas, the slaves of phrases and "eloquence"—those qualities soon began to gain him respect and admiration. Mirabeau said, " He will go far, he believes what he says." Very often what he said had no meaning; but he believed it none the less. In the Jacobins, as was natural, his influence grew by leaps and bounds. The outside mob of patriots—honest, unwashed citizens—became absolutely grotesque and ridiculous in their admiration of him; crowning him in the street with oak-leaves, weeping and being wept on by the "incorruptible virgin." For incorruptibility was his great card, his sincerest pose.

As soon as Mirabeau died, he proposed a decree preventing any deputy from taking office as minister for four years, and a little later carried a motion disabling any deputy from election to the next Assembly.

His purpose was ostensibly to prevent any one from obtaining too much influence too great a popularity; to discourage ambition, as a safeguard against tyranny. Of course the effect of such an arrangement was to ensure that France should never have any well-defined, settled, statesmanlike policy, that her affairs would usually be in prentice hands—thus facilitating his own aggrandisement as a director of the Revolution.

Robespierre was then appointed Public Accuser. After the affair of the Champ de Mars (July 17, 1791) Robespierre was in a state of hysterical, abject panic. He crept from hiding to the Jacobins; they, instead of despising him, swore to defend him or to die with him. At the close of the Constituent Assembly in September he and Petion were carried home by the mob, "exhorting it to remember its dignity."

He retired to Arras, sold his possessions, and returned to the house of a carpenter, one Duplay, who had hidden him in July. The Duplay family seem to have loved and revered him; between him and the eldest daughter there was a love affair.

His life was frugal and sober in the extreme; he was abstemious,

reserved, solitary, living in one small room; but always dressing with the greatest care, in a blue coat and yellow breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes. In person he was small and fragile, and wore spectacles; his cheek-bones were high, his lips thick, his complexion bilious. Carlyle calls him " the Sea-green," appearing to think that his coat and complexion were of that colour, the fact being that a lady of his acquaintance described him as having greenish veins on the temples.

In the new Assembly—in which, of course, he had no seat—the Girondists, under Brissot and Vergniaud, were inclined for war. Robespierre hated war, and was continually attacking the Girondists at the Jacobins.

He does not seem to have been responsible for the horrible massacres of September; indeed, his peculiar sensibility was as yet greatly affected at the idea that one of a certain slaughtered batch was "innocent." He was first deputy for Paris in the Convention. The Girondists attacking him, he united his party with Danton's. Robes-pierre opposed the idea of an appeal to the people concerning the King's fate. After the King's death the Jacobins triumphed.

In April, 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was instituted, and practically ruled France. Robespierre was elected to it in July. The ideals of Couthon and Saint-Just were his; but Collot d'Herbois and Billaud-Varennes and the rest were not entirely in agreement with him; and it is just possible that he was never the dictator he seemed— that they used him, and then, when he appeared likely to become dangerous, accused him of conspiring with Couthon and Saint-Just to form a triumvirate, and brought him to the guillotine. On the other hand, their fears, which seem to have been genuine at the last, may have been so from the first.

Robespierre's power always came from the Jacobin Club. He himself was the dupe of the phrases with which he intoxicated the mob ; but his lack of humour finally betrayed him.

He now enters upon his ferocious phase, influenced perhaps by his colleagues as well as by fear and envy. In October, 1793, the Girondists were executed. Next, in March, 1794, Hebert and his party were disposed of—well and good; then Danton, which was not so well, for Danton was sick of bloodshed; and then Desmoulins, his own personal friend, his devoted admirer. Robespierre, like Marat, seems to have conceived a vindictive and bloody hatred of those he knew to be greater than himself, or likely to stand in his way.

Danton prophesied his fall. He had only four more months to live. He filled all the Committees, all places of power, with his creatures. Saint-Just he sent with orders to the armies in the East. He controlled the Revolutionary Tribunal and turned it into a mere

machine for assassination by Couthon's measure, that no counsel or witness could be called if the jury arrived at a verdict "otherwise." The sentences went on merrily after this, averaging nearly 900 a month.

