READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

CHAPTER LII.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

THE celebrated phrase of Louis XIV, “I am the State”, proclaimed the consummation of despotism. He asserted, and it was true, that the people, as a body politic, had been annulled by the Crown. Before a century had elapsed the maxim was reversed. The head of Louis’s second successor fell upon the scaffold, and the revolutionary disciples of Rousseau established the principle that the real sovereign is the people itself. Hence it would appear that, for all practical purposes, the causes of the French Revolution may be sought between the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XVI; or, in other words, that the inquiry may be limited to the nature of the institutions left by the former Monarch, and the causes which gradually led the people to desire their overthrow under the latter. Even within these limits the extent of the subject might demand a volume rather than a chapter. We can pretend only to indicate its principal heads, leaving the historical student to fill up the outline from his own researches and reflections.

The French Revolution, though partly induced by the existence of discontent and distress, was in the main a political revolution. What was required was a political transformation which should result in the abolition of the remains of feudalism, an equal and just distribution of the burdens of taxation, and the removal of all barriers to the advancement of the lower and middle classes to the highest offices in the State.

The nobles, system under the old régime was the anomalous position of the nobility. The vast power of the old nobles in the early days of the French Monarchy caused the Crown to regard them as rivals, and to court against them the aid of the people. This traditional policy even survived the occasion of it, and down to the very eve of the Revolution, Louis XVI continued to regard the aristocracy as his most dangerous enemies. Louis XI and his successors had begun to undermine their power, which was terribly shaken by the wars of the League, and finally overthrown by Richelieu. One of the most successful measures adopted by Louis XIV was, to entice the nobles to reside in Paris by the attractions of hat capital, and thus to destroy their influence in their own provinces. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the abandonment of their estates for a town life had become almost general among the nobles; few remained in the provinces who had the means of living with becoming splendor in the capital. The dissipation and extravagance in which they thus became involved leading to their gradual impoverishment, they were compelled to sell their lands bit by bit; so that in the reign of Louis XVI it was computed that five-eighths of all the land in France was in the hands of roturiers, and for the most part of very small proprietors. Arthur Young, who travelled in France at the outbreak of the Revolution, had often seen a property of ten rods with only a single fruit tree upon it.

As the policy of Richelieu depressed the nobles, so it tended to enrich and elevate the Tiers état, or commons. The inhabitants of towns, the commercial and manufacturing classes, made rapid progress. The high roads of the kingdom, previously infested by brigands, became safe channels for the operations of trade and industry. Abundance everywhere prevailed; the fields were covered with rich crops, the towns were animated with commerce and embellished by the arts. The impulse once given went on increasing. Hence the Tiers état which attended the States-General of 1789 bore but little resemblance to their predecessors a century or two before. Wealth had given them weight and importance; education had sharpened their intelligence, opened their eyes to the political and social abuses which prevailed, and inspired them with the desire of obtaining that influence and consideration in the State to which their altered condition justly entitled them.

Richelieu’s policy was ultimately followed by effects which he had neither foreseen nor intended. It contributed, in short, to make the Revolution possible. Hence the different views which have been taken by French political writers of Richelieu’s character. The advocates of a constitutional monarchy, regarding a substantial aristocracy as the only sure support of a solid liberty, utterly condemn the policy of Richelieu.

Montesquieu, in his Pensées, calls him one of the worst citizens that France had ever seen; and the same view is adopted by Madame de Stael, in her Considerations sur la Revolution Française.Ultra-democratic writers, on the contrary, look upon the great Cardinal Minister as a deliverer from aristocratic tyranny, in fact, as the founder of the French nation. In their view, a royal despotism is more endurable, and more favorable to the progress of civilization, than the despotism of an aristocracy, because it is less extensively felt, and because it is more amenable to the control of public opinion, and of such protective institutions, however imperfect, as France possessed, for instance, in her Parliaments.

But whilst in the eighteenth century the wealth and the Feudal political influence of the French nobility were almost annihilated, a titular aristocracy still remained, possessing many of the peculiar and invidious privileges of the feudal times. Although the nobles were no longer obliged to make war at their own expense, although they were now enregimented and received the King’s pay, yet they still enjoyed that immunity from direct taxation which had been accorded to them for their military services. The profession of arms, however, was still considered as a monopoly of the nobility. No man, except of noble birth, could become a military officer. On the very eve of the Revolution, a lieutenant in a marching regiment had to prove a nobility of at least four generations. The nobles also enjoyed a monopoly of the greater civil offices. These exclusive privileges tended to make the noblesse a sort of caste. A noble who engaged in trade or commerce forfeited his rights and privileges. As it is computed that there were in France, in 1789, 40,000 noble families, comprising some 200,000 persons, the invidiousness of these privileges must have been very extensively felt. Of the whole nobility, however, there were not 200 families really belonging to those ancient races which prided themselves, though mostly without foundation, on their Frankish origin, and on holding their estates and dignities by right of conquest. Their titles had been mostly purchased. The practice of selling patents of nobility had been adopted by the French kings at a very early period, though it was not carried to any great extent till the sixteenth century. It was resorted to partly as a means of depressing the order, partly as an expedient to raise money. Charles IX issued a vast number of these patents, and his successor, Henry III, is said to have created no fewer than a thousand nobles. Roturiers were sometimes compelled to buy these patents, which were even issued with the name in blank. Louis XIV granted 500 letters of nobility in a single year.

The feudal privileges enjoyed by the nobles, or by those who had stepped into their places, were very grievously felt in the rural districts. Even where the land was no longer in the hands of a seigneur, the feudal rights attached to it, or what was called la servitude de la terre, still remained in force, though held perhaps, by neighboring proprietors, almost as poor as the peasant who was subject to them. In some instances these rights had been acquired by the Crown, and the peasant was compelled to labour gratuitously, often at a distance from his home, in making roads, building barracks, and other works of a like description, experiencing, at the same time, the most brutal and unfeeling treatment. Besides this compulsory task-work, called the corvée, the peasant saw his fields exposed, without defence, to the ravages of game; he was obliged to pay heavy market-tolls, to make use of a certain ferry, to have his corn ground at a particular mill, his bread baked at a particular oven. Not the least among these feudal grievances were the justices seigneuriales, or private courts of justice attached to certain titles and possessions. The proprietors of these courts, of which there are said to have been more than 2,400, leagued themselves with the Parliaments against the reforms in the administration of justice proposed by the Royal Edict of May 8th, 1788; in the preamble of which it is stated that trifling civil causes had often to undergo six hearings.

