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The object of this book is similar to that with which, a few years ago, I wrote a short biography of Napoleon. The main outlines of the Revolution, the proportion and relation of things, tend to become obscured under the accumulation of historical detail that is now proceeding. This is an attempt, therefore, to disentangle from the mass of details the shape, the movement, the significance of this great historical cataclysm. To keep the outline clear I have deliberately avoided mentioning the nam

The magnitude of an event is too apt to lie with its reporter, and the reporter often fails in his sense of historical proportion. The nearer he is to the event the more authority he has as a witness, but the less authority as a judge. It is time alone can establish the relation and harmony of things. This is notably the case with the greatest event of modern European history, the French Revolution, and the first task of the historian writing a century later, is to attempt to catch its perspecti

At the close of the 18th century France had more nearly reached her growth than any of her great European rivals; she was far more like the France of to-day, than might at first be supposed by an Englishman, American or German, thinking of what his own country accomplished during the 19th century. Her population of about 25,000,000 was three times more numerous than that of England. Paris, with 600,000 inhabitants or more, was much nearer the present-day city in size than any other capital of Eu

Even under such conditions the Bourbon monarchy might have survived much longer had it not failed badly at one specific point. Napoleon himself declared that it was in its financial management that the ancien régime had broken down; and although for a long period historians chose to accentuate the political and social aspects of the Revolution, of recent years the economic has been the point of emphasis. And it was to consider a financial problem that the States-General were summoned in 1789; wh

Louis XVI, grandson of Louis XV, came to the throne in 1774. He showed some, but not all, of the characteristics of his family. He was of sluggish intelligence, and extremely slow, not to say embarrassed, in speech. He was heavy in build and in features. His two great interests were locksmithing, which he had learned as a boy, and running the deer and the boar in the great royal forests, St. Germain, Fontainebleau, Rambouillet. He had all the Bourbon insouciance , and would break off an importan

At the beginning of May, twelve hundred and fourteen representatives of France reached Versailles. Of these, six hundred and twenty-one, more than half, belonged to the Third Estate, and of the six hundred and twenty-one more than four hundred had some connection with the law, while less than forty belonged to the farming class. Little preparation had been made for them; the King had continued to attend to his hounds and horses, the Queen to her balls and dresses, and Necker to his columns of fi

The effect of the insurrection of Paris was immediate. Besenval, lacking instructions and intimidated by the violence of the rising, held his troops back; while Louis, shrinking from violence as he always did, and alarmed at the desertion in the army, decided to bow before the storm. He had nerved himself to a definite and resolute policy, but the instant that policy had come to the logical proof of blood-letting, he had fallen away; his kindliness, his incapacity for action, had asserted themse

In the preceding chapter, stress has been laid on the economic causes that had led to the rooting up of the Bourbons from Versailles; in this one the political significance of the event must be accentuated. In the history of the Revolution it is always so; the political and the economic factors are constantly fusing the one in the other. In a sense, what had happened was that the poor people, the democracy, let us say, of Paris, had now got the King in the city and under their influence; not onl

On the 14th of July 1790 was held the first great festival of the Revolution, the federation of the national guards at the Champ de Mars in Paris. Federation was the name that had been given all through France the previous year to district or departmental gatherings or reviews, at which the newly raised national guards had paraded and, with great ceremony, sworn patriotic oaths. This was now repeated on a grander and more centralized scale, to commemorate the fall of the Bastille twelve months b

From the 25th of June to the 17th of July the conflict between the middle class and the democratic party continued with great intensity. Louis was, in reality, less the object than the pretext of their quarrel. The Cordeliers urged that France, and not the assembly, should pronounce the King's fate, and to effect that it would be necessary to proceed to a referendum, to demand a popular vote. But this was precisely what the Constitution refused to permit, and hence the demand was in reality an a

The event of the 20th of June was like lightning flashing in darkness. Instantly people saw where they were. Moderate, loyal, reasonable men, startled at the danger of the King, smarting at the indignity he had suffered, fearful of mob rule and mob violence, rallied to the throne, signed petitions protesting against the event. Louis himself, realizing that his life was in jeopardy, made appeals both to the assembly and to his people. The first reply to the King's appeal, unsolicited and unapprec

On the 20th and 21st of September 1792 the Convention met, the Bourbon monarchy fell, and the Duke of Brunswick was defeated, a coincidence of memorable events. Brunswick, pushing on from Verdun into the defiles of the Argonne, had two armies operating against him, trying to stop his march; the one under Dumouriez, the other under Kellermann. He forced a way, however, but at the further side, about the hills of Valmy, had to face the combined armies of his adversaries. Brunswick was now much red

The disappearance of Louis XVI from the scene left the Mountain and the Gironde face to face, to wage their faction fight, a fight to the knife; while France in her armies more nobly maintained her greater struggle on the frontier. There for a while after Valmy all had prospered. Brunswick had fallen back to Coblenz. A French army under the Marquis de Custine had overrun all the Rhineland as far as Mainz. Dumouriez, transferred from the Ardennes to the Belgian frontier, had invaded the Austrian

For six weeks after the fall of the Gironde, until the 13th of July, the course of events in France, both in Paris and in the provinces, reflected the bitterness of the two factions, conqueror and conquered. In a minor way, it also revealed the fundamental difference of attitude between the two wings of the successful party, between Danton, content to push the Girondins out of the way of the national policy, and Robespierre, rankling to destroy those who offended his puritanical and exclusive do

Danton had fallen fast in popularity and influence since the moment when, after the fall of the Gironde, he had appeared to dominate the situation. On the 12th of October, weary, sick at heart, disgusted at the triumph of the Hébertists, he had left Paris and, apparently retiring from politics, had gone back to his little country town of Arcis-sur-Aube. There a month later Robespierre sought him out, and invited him to joint action for pulling down Hébert. With Robespierre this meant no more tha

It is hard when considering the extraordinary features of the reign of terror, to realize that in some directions it was accomplishing a useful purpose. If the Revolution had been maintained so long, in the face of anarchy, of reaction and of foreign pressure, it was only by a policy of devouring flames and demented angels. And meanwhile, whatever might be the value or the fate of republican institutions, unconsciously the great social revolution had become an accomplished fact. In the short spa

With the Directoire the Revolution enters its last phase, and with that phase all readers of history connect certain well-marked external characteristics, extravagance of dress, of manners, of living; venality and immorality unblushing and unrestrained. The period of the Directoire is that during which the political men of the Revolution, with no principles left to guide them, gradually rot away; while the men of the sword become more and more their support, and finally oust them from power. The

French literature has great names before 1789, and after 1815. Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, to mention only the giants, wrote before the Revolution; and, Chateaubriand, Thiers, Hugo, Musset, Beranger, Courrier, after Napoleon had fallen. In between there is little or nothing. The period is like a desolate site devastated by flame, stained with blood, with only here and there a timid flower lending a little colour, a touch of grace, a gleam of beauty, to a scene of destruction and violence. No ve

[1] TO THE NUMBER OF THE DAY IN: Vendémiare, add 21 to get dates in September, October; Brumaire, add 21 to get dates in October, November; Frimaire, add 20 to get dates in November, December; Nivôse, add 20 to get dates in December, January; Pluviose, add 19 to get dates in January, February; Ventôse, add 18 to get dates in February, March; Germinal, add 20 to get dates in March, April; Floréal, add 19 to get dates in April, May; Prairial, add 19 to get dates in May, June; Messidor, add 18 to g