Robespierre's popularity now began to wane. Apart from the fact that all either feared him or grovelled before him, his sense of proportion departed. He was accompanied by a voluntary bodyguard. He proposed a Spartan constitution, breaking up the family. He proposed a new religion and a new morality. He made the Convention agree to acknowledge a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul; and these were to be celebrated by thirty-six festivals. The first was on June 5th. Robespierre, in violet for once, burned paper images of the new Republican vices. An old woman by the name of Theot, who believed herself to be the mother of God, professed to find in the Book of Revelation that Robespierre was the Messiah.

Two days later Couthon proposed four Revolutionary Tribunals, and an easier Law of Suspects. The world was to be cleared of anti-Robespierrists.

After this Robespierre was somewhat retiring. He did not appear in the Convention till July 26th. He made a vague speech, accusing every one; only he was incorruptible. Remedy—more blood. A deputy moved that the speech should be printed. The order was passed—and revoked. Robespierre, chilled by a' dubious reception, went away discouraged.

The end comes next day. Saint-Just is interrupted; Tallien cries: " Last night, at the Jacobins, I trembled for the Republic. ... If the Convention dare not strike the tyrant, I dare, and if need be, will!" and he brandishes a knife. There are cries of " Tyranny! Dictatorship I Triumvirate I" All the night before Robespierre's enemies, feeling their heads but loosely knit to their shoulders, have gone to and fro in consultation. Robespierre tries to speak; is shouted down. " President of Assassins !" he screams, but his voice breaks. "Theblood of Danton chokes him I' cries one Garnier. One Louchet demands his arrest Robespierre junior and Lebas stand forward, claiming to share his arrest.

Paris failed to support the Jacobins in their attempts at rescue. Sent to prison, allowed to break away and seek refuge in the Hotel de Ville, he and his fellows—including Saint-Just and Couthon—were declared outlawed. The National Guard was turned out; the police broke into the room; Robespierre's jaw was shattered by a bullet For a time he lay half-conscious, in the Hall of the Convention, execrated, in torment. At the scaffold the bandage was torn brutally off his face ; he screamed. His head fell; Saint-Just followed him. In a few days the Terror was at an end.

Roland, Mme., and Jean Marie Roland de la Platifcre.—

Marie-Jeanne Philipon was born in Paris, 1754, her father being an engraver and unlucky speculator. She was an eager reader, even as a child reading everything that came her way, but in especial Plutarch, Buffon, Bossuet, Helvetius, and finally Rousseau. Plutarch prepared her for republicanism; but Rousseau was for a long time her idol. At the age of twenty-six she married Roland, an inspector of manufactures at Amiens. Roland drew up the cahier for the Agricultural Society at Lyons, and in 1791 went to Paris in the interests of the municipality, settling in Paris a year later. Mme. Roland, with her beauty and intellect, soon founded a salon, including all the prominent members of the Girondist party, and, at the outset, Danton and Robespierre.

In 1792 Roland became Minister of the Interior, but was soon dismissed for reproving the King for his refusal to give his sanction to the decree banishing the non-juring priests. During the King's imprisonment he was recalled, and protested strongly against the September massacres, and took part in the final attempt to create a strong moderate party. On their arrest Roland escaped and fled to Rouen ; next day Mme. Roland was taken to the Abbaye; released, and again imprisoned, this time in Sainte-Pelagie. During the five months left her she wrote her Mlmoires, and read in Plutarch and Tacitus. She was beheaded on November 8, 1793. She asked that a printer, who was with her, and had lost his nerve, might be executed first, that he might not suffer the shock of seeing her beheaded. «O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name I" are said to have been her last words. A week later Roland fell on his sword.

Mme. Roland's Mimoires relate chiefly to her youth. Her letters, to Bancal des Issarts and others, and to Buzot, whom she loved, were published by Dauban (1867). Hers was one of the noblest and purest characters of the time; what success and influence her husband attained he owed largely to her. He was devoted to her, and she to him; but the man she loved was Buzot. She confessed her attaqfetment to her husband, and her relations with Buzot were blameless.

M&ousseau, Jean Jacques.—It is impossible in this brief space to give any but the most meagre account of this extraordinary person: a man half insane, of odious character and sordid life, who nevertheless was one of the great political and literary influences of the eighteenth century.