Noble proprietors were commonly absentees, and left their estates to be managed by agents, whose only object it was to extort as much as they could from the peasantry. The smaller landowners had not the means of properly cultivating their land, nor of laying anything by, so that a bad year brought actual famine and deaths by thousands. The misery of the agricultural districts at the close of the 17th century, and during the following one, has been fully described by Vauban, St. Simon, and other writers. La Bruyère, writing about 1689, describes the rural population as resembling wild animals in their appearance and way of life. Massillon, Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, tells Cardinal Fleury, in 1740, that the misery of the rural population was frightful, and D'Argenson declares that more Frenchmen died in 1739 and 1740 than in all the wars of Louis XIV. We hear of their being forced to resort to the herbs of the field and the bark of trees to appease the cravings of hunger. Between 1700 and 1715 the population of France is said to have decreased by more than two millions, and from that period to the middle of the century it made no advance. Among the peasants the desire for land was strong, and at the time of the Revolution about a fifth part of France was in the hands of peasant proprietors.

The nobles had little interest in the land except the title and the feudal privileges, and as Madame de Stael, an acute observer of her own times, remarks, the different classes in France entertained a mutual antipathy for one another. In no other country were the gentry so estranged from the rest of the nation.

The bourgeoisie, like the peasantry, were oppressed by peculiar burdens originating in the middle ages. The trade of France was monopolized by guilds and corporations, which fettered independent industry by a system of maitrises and jurandes (masterships and wardenships), and thus even the bourgeoisie had its aristocracy. A stranger, or non-freeman, could not become an apprentice even to the meanest trade, without paying a considerable premium. On the expiration of his apprenticeship, a young man became a compagnon and was entitled to wages; but a long interval must still elapse before he could set up for himself as a maître juré, or master in his trade; and this again entailed heavy expenses. Even a Paris flower-girl had to pay 200 livres to become a maîtresse. On the other hand, the son of a maître could avoid these expenses by being apprenticed to his father. Hence trades came to be perpetuated in certain families, and an exclusive system was formed which gave occasion to perpetual disputes. The very beggars had their privileges, and it was only those belonging to a certain order, called trôniers, who were entitled to ask alms at the door of a church.

Among other relics of the feudal times, the ecclesiastical system of France was diametrically opposed to the growing spirit of the age. The clergy were a landed aristocracy, and like the nobles, were exempt from direct taxation; or rather, they claimed the privilege of taxing themselves by what were called dons gratuits, or voluntary offerings. The collection of tithes brought them into direct collision with that numerous body of small landed proprietors which, as we have already said, had now sprung up in France; and thus the notice of an inquiring age was all the more strongly attracted to the flagrant abuses which prevailed in the Church. The higher ecclesiastical dignities were mostly filled by the younger sons of noble families, and were no longer the rewards of virtue and piety, while the lower clergy who really performed the duties of the Church had in many cases scarcely wherewithal to support a decent existence.

The arbitrary power of the Crown shared the hatred felt by the people for the privileges of the aristocracy, both lay and clerical. The French Government was, indeed, both in theory and practice, a perfect despotism. The King was the only legislative and supreme executive power. As he claimed to be the sole proprietor and absolute lord of all France, he could dispose of the property of his subjects by imposts and confiscations, and of their persons by lettres de cachet. Thus in France the social structure had no secure foundation. Had the States-General been regularly convened, the long­standing abuses which we have described would probably have been gradually abolished, instead of remaining to be swept away by a revolution. The only constitutional principle which could be perceived was, as Madame de Stael observes, that the Crown was hereditary. Public opinion, and the passive and unavailing resistance of the Parliaments, were the sole checks upon the exercise of the Royal prerogative. A dangerous result of the all-disposing power of the Crown was that the people looked up to it for everything, even for aid in their private affairs, and attributed to it the most inevitable calamities. If agriculture was in a bad state, it was ascribed to want of succour from the Government; in times of scarcity, which frequently occurred in the eighteenth century, the different districts looked to their Intendant for food.

Besides the invidious and oppressive privileges of the nobles, the monopolies of guilds and corporations, the abuses in the hierarchy, and the arbitrary power of the Sovereign, the anomalous condition of the French provinces was another source of discontent. Although Richelieu had consolidated the authority of the Crown throughout France, he had not amalgamated its various provinces; which differed so widely in their systems of law, religion, and finance, that they could hardly be said to form one kingdom. There were Gascons, Normans, Bretons, Provençals, etc., but a French, nation could hardly be said to exist. There was France of the Langue d'oc, subject to the Roman law, and France of the Langue d'oil, obeying the common law; France of the Concordat, and France of the Pays d’obedience more immediately subject to the Papal power; France of the Pays d’élection and France of the Pays d'états. These anomalies chiefly arose from the gradual manner in which the Monarchy had been developed. Down to the twelfth century the patrimony of the French Crown continued to be only the province of the Isle of France, with Paris for its capital, together with the Orleanais and a few adjacent districts. The King’s authority over the rest of France was rather that of a feudal suzerain than of a Sovereign. By marriage, bequest, confiscation, conquest and other means, related in the preceding pages, these slender possessions had been augmented before the reign of Louis XVI to between thirty and forty provinces; embracing, with the exception of Avignon and the Venaissin, which still belonged to the Pope, the whole of modern France.

Of these provinces, acquired at such different times and in such various ways, many had continued to retain their peculiar laws and privileges. On a general view, the most important distinction between them was that of Pays d'élection and Paysd'états. The Pays d’élection were so called because originally the territorial taxes were assessed by certain magistrates called élus (persons chosen or elected), whose fiscal jurisdiction was entitled an Election. In early times these magistrates had really been chosen by the communities, a practice which ceased under Charles VII, though the name was still retained. As a general rule, the Pays d’élection were the provinces most anciently united to the Crown. The Pays d'états derived their name from the states, or administrative assemblies, which they had possessed before their union with the French Realm, and were allowed subsequently to retain. The provinces comprised under this name were Rousillon, Brittany, Provence, Languedoc, Burgundy Franche-Comté, Dauphiné, Alsace, the Trois Evêchés (Metz, Toul, and Verdun), Flanders, Hainault, Lorraine, and Corsica. In these provinces the administration was vested, nominally, at least—for the authority of the Crown often overrode their ancient constitutions—in the States. The right of sitting in these assemblies, was attached, with regard to the clergy, to certain preferments, with regard to the nobles, to certain families, and with regard to the Tiers état, or burgesses, to certain offices. Some of these provinces, by virtue of treaties concluded with the Crown, claimed an immunity from various taxes. In such cases the Crown fixed the contribution of each province, and the privilege of the States consisted principally in determining the method in which it should be assessed. The King was said to demand a tax of the Pays d’états, and to impose it on the Pays d’élection.

This state of things was attended with great inconvenience and many evils. One of the most striking of these was the of enormous difference which prevailed, perhaps in contiguous provinces, in the duties on the same article, and consequently in its price. In some provinces, for instance, as Bretagne and the Artois, there was no gabelle or salt tax, while in others it was oppressive. In the free provinces salt was worth only from two to eight livres the quintal, while in those subject to the grande gabelle it sold for sixty-two livres. The Crown alone enjoyed the right to sell salt, and in the provinces subject to the gabelle its consumption was obligatory; every person above seven years of age was compelled to purchase seven pounds annually at the Grenier du Roi. A cask of wine passing from the Orleanais into Normandy increased at least twentyfold in price, while goods from China could be imported at only five times their original cost. The taxes were chiefly assessed on the most necessary articles of life, such as bread, salt, meat, and wine; so that the burden was thrown chiefly on the poor. Salt alone contributed fifty-four million livres to the revenue. The great difference in the duties on the same articles in different provinces made the same precautions necessary to prevent smuggling between them as if they had been foreign countries, and an army of 50,000 men was employed to guard 1,200 leagues of internal barriers. It was estimated that smuggling and the illicit manufacture of salt occasioned annually 4,000 domiciliary visits, 3,400 imprisonments, and 500 convictions, some of which were capital. In years of scarcity these barriers produced the greatest inconvenience and distress by preventing the ready transit of grain from one district to another. The independent fiscal system of the provinces also rendered possible to persons in authority that peculation to which we have already alluded in the instance in which Louis XV himself was implicated in 1771, and which was consigned to infamy under the name of the Pacte de famine. One province was ignorant of the condition of another; the total amount of direct taxation was known only by the King’s council. The fermiers généraux or traitants, to whom the taxes were farmed, treated France like a conquered country. The galleys, the prisons, the gallows were at their service. No man could tell the amount of their gains. But out of them they had to make large presents to courtiers and mistresses. Even the King himself, when they closed their accounts, condescended to receive from them large sums of gold in velvet purses. And not unfrequently the arm of the law or the strong hand of power compelled them to disgorge their ill-gotten wealth.

These very anomalies, however, created a necessity for a strong central government. It was by this method that Richelieu obviated the inconveniences which it was not in his power to remove. Under his Ministry, all France was divided, for fiscal and administrative purposes, into thirty-two districts called généralités, each under the superintendence of an Intendant, who was commonly selected from the maîtres des requêtes attached to the Royal Council. His functions were to superintend the construction and maintenance of high roads, bridges, etc.; to control hospitals, prisons, and the relief of the poor; to take care that taxes were equitably assessed, and justice impartially administered; to direct the police, with other duties of the like kind. The Intendants in central France were dependent on the Controller of Finance, those in the frontier provinces on the Secretary at War. Thus the whole Kingdom was subjected to the surveillance of the King and his Ministers; and the despotism of the Crown was brought home to the very doors of the people. D’Argenson observe that France was entirely governed by some thirty Intendants, the clerks of the provinces, on whom depended their happiness or misery, their sterility or abundance. Thus also a system of centralization was established which materially contributed to render Paris the centre of France.

All the miseries and abuses we have described had been endured till about the middle of the eighteenth century, when a school of writers sprang up which began to attack them from the administrative point of view.

One of the first, and perhaps the most distinguished of this reformers was the Marquis d'Argenson, Minister for Foreign Affairs in 1744, and previously Intendant of Hainault. His treatise entitled Considérations sur le Gouvernement de France, published in 1740, and consequently several years before the appearance of the Encyclopédie, contains many liberal principles. He was for doing away with the invidious fiscal privileges of the nobles, abolishing Protestant disabilities, and making all alike admissible to public office. But his scheme presents no bold and striking outline. The main feature of it was to divide France by degrees into new departments and arrondissemens, which were all to be endowed with an administration resembling that of the Pays d'états. Thus there was to be a municipal council in each parish; an assembly in each district composed of deputies from the different parishes, and the States of the province or department, formed of deputies from the districts. But these bodies were to be entrusted only with the administration of their local concerns. They were to have no voice in the general affairs of the Kingdom, nor could anything be submitted to them that had not first been sanctioned by the King. In a word, he would have created a multitude of little provincial democracies under a central despotism.