He was born in Geneva, in 1712, his father being a disreputable dancing-master and watchmaker, who when Rousseau was only ten had to flee the city to escape the consequences of a brawl. His uncle sent him to a lawyer, who dismissed him as a fool, and to an engraver, whose cruelty developed his cunning and cowardice. The rest of his

life consisted of wanderings, interspersed with periods of rest, when he usually lived on a mistress. He was generally dismissed from his situations—and he took service as footman, general servant, tutor, secretary, and worked at copying music. The later years of his life were made wretched by delusions that he was watched and spied on, and that he had powerful enemies. He lived many years with a servant-girl, all his children by her being sent to a foundling hospital. Turin, Paris, Vienna, and London knew him; a Madame de Warens, a spy, whose lover he was for nine years, the French Ambassador in Venice, Diderot, Madame d'^pinay, the Duke of Luxemburg, George Keith, Earl Marischal to Frederic, David Hume, Mirabeau, the Prince de Conti, and M. de Girardin, were among those who employed or befriended him, sheltered him, or lent him houses. Besides writing and copying music he made lace, and composed a successful opera.

His life—sordid, dishonest, immoral, suspicious—was in utter contrast to his work. Although he wrote the most meticulous confessions, he regarded himself not only as a supreme genius, but as a man of impeccable character.

His first work of importance was a Discourse on Arts and Sciences, (1749), written to obtain a prize offered by the Dijon Academy. It attacks art, science, and in fact all culture, as the source and sign of all human corruption. Four years later, after a successful opera, he wrote a Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, arguing that civilisation ia degradation, and that the brutish primitive life, without letters or art, is the perfect state: that wealth is a crime, and government a tyranny.

In 1760 the New Heloise appeared; inordinately dull, inflated, and pointless to modern readers, but greatly to the taste of his sentimental and artificial age. He became famous, and followed his success by the Social Contract, published in Amsterdam, and, two months later, by Emile.

Emile was condemned, so was Rousseau. He fled to Neuchatel; but finally, while in t£e Val de Travers, the villagers became violently hostile to him as a heretic; then, driven from Berne, he fled to England, remaining there until he became convinced that the Government sought his life.

In the Control Social Rousseau advances the theory that the original members of society surrendered their will to the general will to obtain protection; that the community is the sovereign, and that no laws are binding unless sanctioned by the whole people. Entile is largely concerned with the education of children. Both works had a vast influence.

His Confessions followed; then Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques> and Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire.

The descriptions of Nature in many of his works went far to bring about the romantic and naturalistic schools. Politically his works did more service by their boldness in breaking down barriers and

despising conventions, and by occasional insight amounting to genius, than by their actual intellectual value. In religion he was a theist, and inspired Robespierre with his State religion. His faults were the outcome of a miserable youth, and a temperament unbalanced to the point of insanity. He died in a cottage given him by Girardin; not without suspicion of suicide. His Therese, his m&nagere, had caused him endless trouble, and delusions were multiplying; he believed that every one he met hated him and was spying on him, even to the children.

His attacks on society and on art are those of a fanatic, but there is much truth in his criticisms, and they were needed at the time; in fact, they were far more justifiable at the time than we can easily realise now.

Saint-Just, Louis Antoine L6on Florelle de.—Saint-Just was born near Nevus in 1767, and was educated by the Oratorians at Soissons. He studied law, but soon began to write, being a confirmed disciple of Rousseau. At nineteen he went to Paris with his mother's plate, and was imprisoned for six months at her request.

In 1791 he published an essay on IEsprit de la Revolution. In 1792 he was returned to the Convention as one of the deputies for Aisne, being then twenty-four years of age.

His first speeches were attacks on the Monarchy. He spoke long and eloquently in favour of Louis' immediate execution.

A devoted follower of Robespierre, he was sent on missions to the eastern armies, urging them on and encouraging them.

Full of fanatical ideals, anxious to see France a republic on the model of Sparta, a supporter in all things of Robespierre, Saint-Just was dangerous through an insane attachment to his ideals; he was all intellect and prejudice, and utterly inhuman. His slight figure, straight black hair, large blue eyes, and bold features, his cold, reserved manner, and simple habits and clothing, made him, together with his youth, a striking and individual figure. It was he who began the attacks on Hebert which sent first him and then the Dantonists to the guillotine.