With the administrative reformers arose the Physiocrats and the Economists. Physiocracy, or the government of nature, derived its name from the fundamental tenet of the sect, that the soil alone was the source of all wealth, its cultivators the only productive class, the rest of the world was designated as classe stérile. Quesnay, physician to Madame de Pompadour, was the founder of this sect. They denounced such institutions as stood in the way of their theories; but they had no wish to diminish the absolute power of the Crown; on the contrary, they considered it essential to their purposes, and better adapted to them than English liberty. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that some of them felt an extraordinary admiration for China; where an absolute, yet unprejudiced Sovereign cultivated the earth once a year with his own hands, in honor of the useful arts; where all places were obtained by literary competition; where philosophy took the place of religion, and learning was a title to aristocracy. Some of the physiocrats held a sort of socialist doctrine, as Morelly, who, in his Code de la Nature, published in 1754, advocated the community of goods. This school made a great parade of analysis and philosophical method, though their main theory was not a very wise one. The earth, as the sole source of all wealth, was to bear the whole burden of taxation; and hence their grand aim was to augment the net product of the land, in other words, the income of the landed proprietor; and bread was to be made dear in order that agriculture might flourish! It was to ridicule this school that Voltaire wrote his Homme aux 40 écus.

Side by side with this school grew up another, that of the Economists, whose attention was directed to commerce. Opposed on other points to the views of the Physiocrats, they held one doctrine in common with them—the removal of all restrictions. The mottoes common to both schools were laissez faire, laissez passer. The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of the orator, belonged to the Economists, and was among the first advocates of free trade, especially in corn. In a passage of his Ami des Hommes, he asks: “In order to maintain abundance in a Kingdom, what should be done?— Nothing”. Thus he opened the road, though often erroneously and inadequately, which was afterwards improved and completed by Adam Smith. Turgot, whose constant aim was the good of the people, was the most eminent member of this school. The views of Turgot embraced the abolition of corvées and jurandes, the suppression of provincial barriers and custom-houses, the establishment of free trade in corn, and the compelling the nobles and clergy to contribute to the taxes. It was Turgot who first asserted, in his article Fondation in the Encyclopédie, that church lands were national property.

It was not, however, such gradual and incomplete reforms, even if these could have been carried without some convulsion, that could satisfy the present temper of the French nation. Instead of lopping off a few abuses of the ancient régime, a spirit was abroad which was to overthrow both the throne and the altar, and to shake society to its foundations. This spirit had been engendered by the literature and pseudo-philosophy of the eighteenth century. The material progress of the middle-classes, accompanied with a corresponding advance in their manners and education, had produced an apt and ready audience for its doctrines. Into the effects of this new philosophy we must now inquire.

The French literature of the seventeenth century, formed under the auspices of Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV, had been developed in the spirit of the anti-reformation, and rested on classical antiquity, the Roman Catholic religion, and absolute Monarchy. It had been encouraged by Richelieu and his successors as a means of extending their own as well as the national glory; nor can it be denied that it had a vast effect in promoting French influence abroad. Richelieu, however, seems to have felt some apprehension of the consequences it might one day produce at home. In a remarkable passage of his Testament Politique, he almost foretells the spirit of the eighteenth century, and betrays his anxiety to prevent the diffusion of knowledge; unconscious that its floodgates, when once opened, cannot again be closed. Already before the end of the seventeenth century symptoms had begun to appear of a change in the literary taste of the nation. The French writers of the eighteenth century sought their inspiration not in classical, but in modern literature, especially the English. After this school, they began to occupy themselves with questions of politics and religion; to discuss the elementary principles of society; and to investigate the grounds of religious belief. Thus the age of Bossuet and Pascal was succeeded by that of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists.

Infidelity had, indeed, taken root in France before the close of Louis XIV’s reign, under the auspices of the profligate Duc de Vendome and his brother; and it was in this school that the Duc de Chartres, afterwards the Regent Orleans, imbibed his principles of atheism and immorality. There can be little doubt that disgust at the bigotry, superstition, and hypocrisy which marked the later years of Louis XIV, contributed to produce this reaction. Infidelity, however, would not probably have spread itself among the great mass of the nation, but for the writers who subsequently sprung up. Fontenelle was their precursor, whose long life, extending from the middle of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century, rendered him the connecting link between the literature of the two periods. Not that Fontenelle can be exactly styled an infidel author. He was, as Villemain remarks, but the discreet echo of the bolder thinkers, such as Bayle and others, who wrote in Holland. Yet his writings are marked by a certain want of orthodoxy, a disposition to question received opinions, and to treat grave subjects in that tone of badinage which became characteristic of the eighteenth century. Such especially is the style of his Histoire des Oracles, whilst his Dialogues of the Dead betray a genius kindred with that of Lucian.

Lord Bolingbroke, and the Club of the Entresol, which he founded during his banishment in France, tended greatly to promote the liberalism and infidelity of the eighteenth century, and to give them a literary and philosophical turn. Among the most remarkable members of the Club of the Entre-sol, was the Abbé de St. Pierre, whose works, says Villemain, present the programme of a social revolution so bold and complete as to astonish even J. J. Rousseau. But Montesquieu must perhaps be regarded as the first writer whose works had any direct influence upon the French Revolution. After travelling over great part of Europe Montesquieu took up his abode in England, in 1729. Here he applied himself to the study of our Constitution, for which he imbibed a great admiration, as appears from his panegyric on it in the eleventh book of his Esprit des Lois, published about twenty years afterwards. At first, however, this, his greatest work, was not understood by his countrymen. They were hardly yet ripe for serious political studies, and Montesquieu’s first work, the Lettres Persanes, seems to have given them a wrong idea of his genius. In the disguise of Eastern masquerade Montesquieu in that work aimed some blows at French customs and institutions; and hence, while uttering in the Esprit des Lois his earnest convictions, he was still regarded by many of his countrymen only as a concealed satirist. His book was much better received in England, and it was only by Frenchmen of the next generation that it began to be duly understood and appreciated.

Montesquieu must be regarded as the father of that school of reformers, including Necker, Lally Tollendal, Mounier, and others, who at the outbreak of the French Revolution wished to establish in France a Constitution on the English model. There was no analogy whatever between the France of 1789 and England at any period of its history. The want of an aristocracy influential through its dignities and wealth, yet without particular privileges, except that of an hereditary peerage, and identified in its private interests with the great mass of the people, would alone have rendered English institutions impossible in France. The democratic inclinations of the French, their military habits, their large standing army, all tended the same way. The principles of Montesquieu obtained however, at length, a sort of triumph in the Charter of 1814; which appears to have been founded on the scheme of a Constitution modelled on that of England, and submitted by Lally Tollendal to the Constituent Assembly.

Voltaire, the son of a notary of the name of Arouet, also acquired much of his philosophy in England, and had a far greater influence than Montesquieu on the French Revolution. Not, however, from any love of constitutional liberty. Voltaire throughout his life posed as an aristocrat and a royalist, and mixed in the highest circles of Paris. Unfortunately, however, his talent for satire produced effects calculated to remind him unpleasantly of his plebeian origin. He offended a young nobleman, the Chevalier de Rohan, who caused him to be horse-whipped, and in reply to a demand for satisfaction, obtained a lettre de cachet which consigned him to the Bastille, whence he was released only to be banished into England. Here was enough to have cured most men of a love of aristocracy and despotism. Not so with Voltaire. On his return we find him throwing himself at the feet of Madame de Pompadour, nay, of Madame du Barri; courting Louis XV by every means in his power; degrading his fine genius by representing that profligate Monarch under the character of Trajan in a little piece entitled Le Temple de Gloire, which he wrote for the theatre of Versailles; and when repulsed with the most marked disdain by Louis, still retaining all the devotion of loyalty. He showed the same complacency towards foreign potentates. Failing to attract the notice of his own Court, he became the guest and literary satellite of Frederick II of Prussia; and though ultimately treated with the grossest indignity by that Monarch, condescended to congratulate him on his victory at Rossbach. He approved of Catharine II’s arbitrary designs against the national existence of Poland and Turkey.

How, then, did Voltaire contribute to the Revolution? Principally by his attacks on the established religion. Between the Church, almost invariably the upholder of the existing state of things, and a tyranny which founds itself on Divine right, the connection is so close that one cannot be shaken without endangering the other. The skeptical nature of Voltaire’s writings had, moreover, a natural tendency to sap belief in all fixed principles whatsoever. The overthrow of the Church, the absorption of ecclesiastical property, the proclamation of the Age of Reason, are among the most marked and striking features of the French Revolution; and they must be ascribed in the main to the teaching of Voltaire.

Voltaire’s skepticism, if not imbibed, was at least confirmed, by his residence in England. His study of the English deistical writers, as Shaftesbury, Toland, and others, and his friendship and intercourse with Lord Bolingbroke, gave it a body and a method. From the study of Locke’s metaphysical works he imbibed the theory of Sensation; a doctrine which was afterwards developed in France by Condillac in his Traité des Sensations, and laid the foundation of the materialism of the French Encyclopaedists. Voltaire’s residence in England, during which he obtained a very considerable mastery of our language, imbued him with much admiration for our literature and customs. Hence he contributed to spread in France what has been called the Anglomania; which, by promoting travelling in England, the studying of the English language, the reading of English newspapers, and even the affecting of English tastes and manners, undoubtedly became a strong predisposing cause of the Revolution.

It was natural that on his return to France Voltaire should be struck with the different state of things that he found there. Having studied in England the philosophy of Newton, he drew up his Système du Monde to explain it to his country­men; but the chancellor d'Aguesseau refused his visa to the publication. Still worse was the fate of Voltair’'s Lettres Philosophiques sur les Anglais, which he published soon after his return to France, and which contained much praise of our customs and institutions. The Parliament of Paris ordered them to be burnt by the common hangman, and deprived the publisher of his maîtrise. Voltaire afterwards recast them in his Dictionnaire Philosophique.

Such treatment was not likely to increase Voltaire’s respect for the Church. And, indeed, there was much in its practice that might serve to explain, and to a certain extent to justify, the hostility of an observant philosopher. The higher clergy were often open profligates and atheists; while that portion, including the Jansenists, which pretended to devotion, exhibited little more than a superstition united with a persecuting spirit. In February, 1762, in pursuance of a sentence of the Parliament of Toulouse, Rochette, a Protestant pastor, was hanged for having exercised his ministry in Languedoc. Soon after, Calas, another Protestant of Toulouse, was broken on the wheel on the false accusation of having killed his son in order to prevent his turning Catholic. Voltaire protected Calas’s widow and children; and by bold and persevering efforts vindicated the memory of Calas, by procuring a reversal of his sentence. At a later period he interfered, but with less success, for another victim of clerical fury. In 1766 two young officers, La Barre and D'Etallonde, were prosecuted by the Bishop of Amiens for mutilating a crucifix erected on a bridge at Abbeville. D'Etallonde escaped by flight; La Barre was convicted on very vague testimony, and sentenced by the Jansenist Court of Abbeville to have his hand and tongue amputated, and to be burnt alive. The Parliament of Paris, on appeal, confirmed the sentence in spite of all Voltaire’s efforts; according, however, to the criminal the favor of being beheaded instead of being burnt.

Voltaire’s wit, vivacity, and admirable style made him the most popular of authors. No writer, perhaps, has exercised a greater and more general influence on his age. It was not in France alone that he was regarded as the Apostle of Reason, and the harbinger of a new era. Many of the sovereigns and statesmen of Europe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catharine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria, were among his admirers and correspondents. He even exchanged compliments with Pope Benedict XIV about his tragedy of Mahomet; and Cardinal Quirini amused himself with translating the Henriade into Latin verse. It was through Voltaire’s inspiration that D'Aranda in Spain, Pombal in Portugal, were led to expel the Jesuits. Pombal caused the works of Voltaire and Diderot to be translated into the Portuguese language. Thus through the medium of England, the spirit of the Reformation, degenerating into skepticism, reoperated through the genius of Voltaire upon the most bigoted nations of Europe.

The philosophical school known as the Encyclopaedists, who outran their master were the contemporaries of his later years. Holbach, a rich German baron, was their Maecenas. Holbach had himself some literary pretensions, and was the author of the Système de la Nature, the most complete code of atheism that had yet appeared. Holbach gave the philosophers two dinners a week for a period of forty years; whence the Abbé Galliani called him the Maître d'Hôtel de la Philosophie. His table was frequented by Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Grimm, Raynal, and other beaux esprits of the day. Most of these were contributors to the famous Encyclopedic, whence the school derived their name. This storehouse of knowledge, projected by Diderot in 1750, was the first work of the kind, and was intended also to be a vehicle for the propagation of liberal opinions. Diderot’s chief assistant was D'Alembert, a man of great mathematical attainments.