In 1794 he proposed to the Convention Robespierre's scheme for the reconstitution of society, a rechaufft of Spartan laws and traditions. Boys were to be taken from their parents, and educated by the State; no marriage was to be proclaimed until fruitful; friendship was to be a public obligation, and a man must publicly declare his friends. Naturally all this involved an absolute dictator: Robespierre. Saint-Just was arrested with Robespierre, and died with him, silent and unmoved.

He is a typical example of the Frenchman—or for that matter of the

youthful enthusiast of whatever country— possessed by a fixed idea to the point of fanaticism, and to the exclusion of humour, a sense of proportion, experience, logic, foresight, or humanity. He was a man of action — courageous, pitiless, uncompromising. Couthon, Saint-Just, and Robespierre formed the famous ''triumvirate' 1 within the Committee gfJPublic Safety.

Emmanuel Joseph, Comte de, afterwards Abbe, was born at Frejus, in 1748, of a bourgeois family. Like so many eminent men of his time, he was educated by the Jesuits of his native town ; then by the Doctrinaires at Draguignan. He entered the Church on account of weak health, but had wished to become an engineer. As a student of theology his originality caused some apprehension. Canon of Treguier, then Chancellor and Vicar-General of Chartres, sent from Chartres to the Chambre Superieure of the Clergy, he published just before the Estates-General were convened three very remarkable pamphlets, which at once made his name a household word ; Views on the means of Execution, an Essay on Privilege, and What is the Third Estate? "What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it hitherto been? Nothing. What does it wish to be? Something." A deputy for Paris, he proposed the motion that sent the final invitation to the noblesse and clergy to join the Third Estate. A week later the Third Estate adopted the title of National Assembly on his motion. Inimical to all privileges, his mind was characterised by fearless logic ; his eloquence was incisive. The establishment of departmental administration was largely the work of Sieyes. In the National Convention he sat with the Centre. He voted for Louis' death. Later, he preserved a disdainful silence, despising the rant and brutality of his colleagues. During the Terror he lived as unobtrusively as possible. He opposed the Constitution of the year III. He would not at first sit on the Directoire, but accepted a mission to Berlin (1798) and on his return next year was elected a member of the Directoire. He had long ceased to regard the Republic with anything but despair, and began to cast about for a dictator. With Napoleon, when the latter returned from Egypt, he planned the revolution which ended in the Consulate of Sieyes, Bonaparte, and Ducos. He found, however, that Bonaparte was too much for him, and threw up his consulship. He was given, on his retirement, the title of count, an estate, and a sum of 600,000 francs. Later he was offered the dignity of President of the Senate, but refused it A disappointed man, he lived a private life, and on the Restoration was exiled to Belgium, returning after fifteen years, at the time of the Revolution of 1830. He died at Paris in 1836, aged eighty-eight. A reserved, solitary man, he had absolute faith in his own intellectual

conclusions. He was too inflexibly reasonable, so that humanity bitterly disappointed him.

Tallien, Jean Lambert.—Tallien was born in Paris in 1769. He began life as a lawyer's clerk, entered a printing establishment, became a journalist, and in 1791 started a Jacobin sheet, L'Ami des Citoyens. He was one of the leaders in the attack on the Tuileries in August, and became secretary to the insurrectionary commune. He was not innocent of complicity in the September massacres, and elected to the Convention, proved himself violent and intemperate, and of course voted for Louis' death. He was one of the Committee of General Security, and concerned in the downfall of the Girondists.

He was sent to Bordeaux in September, when he crushed the insurrection by means of the guillotine. He was recalled to Paris, and made President of the Convention. Robespierre disapproved of him, perhaps envied his profligacy—his behaviour in Bordeaux was shameless—and Tallien, recognising his danger, began the attack upon Robespierre in the Convention, offering to kill him if nobody else would. He helped to suppress the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Jacobins and the Terrorists generally. He married Comtesse Th6rese de Fontenay, one of his Bordeaux victims. After the close of the Convention he began to lose influence, and she left him for a banker. Napoleon took him to Cairo; but General Menou dismissed him. Coming home, he was captured by an English man-of-war. The Whigs made much of him (1801)—one presumes for his share in Robespierre's overthrow. Returning to Paris, he was sent as consul to Alicante. He died in poverty, in Paris, in 1820.