Among the guests at Holbach’s table by far the most remarkable was Jean Jacques Rousseau, who did not, however, long remain a member of that brilliant society.

The consciousness of brilliant intellect led Rousseau to regard with disgust the cynical materialism of the Encyclopaedists. Should the only being which could observe and understand the phenomena of nature, study other beings and their relations, be sensible of order, beauty, virtue, and from contemplating the works of the creation could rise to the Creator, love what was good and act accordingly, be nothing but a brute! The man who could feel and reason thus had in him the seeds at least of nobleness and virtue, though partly from his peculiar temperament, partly from the circumstances of his life, they produced only abortive fruits. Endowed with an exquisite sensibility, bordering on insanity, Jean Jacques had some real, and many imaginary, grievances to allege against society. From childhood his life had been an almost constant struggle with adversity; and when a little prosperity at length dawned upon him he found himself, from innate shyness and early habits, incapable of playing a becoming part in society, and thus his irritable pride sustained a thousand wounds. So constituted, it is not surprising that he should have conceived a deadly hatred against the whole social system. His thoughts reverted to man in his unsophisticated state and to an ideal primitive society, which existed only in his own imagination. Of this imaginary world, and of the actual world with which it was contrasted, he wrote with an eloquence and purity of style never excelled in French prose. He appealed to the feeling rather than, like Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, to the reason, and in times of ferment sentiment touches the heart, which argument leaves unmoved. When he reasoned, indeed, as he generally started from false premises, he fell into contradictions and absurdities, though the flaws were concealed by a show of rigorous logical deduction highly captivating to his French readers.

The Social Contract, Rousseau’s most practical work, and on which his fame as a political philosopher must rest, was, perhaps, partly founded on hints derived from the Republican Constitution of his native city. It contains much that might be practicable under certain conditions of society, and was so regarded not only by the French democrats, but also by the Corsicans and the Poles, who made Rousseau their legislator, and asked for a constitution at his hands. The assumption of an original contract as the basis of civil society had been made by less eccentric philosophers than Rousseau; it had been solemnly asserted by the practical English statesmen of 1688. Although a fiction, it afforded at least convenient grounds for inquiring into first principles. Even the chief characteristic doctrine of the Social Contract, the sovereignty of the people, had been promulgated by the Dutch in their Declaration of Independence, and had been maintained by Locke in his Treatise on Government; nor in so far that the last appeal in all questions affecting the vital interests of a nation should be to the people itself, will any enlightened mind be disposed to contest the doctrine. But the difference between Locke and Rousseau is this, that while both thought that the sovereign power resides inalienably in the people, Locke allows that it may be delegated; while Rousseau holds that the sovereign, that is, the people, can only be represented by himself. Even this might not be impracticable in a small State, and was, indeed, actually done at Athens; but Rousseau is forced to admit its unsuitableness for a large one; and hence his theory sinks at once from the rank of absolute to that of only relative truth. As a legitimate deduction from these views, Rousseau condemned representative government altogether. He recognized not such bodies as Parliaments and National Assemblies; for as the people cannot delegate the sovereignty, so neither can they delegate the legislative power, the highest function of the sovereign. Hence Rousseau was no admirer of the English Constitution. He even ridicules the English for thinking themselves free; a condition which, according to him, they enjoy only during the short period employed in electing members of Parliament.

No writer had a greater influence on the Revolution. Before it broke out, Marat was accustomed to read and comment on the Contract Social in the streets amid the applause of an enthusiastic audience. Professors of jurisprudence put it into the hands of their pupils as a manual. The majority of the first National Assembly were Rousseau’s disciples, as appears from their voting him a statue, as the author of the Contract Social, the elementary book of public liberty and the science of government; and from their giving a pension of 1,200 francs to his widow. They seemed to have borrowed from Rousseau the idea of giving the King the title of “King of the French”, instead of “King of France”. But the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the Constituent Assembly is perhaps the strongest instance of his influence. In the third Article his dogma of the sovereignty of the people is laid down in its full extent. As the Revolution pursued its headlong course, Rousseau’s authority grew all the stronger. The first Declaration of Rights only proclaimed that men are equal in rights; the second (June 24th, 1793) asserted that they are equal by nature. Thus the natural was sophistically confounded with the social state, the savage with the civilized man; and the people, instead of being instructed in their duties, were taught to believe themselves entitled to rights utterly incompatible with their social condition.

As Voltaire was the laughing philosopher, the Democritus of the Revolution, so Rousseau was its Heraclitus. Uniting an ardent imagination with extraordinary dialectic subtlety, he was enabled to support his extravagant hypotheses with a display of reasoning which to some minds made them appear truths. He would perhaps have been filled with regret could he have foreseen their consequences, for he had the greatest aversion to violence.

A morbid sensibility, like that of Rousseau, is, however, so far from being incompatible with the most atrocious cruelty that their union forms one of the strongest and most striking features of the French Revolution. Michelet has remarked that many of the terrorists “were men of an exalted and morbid sensibility”; and he goes on to observe that artists and women were particularly subject to it. The perpetrators of the September massacres were occasionally seized with a fit of frantic joy when one of their intended victims was acquitted, and, by “a strange reaction of sensibility”, would shed tears and throw themselves into the arms of those whom a moment before they were about to slay. The same sort of “sensibility” appears to have characterized Danton. It has been remarked that the novels and other publications of the bloodiest period of the Revolution are full of the word sensibility. Fabre d'Eglantine even talked about “the sensibility of Marat”.

In the absence of all public debate, literature was, under the old régime, the only channel of political discussion. The growing audacity of its tone had not escaped the attention of the Government. A Royal Declaration of 1757, in the very zenith of Voltaire’s ascendant, condemns to death those who should write or print or disseminate anything hostile to religion or the established Government. The censorship of the Press, however, which was in the hands of the clergy, was on the whole exercised with tolerable leniency, though often capriciously. Thus Rousseau’s prize essay was left unnoticed, while his harmless Emile was condemned to be burnt by the executioner. In like manner the Sorbonne refused their imprimatur to Marmontel’s innocuous Bélisaire, and extracted from it thirty-two propositions, which they published with their anathema as heretical, under the title of Indiculus; to which Turgot subjoined the epithet ridiculus. One of the propositions denounced was: “It is not by the light of the flaming pile that souls are to be enlightened”; whence Turgot drew the legitimate conclusion that, in the opinion of the Sorbonne, souls were to be so enlightened! Such were the clerical censors of those days.

A recent French writer somewhat paradoxically maintains that the restrictions on literature were really effective, and that the philosophers had thus little or no influence in producing the Revolution. In corroboration of this view he asserts, on the authority of the Introduction to the Moniteur, that their works were to be found only in the libraries of the educated and rich. But what more could be required? It is notorious that the Revolution was begun by the higher classes. Thus Marmontel tells us that among the nobles, a considerable number of enthusiasts (têtes exaltées), some from a spirit of liberty, others from calculating and ambitious views, were inclined towards the popular party. Madame de Stael says that not only all the men, but also all the women, who had any influence upon opinion among the higher classes, were warm in favor of the national cause; that fashion, all powerful in France, ran in this direction; and that this state of things was the result of the whole century.

The privileged classes adopted the same language as the Tiers état, and were disciples of the same philosophers. As early as 1762, women of fashion had taken from Rousseau the ominous name of citoyenne, as a pet appellation. In like manner, among the clergy, the most pronounced skepticism was found in the hierarchy. We need hardly advert to the rapidity with which, in a country like France, opinion spreads from class to class. This circumstance had not escaped the notice of Voltaire, who had remarked the rapid diffusion of the new principles. A traveller who had been long absent from France being asked on his return at the opening of Louis XVI’s reign what change he observed in the nation? replied: “None, except that what used to be the talk of the drawing-rooms is now repeated in the streets”.

The persecution which authors experienced from the Censorship was more vexatious than terrible, and calculated rather to excite than to deter. Hume even expressed to Diderot his opinion that French intolerance was more favorable to intellectual progress than the unlimited liberty of the Press enjoyed in England. However this may be, it is certain that the progress of public opinion in France had led acute observers to predict a revolution even so early as the middle of the eighteenth century. Lord Chesterfield, in a letter dated April 13th, 1752, adverting to the quarrel between Louis XV and the Parliament of Paris, observes :

“This I see, that before the end of this century, the trade of both king and priest will not be half so good a one as it has been”.

While such was the progress of public opinion, the Monarchy had been gradually sinking into unpopularity and contempt. The French people, till towards the close of Louis XIV’s reign, had loved their kings with an affection bordering on idolatry. They looked up to them as their protectors against the aristocracy, and as the promoters of national glory, both in arms and letters. But this popularity began to wane with Louis XIV’s good fortune, and the approach of that misery which his ambition had occasioned. The Regency of the Duke of Orleans was calculated to bring all government into contempt. Yet the loyalty of the French seemed to revive a little in the first part of Louis XV’s reign, till his vices entirely extinguished it. The masses ordered by private individuals for the King’s safety form a kind of barometer of his popularity. During his illness at Metz in 1744, they amounted to 6,000; after Damiens’ attempt on his life in 1757 to 600; at his last illness in 1774 to 3. Frequent scarcities constantly recalled the Pacte de Famine, till at length it resounded as the death-knell of the French Monarchy, when on the 6th of October, 1789, the populace led the Royal Family captive to Paris, with shouts that they were bringing the baker, his wife, and the little apprentice! Thus Louis XVI inherited a Crown sullied by the vices of his predecessors, and became the innocent victim of faults that were not his own. The feebleness of his character, nay, even his very virtues, assisted the Revolution. Had he possessed more energy and decision, had he felt less reluctance to shed the blood of his subjects, he might probably have averted the excesses which marked his own end and that of the Monarchy. “It is frightful to think”, says Mounier, “that with a less benevolent soul, another Prince might perhaps have found means to maintain his power”.

The aid which, against his better judgment, Louis XVI was induced to lend to the American rebellion, must be reckoned among the causes of his fall; not only by aggravating the financial distress, but also, and more materially, from the support which the doctrines of the revolutionary philosophers derived from the establishment of the American Republic. While, as De Tocqueville remarks, the American rebellion was only a new and astonishing fact to the rest of Europe, to the French people it rendered more possible things which they had meditated on already. The Americans seemed only to be executing what the French writers had conceived, and to be giving to their dreams all the substance of reality. The aid which the French Government lent to rebels appeared a sanction of revolt. Lafayette and other Frenchmen, who had taken a personal share in the American struggle, were among the foremost to promote the Revolution in France, and the enthusiastic feeling which the declaration of American Independence excited among the French, was perhaps heightened by the circumstance that it had been achieved at the expense of a rival nation. During the first tumults in Paris, the name of Washington was the principal watchword in the different sections.

Louis XVI himself, in his speech on opening the States-General in 1789, attributed the financial pressure to the American war. Its cost was estimated at 1,194 million livres, or about 48 millions sterling; and so bad was the state of credit in France, that this money was borrowed at an average of about 10 per cent. We cannot, however, regard the disordered state of the finances as much more than the occasion of the Revolution, by necessitating the convocation of the States-General. It was none of the essential causes of the outbreak. Preceding monarchs had triumphed over greater financial embarrassments; and had everything else in the State been sound, even a national bankruptcy might have been surmounted. In fact, though the deficit set the Revolution in motion, it occupied but little attention after the movement was once begun. The importance of the deficit as a revolutionary motive, arose not so much from its amount, as from the temper of the nation. The widespread discontent among the middle and lower classes forbade the imposition of any new taxes, while the higher orders were not inclined to relinquish their fiscal privileges.