Vergniaud, Pierre Victurnien,—Vergniaud was the son of a small Limoges merchant; he was born in 1753. Turgot, then Intendant of Limousin, thought him promising, and procured him a scholarship at the College du Plessis in Paris.

Vergniaud studied and abandoned divinity, and entered the civil service, but after a while returned to Limoges. Finally settling at Bordeaux, he soon obtained a considerable law practice.

He was elected to the National Assembly in 1791. His principles were those of national unity and a strong central government; he especially saw the danger of allowing a rupture between the departments and the capital. A magnificent orator and a man of high character, he was virtually the leader of the Girondists. He was unambitious, hated intrigue, and was hardly a statesman. He died with the rest of the Girondist leaders, being the last to mount the scaffold, singing the " Marseillaise" to the last moment.

Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de, one of the greatest of Frenchmen, was born in 1694, in Paris. His father was employed in the Chambre des Comptes. His mother, who died when he was quite young, had been a friend of Ninon de 1'Enclos.

He was taught to despise religion by the Abbe de Chateauneuf, his godfather. He was a promising student; Ninon de 1'Enclos left him £80 to buy books with. He refused the law, and moved in a cultured, reckless, dissipated set, from which his father removed him by sending him to the Hague in the suite of the French Ambassador; but an intrigue with a young lady soon led to his recall. Satires and lampoons led to banishment, and a year of the Bastille. On emerging he changed his name of Arouet for that of Voltaire (an anagram on Arouet, /.;'.); it was then that he wrote his (Edipe, a triumphant success. Other plays and poems followed, and the Queen (Louis XVs) was smiling on him, when a member of the house of Rohan had him beaten by bravos in revenge for a lampoon which he had written, on being insulted in a snobbish manner by the aristocrat Voltaire challenged him, as he could not get legal redress, and the Bastille again received him ; but he was soon banished to England, where he arrived in 1726. There he knew, among others, Bolingbroke, Pope, Chesterfield, the Herveys, the Duchess of Marlborough, &c., and studied Locke and Newton and the English poets. He dedicated the Henriade to Queen Caroline.

Returning, he made money in the lottery, by speculation, and by army contracts. He formed an attachment to a Mme. du Chatelet, a highly accomplished lady, and retired with her to her chateau; the next few years were prolific in literary output and scientific research. Here he began his correspondence with Frederic of Prussia. A new play performed at the Dauphin's marriage won the favour of Louis XV and the Pompadour, and he was elected to the Academy and received a Court appointment; but his stay at Court was varied by temporary forced exiles. In 1749 his mistress died in childbirth, the child being that of a new lover. Voltaire now accepted a standing invitation of Frederic's to go to Berlin, where he was made a Chamberlain, and received a large pension; but in 1753 his criticisms of Maupertuis, whom Frederic had advanced, and certain financial dealings disclosed by a lawsuit, resulted in a quarrel and his departure from Berlin. At Frankfort he was arrested and imprisoned, Frederic having instructed his representative there to recover a private volume of his poems from the Frenchman. The arrest seems to have been a blunder. In 1755 he settled near Geneva, and continued his literary work. When the Encyclopedic was suspended, and a work of Voltaire's on natural religion burned in Paris, he began the famous series of attacks on Christianity. He also rescued many victims of fanaticism from the clutches of the law. Although an adversary of Christianity, atheists

regarded him as reactionary. He resumed his correspondence with Frederic and began one with Catherine of Russia, whom he urged to expel the Turks from Europe. He became immensely wealthy, farmed, bred horses and poultry, and established a watch-making industry. In his eighty-fourth year he visited Paris to produce his tragedy Irene. He had a loyal, a frantic welcome ; but the excitement brought on an illness which overdoses of opiates aggravated. He died in May, 1778, requesting two priests who came to him to let him die in peace.

He wrote histories, philosophical works, satires, dramas, novels, poems. His great life-work was his attack upon Christian bigotry and fanaticism, and his chief influence was to teach men to refuse authority, to use their reason in all things, and to tolerate the ideas of others.