The centralization of all France in Paris contributed much to the origin as well as to the peculiar character of the Revolution. The destruction of Reveillon’s paper manufactory by the populace, during the election of deputies to the States, though too much stress has perhaps been laid upon it as a political movement, showed at least what extensive elements of discontent and danger were lurking in Paris. No sooner was the National Assembly opened than the Parisian electors, having formed themselves into a permanent and illegal committee, began to dictate to it. The deputies were bullied and insulted by the mob that filled the tribunes; who, as Arthur Young tells us, interrupted the debates by clapping their hands, and other noisy expressions of approbation. When the party 0f the Gironde at length began to feel the intolerable tyranny of the mob which they had themselves used to promote their ends, they sought to protect themselves, and to secure the freedom of debate, by moving for a guard to be composed of provincials.

Such was the self-constituted sovereign people of the Revolution. How unlike the sovereign dreamt of by the Genevese philosopher! Nay, how unlike the great mass of the French nation, who were desirous only of a moderate social reform. “The labourer in the fields”, says Marmontel, “the artizan in the towns, the honest burgess engrossed by his trade, demanded only to be relieved, and had they been left alone, would have sent to the Assembly deputies as peaceable as themselves. But in the towns, and especially in Paris, there exists a class of men, who, though distinguished by their education, belong by birth to the people, make common cause with them, and, when their rights are in question, take up their interests, lend them their intelligence, and infect them with their passions. It was among this class that an innovating, bold, and contentious spirit had long been forming itself, and was every day acquiring more strength and influence”.

But, while the ascendency of the Parisian rabble effected the speedy downfall of the Monarchy, it was also the principal cause of the failure of the Republic. The throne was no sooner overturned than its overthrowers, instead of consolidating the new State, began among themselves a deadly struggle for power, a struggle which ended in the supremacy for the military power.

The character of the national representatives was another cause of the failure of the Revolution. From the want of all public life in France, they had no political experience. Their knowledge of politics rested entirely on theory and speculation; and thus, as De Tocqueville observes, they carried their literary habits into their proceedings. Hence a love of general theories, complete systems of legislation, exact but impracticable symmetry in the laws; a contempt for existing facts, and a taste for what was original, ingenious, and new; a desire to reconstruct the State after a uniform plan, instead of trying to amend the parts of it. To this political ignorance, or worse still, illusory knowledge, must be ascribed some of the greatest evils of the Revolution. Vague and undefined notions of liberty and equality produced the worst and most ridiculous excesses. As it was impossible to establish an equality by raising up the lower orders, it was determined to pull down the higher ones, and thus to reduce everything to a uniform low level.

Resemblances between the French and English Revolutions have been ingeniously pointed out, which at first sight seem striking enough. In both countries an unpopular queen; the Long Parliament in England, and the self-constituted National Assembly in France; the flight of Louis to Varennes, and of Charles to the Isle of Wight; the trial and execution of both those monarchs; the government by the Parliament, and the government by the Convention; Cromwell and Bonaparte, who expel these assemblies and rule by the sword; the setting aside of the heirs of these usurpers, and the restoration of the legitimate Kings. These resemblances, however, lie only on the surface. A deeper examination will discover that no two events of the same kind can be more opposite in their essential character than the French and English Revolutions. While the object of the one was to destroy, that of the other was to restore. In the Petition of Right, the English Parliament protested against certain of the King’s acts which were the acknowledged prerogative of the French Monarch; such as the levying of taxes by his own authority, imprisoning his subjects and confiscating their property arbitrarily and without legal trial, billeting soldiers and mariners upon house­holders, etc. Against these abuses they appeal to the rights and liberties which they have inherited according to the laws and statutes of the realm. In France very different developments took place. After a long and splendid career in arts and arms, the most polished nation in Europe found it necessary to assume the position of Man just emerged from his primeval forests, and like the original societies imagined by Rousseau and other speculative politicians, to settle the elementary conditions of its civil state. Everything that had gone before was swept away, and a constitution was built up on paper from first principles as deduced from the supposed natural rights of Man. Another striking difference is, that while in England the quarrel was in great part founded on religious disputes, in France religion was discarded altogether.

As the whole method and character of the two revolutions was diametrically opposed, so also was the conduct of the two Kings. Charles I had violated the Constitution by a series of high-handed acts; Louis XVI, though bound by no law but his own will, assembled the Etats généraux, which had not been summoned for nearly two centuries; during the abeyance of the English Parliament, the Star Chamber had proceeded in the most absolute and illegal manner, while the French King, instead of increasing, considerably mitigated the arbitrary powers, such as lettres de cachet, etc., which were at his disposal; Charles took up arms against his subjects; Louis could not be persuaded to shed the blood of his people, even in the most urgent cases of self-defence.

In judging the French Revolution from its effects, which, however, may still be said to be in progress, we must on the whole pronounce it to have been beneficial. It delivered France from an arbitrary and unbounded royal prerogative, from an intolerant Church and a tyrannical feudal nobility; it established the peasantry on a stable basis; and it welded the previously ill-cemented provinces into one compact and powerful body; in short, into the present French nation. It may be remarked that the excesses of the French democrats were not imitated in those countries where their principles had produced a revolution, Neither massacres, nor incendiarism, nor sacrilege, nor proscriptions took place in the Netherlands, on the banks of the Rhine, in Switzerland, and Italy. It may, too, be observed as a singular fact that in foreign countries their principles found readier acceptance among the higher classes of society than among the lower and more uneducated. In Germany the peasants of Swabia and the Palatinate were the chief opponents of the French Revolution, while the Princes and States of the Empire made but a feeble resistance, and ultimately took advantage of it to forward their own selfish interests. It was to the peasants of Northern Italy that the allies were considerably indebted for their rapid triumphs in 1799; it was the lazzaroni and peasants of Naples who defended the capital against the French, reestablished the King, and drove the French from Rome. The same class of people in Piedmont displayed the greatest devotion to their Sovereign, and often proved a serious impediment to the progress of the French arms.

CHAPTER LIII

PROGRESS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION