XXX. STRUGGLE IN ENGLAND FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT…

XXX. STRUGGLE IN ENGLAND FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

[Sidenote: The question of absolute or limited monarchy in England.]

183. The great question which confronted England in the seventeenth century was whether the king should be permitted to rule the people, as God's representative, or should submit to the constant control of the nation's representatives, i.e., Parliament. In France the Estates General met for the last time in 1614, and thereafter the French king made laws and executed them without asking the advice of any one except his immediate counselors. In general, the rulers on the continent exercised despotic powers, and James I of England and his son Charles I would gladly have made themselves absolute rulers, for they entertained the same exalted notions of the divine right of kings which prevailed across the English Channel. England finally succeeded, however, in adjusting the relations between king and Parliament in a very happy way, so as to produce a limited, or constitutional, monarchy. The long and bitter struggle between the house of Stuart and the English Parliament plays an important rôle in the history of Europe at large, as well as in that of England. After the French Revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century, the English system began to become popular on the continent, and it has now replaced the older absolute monarchy in all the kingdoms of western Europe.

[Sidenote: Accession of James I, 1603-1625.]

On the death of Elizabeth in 1603, James I, the first of the Stuarts, ascended the English throne. He was, it will be remembered, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, and was known in Scotland as James VI; consequently England and Scotland now came under the same ruler. This did not, however, make the relations between the two countries much happier, for a century to come at least.

[Sidenote: James' belief in the 'divine right' of kings.]

The chief interest of James' reign lay in his tendency to exalt the royal prerogative, and in the systematic manner in which he extolled absolute monarchy in his writings and speeches and discredited it by his conduct. James was an unusually learned man, for a king, but his learning did not enlighten him in matters of common sense. As a man and a ruler, he was far inferior to his unschooled and light-hearted contemporary, Henry IV of France. Henry VIII had been a heartless despot, and Elizabeth had ruled the nation in a high-handed manner; but both of them had known how to make themselves popular and had had the good sense to say as little as possible about their rights. James, on the contrary, had a fancy for discussing his high position.

[Sidenote: His own expression of his claims.]

"As for the absolute prerogative of the crown," he declares, "that is no subject for the tongue of a lawyer, nor is it lawful to be disputed. It is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do: ... so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or that." The king, James claimed, could make any kind of law or statute that he thought meet, without any advice from Parliament, although he might, if he chose, accept its suggestions. "He is overlord of the whole land, so is he master over every person who inhabiteth the same, having power over the life and death of every one of them: for although a just prince will not take the life of one of his subjects without a clear law, yet the same laws whereby he taketh them are made by himself and his predecessors; so the power flows always from himself." A good king will act according to law, but he is above the law and is not bound thereby except voluntarily and for good-example giving to his subjects.

[Sidenote: The theory of 'divine right.']

These theories, taken from James' work on The Law of Free Monarchies, seem strange and unreasonable to us. But he was really only claiming the rights which his predecessors had enjoyed, and such as were conceded to the kings of France until the French Revolution. According to the theory of "divine right," the king did not owe his power to the nation but to God, who had appointed him to be the father of his people. From God he derived all the prerogatives necessary to maintain order and promote justice; consequently he was responsible to God alone, and not to the people, for the exercise of his powers. It is unnecessary to follow in detail the troubles between James and his Parliament and the various methods which he invented for raising money without the sanction of Parliament, for all this forms only the preliminary to the fatal experience of James' son, Charles I.

[Sidenote: James I's foreign policy.]

In his foreign policy James showed as little sense as in his relations with his own people. He refused to help his son-in-law when he became king of Bohemia.[335] But when the Palatinate was given by the emperor to Maximilian of Bavaria, James struck upon the extraordinary plan of forming an alliance with the hated Spain and inducing its king to persuade the emperor to reinstate the "winter king" in his former possessions. In order to conciliate Spain, Charles, Prince of Wales, was to marry a Spanish princess. Naturally this proposal was very unpopular among the English Protestants, and it finally came to nothing.

[Sidenote: Literature in the time of Elizabeth and James I.]

[Sidenote: Shakespeare, 1564-1616.]

[Sidenote: Francis Bacon, 1561-1626.]

[Sidenote: The King James translation of the Bible.]

Although England under James I failed to influence deeply the course of affairs in Europe at large, his reign is distinguished by the work of unrivaled writers who gave England a literature which outshone that of any other of the European countries. Shakespeare is generally admitted to have been the greatest dramatist the world has ever produced. While he wrote many of his plays before the death of Elizabeth, Othello, King Lear, and The Tempest belong to the reign of James. Francis Bacon, philosopher and statesman, did much for the advancement of scientific research by advocating new methods of reasoning based upon a careful observation of natural phenomena instead of upon Aristotle's logic. He urged investigators to take the path already indicated over three centuries earlier by his namesake, Roger Bacon.[336] The most worthy monument of the strong and beautiful English of the period is to be found in the translation of the Bible, prepared in James' reign and still generally used in all the countries where English is spoken.[337]

[Sidenote: Charles I, 1625-1649.]

184. Charles I was somewhat more dignified than his father, but he was quite as obstinately set upon having his own way and showed no more skill in winning the confidence of his subjects. He did nothing to remove the disagreeable impressions of his father's reign and began immediately to quarrel with Parliament. When that body refused to grant him any money, mainly because they thought that it was likely to be wasted by his favorite, the duke of Buckingham, Charles formed the plan of winning their favor by a great military victory.

After James I had reluctantly given up his cherished Spanish alliance, Charles had married a French princess, Henrietta Maria, the daughter of Henry IV. In spite of this marriage Charles now proposed to aid the Huguenots whom Richelieu was besieging in their town of La Rochelle. He also hoped to gain popularity by prosecuting a war against Spain, whose king was energetically supporting the Catholic League in Germany. Accordingly, in spite of Parliament's refusal to grant him the necessary funds, he embarked in war. With only the money which he could raise by irregular means, Charles arranged an expedition to take Cadiz and the Spanish treasure ships which arrived there once a year from America, laden with gold and silver. The expedition failed, as well as Charles' attempt to help the Huguenots.

[Sidenote: Charles' exactions and arbitrary acts.]

In his attempts to raise money without a regular grant from Parliament, Charles had resorted to vexatious exactions. The law prohibited him from asking for gifts from his people, but it did not forbid his asking them to lend him money, however little prospect there might be of his ever repaying it. Five gentlemen who refused to pay such a forced loan were imprisoned by the mere order of the king. This raised the question of whether the king had the right to send to prison those whom he wished without showing legal cause for their arrest.

[Sidenote: The Petition of Right.]

This and other attacks upon the rights of his subjects roused Parliament. In 1628 that body drew up the celebrated Petition of Right,[338] which is one of the most important documents in the history of the English Constitution. In it Parliament called the king's attention to his illegal exactions, and to the acts of his agents who had in sundry ways molested and disquieted the people of the realm. Parliament therefore "humbly prayed" the king that no man need thereafter "make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge" without consent of Parliament; that no free man should be imprisoned or suffer any punishment except according to the laws and statutes of the realm as presented in the Great Charter; and that soldiers should not be quartered upon the people on any pretext whatever. Very reluctantly Charles consented to this restatement of the limitations which the English had always, in theory at least, placed upon the arbitrary power of their king.

[Sidenote: Religious differences between Charles and the Commons.]

The disagreement between Charles and Parliament was rendered much more serious by religious differences. The king had married a Catholic princess, and the Catholic cause seemed to be gaining on the continent. The king of Denmark had just been defeated by Wallenstein and Tilly, and Richelieu had succeeded in depriving the Huguenots of their cities of refuge. Both James and Charles had shown their readiness to enter into engagements with France and Spain to protect English Catholics, and there was evidently a growing inclination in England to revert to the older ceremonies of the Church, which shocked the more strongly Protestant members of the House of Commons. The communion table was again placed by many clergymen at the eastern end of the church and became fixed there as an altar, and portions of the service were once more chanted.

[Sidenote: Charles dissolves Parliament (1629) and determines to rule by himself.]

These "popish practices," with which the king was supposed to sympathize, served to widen the breach between him and the Commons which had been opened by the king's attempt to raise taxes on his own account. The Parliament of 1629, after a stormy session, was dissolved by the king, who determined to rule thereafter by himself. For eleven years no new Parliament was summoned.

185. Charles was not well fitted by nature to try the experiment of personal government. Moreover, the methods resorted to by his ministers to raise money without recourse to Parliament rendered the king more and more unpopular and prepared the way for the triumphant return of Parliament.

[Sidenote: Charles' financial exactions.]

According to an ancient law of England, those who had a certain amount of land must become knights; but since the decay of the feudal system, landowners had given up the meaningless form of qualifying themselves as knights. It now occurred to the king's government that a large amount of money might be raised by fining these delinquents. Other unfortunates who had settled within the boundaries of the royal forests were either heavily fined or required to pay enormous arrears of rent.

In addition to these sources of income, Charles applied to his subjects for ship money.[339] He was anxious to equip a fleet, but instead of requiring the various ports to furnish ships, as was the ancient custom, he permitted them to buy themselves off by contributing to the fitting out of large ships owned by himself. Even those living inland were asked for ship money. The king maintained that this was not a tax but simply a payment by which his subjects freed themselves from the duty of defending their country. John Hampden, a squire of Buckinghamshire, made a bold stand against this illegal demand by refusing to pay twenty shillings of ship money which was levied upon him. The case was tried before the king's judges, a bare majority of whom decided against Hampden. But the trial made it tolerably clear that the country would not put up long with the king's despotic policy.

[Sidenote: William Laud made Archbishop of Canterbury.]

In 1633 Charles made William Laud Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud believed that the English Church would strengthen both itself and the government by following a middle course which should lie between that of the Church of Rome and that of Calvinistic Geneva. He declared that it was the part of good citizenship to conform outwardly to the services of the state church, but that the state should not undertake to oppress the individual conscience, and that every one should be at liberty to make up his own mind in regard to the interpretation to be given to the Bible and to the church fathers. As soon as he became archbishop he began a series of visitations through his province. Every clergyman who refused to conform to the Prayer Book, or opposed the placing of the communion table at the east end of the church, or declined to bow at the name of Jesus, was, if obstinate, to be brought before the king's special Court of High Commission to be tried and if convicted to be deprived of his benefice.

[Sidenote: The different sects of Protestants.]

Laud's conduct was no doubt gratifying to the High Church party among the Protestants, that is, those who still clung to some of the ancient practices of the Roman Church, although they rejected the doctrine of the Mass and refused to regard the pope as their head. The Low Church party, or Puritans, on the contrary, regarded Laud and his policy with aversion. While, unlike the Presbyterians, they did not urge the abolition of the bishops, they disliked all "superstitious usages," as they called the wearing of the surplice by the clergy, the use of the sign of the cross at baptism, the kneeling posture in partaking of the communion. The Presbyterians, who are often confused with the Puritans, agreed with them in many respects, but went farther and demanded the introduction of Calvin's system of church government.[340]

[Sidenote: The Independents.]

[Sidenote: The Pilgrim Fathers.]

Lastly, there was an ever-increasing number of Separatists, or Independents. These rejected both the organization of the Church of England and that of the Presbyterians, and desired that each religious community should organize itself independently. The government had forbidden these Separatists to hold their little meetings, which they called conventicles, and about 1600 some of them fled to Holland. The community of them which established itself at Leyden dispatched the Mayflower, in 1620, with colonists--since known as the Pilgrim Fathers--to the New World across the sea.[341] It was these colonists who laid the foundations of a New England which has proved a worthy offspring of the mother country. The form of worship which they established in their new home is still known as Congregational.[342]

[Sidenote: Charles summons Parliament once more, to aid him in fighting the Scotch Presbyterians, 1640.]

186. In 1640 Charles found himself forced to resort to Parliament, for he was involved in a war with Scotland which he could not carry on without money. There the Presbyterian system had been pretty generally introduced by John Knox in Queen Mary's time, but the bishops had been permitted to maintain a precarious existence in the interest of the nobles who enjoyed their revenues. James I had always had a strong dislike for Presbyterianism. He once said, "A Scottish presbytery agreeth as well with the monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and at their pleasure censure me and my council." He much preferred a few bishops appointed by himself to hundreds of presbyteries over whose sharp eyes and sharper tongues he could have little control. So bishops were reappointed in Scotland in the early years of his reign and got back some of their powers. The Presbyterians, however, were still in the majority, and they continued to regard the bishops as the tools of the king.

[Sidenote: The National Covenant, 1638.]

An attempt on the part of Charles to force the Scots to accept a modified form of the English Prayer Book led to the signing of the National Covenant in 1638. This pledged those who attached their names to it to reëstablish the purity and liberty of the Gospel, which, to most of the Covenanters, meant Presbyterianism. Charles thereupon undertook to coerce the Scots. Having no money, he bought on credit a large cargo of pepper, which had just arrived in the ships of the East India Company, and sold it cheap for ready cash. The soldiers, however, whom he got together showed little inclination to fight the Scots, with whom they were in tolerable agreement on religious matters. Charles was therefore at last obliged to summon a Parliament, which, owing to the length of time it remained in session, is known as the Long Parliament.

[Sidenote: The measures of the Long Parliament against the king's tyranny.]

The Long Parliament began by imprisoning Strafford, the king's most conspicuous minister, and Archbishop Laud in the Tower of London. The help that Strafford had given to the king in ruling without Parliament had mortally offended the House of Commons. They declared him guilty of treason, and he was executed in 1641, in spite of Charles' efforts to save him. Laud met the same fate four years later. Parliament also tried to strengthen its position by passing the Triennial Bill, which provided that it should meet at least once in three years, even if not summoned by the king. The courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, which had arbitrarily condemned a number of the king's opponents, were abolished, and ship money declared illegal.[343] In short, Charles' whole system of government was abrogated. The efforts of the queen to obtain money and soldiers from the pope, and a visit of Charles to Scotland, which Parliament suspected was for the purpose of forcing the Scots to lend him an army to use against themselves, led to the Grand Remonstrance. In this all of Charles' errors were enumerated and a demand was made that the king's ministers should thereafter be responsible to Parliament. This document Parliament ordered to be printed and circulated throughout the country.

[Sidenote: Charles' attempts to arrest five members of the House of Commons.]

Exasperated at the conduct of the Commons, Charles attempted to intimidate the opposition by undertaking the arrest of five of its most active leaders, whom he declared to be traitors. But when he entered the House of Commons and looked around for his enemies, he found that they had taken shelter in London, whose citizens later brought them back in triumph to Westminster.

[Sidenote: The beginning of civil war, 1642.]

[Sidenote: Cavaliers and Roundheads.]

187. Both Charles and Parliament now began to gather troops for the inevitable conflict, and England was plunged into civil war. Those who supported Charles were called Cavaliers. They included not only most of the aristocracy and the papal party, but also a number of members of the House of Commons who were fearful lest Presbyterianism should succeed in doing away with the English Church. The parliamentary party was popularly known as the Roundheads, since some of them cropped their hair close because of their dislike for the long locks of their more aristocratic and worldly opponents.

[Sidenote: Oliver Cromwell.]

The Roundheads soon found a distinguished leader in Oliver Cromwell[344] (b. 1599), a country gentleman and member of Parliament, who was later to become the most powerful ruler of his time. Cromwell organized a compact army of God-fearing men, who indulged in no profane words or light talk, as is the wont of soldiers, but advanced upon their enemies singing psalms. The king enjoyed the support of northern England, and also looked for help from Ireland, where the royal and Catholic causes were popular.

[Sidenote: Battles of Marston Moor and Naseby.]

[Sidenote: The losing cause of the king.]

The war continued for several years, and a number of battles were fought which, after the first year, went in general against the Cavaliers. The most important of these were the battle of Marston Moor in 1644, and that of Naseby the next year, in which the king was disastrously defeated. The enemy came into possession of his correspondence, which showed them how their king had been endeavoring to bring armies from France and Ireland into England. This encouraged Parliament to prosecute the war with more energy than ever. The king, defeated on every hand, put himself in the hands of the Scotch army which had come to the aid of Parliament (1646), and the Scotch soon turned him over to Parliament. During the next two years Charles, while held in captivity, entered into negotiations with the various parties in turn, but played fast and loose with them all.

[Sidenote: Pride's Purge.]

There were many in the House of Commons who still sided with the king, and in December, 1648, that body declared for a reconciliation with the monarch, whom they had safely imprisoned in the Isle of Wight. The next day Colonel Pride, representing the army,--which constituted a party in itself and was opposed to all negotiations between the king and the Commons,--stood at the door of the House with a body of soldiers and excluded all the members who took the side of the king. This outrageous act is known in history as Pride's Purge.

[Sidenote: Execution of Charles, 1649.]

In this way the House was brought completely under the control of those most bitterly hostile to Charles, whom they now proposed to bring to trial. They declared that the House of Commons, since it was chosen by the people, was supreme in England and the source of all just power, and that consequently neither king nor House of Lords was necessary. The mutilated House appointed a special High Court of Justice made up of Charles' sternest opponents, who alone would consent to sit in judgment on him. They passed sentence upon him, and on January 30, 1649, Charles was beheaded in front of his palace of Whitehall, London. It must be clear from the above account that it was not the nation at large which demanded Charles' death, but a very small group of extremists who claimed to be the representatives of the nation.[345]

[Sidenote: England becomes a commonwealth or republic.]

[Sidenote: Cromwell at the head of the government.]

188. The Rump Parliament, as the remnant of the House of Commons was contemptuously called, proclaimed England to be thereafter a commonwealth, that is, a republic, without a king or House of Lords. Cromwell, the head of the army, was the real ruler of England. He derived his main support from the Independents; and it is very surprising that he was able to maintain himself so long, considering what a small portion of the English people was in sympathy with the religious ideas of that sect and with the abolition of kingship. Even the Presbyterians were on the side of Charles II, the legal heir to the throne. Yet Cromwell represented the principles for which the opponents of tyranny had been contending. He was, moreover, a vigorous and skillful administrator, and had a well-organized army of fifty thousand men at his command; otherwise the republic could scarcely have lasted more than a few months.

[Sidenote: Ireland and Scotland subdued.]

Cromwell found himself confronted by every variety of difficulty. The three kingdoms had fallen apart. The nobles and Catholics in Ireland proclaimed Charles II as king, and Ormond, a Protestant leader, formed an army of Irish Catholics and English royalist Protestants with a view of overthrowing the Commonwealth. Cromwell accordingly set out for Ireland, where, after taking Drogheda, he mercilessly slaughtered two thousand of the "barbarous wretches," as he called them. Town after town surrendered to Cromwell's army, and in 1652, after much cruelty, the island was once more conquered. A large part of it was confiscated for the benefit of the English, and the Catholic landowners were driven into the mountains. In the meantime (1650) Charles II had landed in Scotland, and upon his agreeing to be a Presbyterian king, the whole Scotch nation was ready to support him. But Scotland was subdued even more promptly than Ireland had been. So completely was the Scottish army destroyed that Cromwell found no need to draw the sword again in the British Isles.

[Sidenote: The Navigation Act, 1651.]

[Sidenote: Commercial war between Holland and England.]

Although it would seem that Cromwell had enough to keep him busy at home, he had already engaged in a victorious foreign war against the Dutch, who had become dangerous commercial rivals of England. The ships which went out from Amsterdam and Rotterdam were the best merchant vessels in the world, and had got control of the carrying trade between Europe and the colonies. In order to put an end to this, the English Parliament passed the Navigation Act (1651), which permitted only English vessels to bring goods to England, unless the goods came in vessels belonging to the country which had produced them. This led to a commercial war between Holland and England, and a series of battles was fought between the English and Dutch fleets, in which sometimes one and sometimes the other gained the upper hand. This war is notable as the first example of the commercial struggles which were thereafter to take the place of the religious conflicts of the preceding period.

[Sidenote: Cromwell dissolves the Long Parliament (1653), and is made Lord Protector by his own Parliament.]

Cromwell failed to get along with Parliament any better than Charles had done. The Rump Parliament had become very unpopular, for its members, in spite of their boasted piety, accepted bribes and were zealous in the promotion of their relatives in the public service. At last Cromwell upbraided them angrily for their injustice and self-interest, which were injuring the public cause. On being interrupted by a member, he cried out, "Come, come, we have had enough of this. I'll put an end to this. It's not fit that you should sit here any longer," and calling in his soldiers he turned the members out of the House and sent them home. Having thus made an end of the Long Parliament (April, 1653), he summoned a Parliament of his own, made up of God-fearing men whom he and the officers of his army chose. This extraordinary body is known as Barebone's Parliament, from a distinguished member, a London merchant, with the characteristically Puritan name of Praisegod Barebone. Many of these godly men were unpractical and hard to deal with. A minority of the more sensible ones got up early one winter morning (December, 1653) and, before their opponents had a chance to protest, declared Parliament dissolved and placed the supreme authority in the hands of Cromwell.

[Sidenote: The Protector's foreign policy.]

For nearly five years Cromwell was, as Lord Protector,--a title equivalent to that of regent,--practically king of England, although he refused actually to accept the royal insignia. He did not succeed in permanently organizing the government at home but showed remarkable ability in his foreign negotiations. He formed an alliance with France, and English troops aided the French in winning a great victory over Spain. England gained thereby Dunkirk, and the West Indian island of Jamaica. The French king, Louis XIV, at first hesitated to address Cromwell, in the usual courteous way of monarchs, as "my cousin," but soon admitted that he would have to call Cromwell "father" should he wish it, as the Protector was undoubtedly the most powerful person in Europe.

[Sidenote: Death of Cromwell, September, 1658.]

In May, 1658, Cromwell fell ill, and as a great storm passed over England at that time, the Cavaliers asserted that the devil had come to fetch home the soul of the usurper. Cromwell was dying, it is true, but he was no instrument of the devil. He closed a life of honest effort for his fellow-beings with a last touching prayer to God, whom he had consistently sought to serve: "Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do Thy people some good and Thee service: and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too; and pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Jesus Christ's sake, and give us a good night, if it be Thy pleasure. Amen."[346]

[Sidenote: The Restoration.]

[Sidenote: Charles II welcomed back as king, 1660.]

189. After Cromwell's death his son Richard, who succeeded him, found himself unable to carry on the government. He soon abdicated, and the remnants of the Long Parliament met once more. But the power was really in the hands of the soldiers. In 1660 George Monk, who was in command of the forces in Scotland, came to London with a view of putting an end to the anarchy. He soon concluded that no one cared to support the Rump, and that body peacefully disbanded of its own accord. Resistance would have been vain in any case with the army against it. The nation was glad to acknowledge Charles II, whom every one preferred to a government by soldiers. A new Parliament, composed of both houses, was assembled, which welcomed a messenger from the king and solemnly resolved that, "according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom, the government is, and ought to be, by king, lords, and commons." Thus the Puritan revolution and the ephemeral republic was followed by the Restoration of the Stuarts.

[Sidenote: Character of Charles II.]

Charles II was quite as fond as his father of having his own way, but he was a man of more ability. He disliked to be ruled by Parliament; but, unlike his father, he was unwilling to arouse the nation against him. He did not propose to let anything happen which would send him on his travels again. He and his courtiers were fond of pleasure of a light-minded and immoral kind. The licentious dramas of the Restoration seem to indicate that those who had been forced by the Puritans to give up their legitimate pleasures now welcomed the opportunity to indulge in reckless gayety without regard to the bounds imposed by custom and decency.

[Sidenote: Religious measures adopted by Parliament.]

[Sidenote: The Act of Uniformity.]

[Sidenote: The Dissenters.]

Charles' first Parliament was a moderate body, but his second was made up almost wholly of Cavaliers, and it got along, on the whole, so well with the king that he did not dissolve it for eighteen years. It did not take up the old question, which was still unsettled, as to whether Parliament or the king was really supreme. It showed its hostility, however, to the Puritans by a series of intolerant acts, which are very important in English history. It ordered that no one should hold a municipal office who had not received the Eucharist according to the rites of the Church of England. This was aimed at both the Presbyterians and the Independents. By the Act of Uniformity (1662), every clergyman who refused to accept everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer was to be excluded from holding his benefice. Two thousand clergymen thereupon resigned their positions for conscience' sake. These laws tended to throw all those Protestants who refused to conform to the Church of England into a single class, still known as Dissenters. It included the Independents, the Presbyterians, and the newer bodies of the Baptists, and the Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers. These sects abandoned any idea of controlling the religion or politics of the country, and asked only that they might be permitted to worship in their own way outside of the English Church.

[Sidenote: Toleration favored by the king.]

[Sidenote: The Conventicle Act.]

[Sidenote: The Test Act.]

Toleration found an unexpected ally in the king, who, in spite of his dissolute habits, had interest enough in religion to have secret leanings toward Catholicism. He asked Parliament to permit him to moderate the rigor of the Act of Uniformity by making some exceptions. He even issued a declaration in the interest of toleration, with a view of bettering the position of the Catholics and nonconformists. Suspicion was, however, aroused lest this toleration might lead to the restoration of "popery," and Parliament passed the harsh Conventicle Act (1664). Any adult attending a conventicle--that is to say, any religious meeting not held in accordance with the practice of the English Church--was liable to penalties which culminated in transportation to some distant colony. Samuel Pepys, who saw some of the victims of this law upon their way to a terrible exile, notes in his famous diary: "They go like lambs without any resistance. I would to God that they would conform or be more wise and not be catched." A few years later Charles issued a declaration giving complete religious liberty to Roman Catholics as well as to Dissenters. Parliament not only forced him to withdraw this enlightened measure but passed the Test Act, which excluded every one from public office who did not accept the Anglican views.

[Sidenote: War with Holland.]

The old war with Holland, begun by Cromwell, was renewed under Charles II, who was earnestly desirous to increase English commerce and to found new colonies. The two nations were very evenly matched on the sea, but in 1664 the English seized some of the West Indian Islands from the Dutch and also their colony on Manhattan Island, which was renamed New York in honor of the king's brother. In 1667 a treaty was signed by England and Holland which confirmed these conquests. Three years later Charles was induced by Louis XIV to conclude a secret treaty, by which he engaged to aid Louis in a fresh war upon Holland. Louis cherished a grudge against Holland for preventing him from seizing the Spanish Netherlands, to which he asserted a claim on behalf of his Spanish wife.[347] In return for Charles' promised aid, Louis was to support him with money and troops whenever Charles thought fit publicly to declare himself a Catholic--he had already acknowledged his conversion to a select circle. But Charles' nephew, William of Orange,--the great-grandson of William the Silent,--who was later to become king of England, encouraged the Dutch to withstand, and Louis was forced to relinquish his purpose of conquering this stubborn people. Peace was concluded in 1674, and England and Holland soon became allies against Louis, who was now recognized as the greatest danger which Europe had to face.

[Sidenote: James II, 1685-1688.]

190. Upon Charles' death he was succeeded by his brother James, who was an avowed Catholic and had married, as his second wife, a Catholic, Mary of Modena. He was ready to reëstablish Catholicism in England regardless of what it might cost him. Mary, James' daughter by his first wife, had married William, Prince of Orange, the head of the United Netherlands. The nation might have tolerated James so long as they could look forward to the accession of his Protestant daughter. But when a son was born to his Catholic second wife, and James showed unmistakably his purpose of favoring the Catholics, messengers were dispatched by a group of Protestants to William of Orange, asking him to come and rule over them.

Charles I, m. Henrietta Maria (1625-1649) | | +-------+------------------+-----------------+ | | | Charles II Mary, m. William II Anne Hyde, m. James II, m. Mary of Modena (1660-1685) | Prince of | (1685-1688)| | Orange | | | +------+-------+ | | | | | William III, m. Mary Anne James Francis Edward, (1688-1702) (1702-1714) the Old Pretender

[Sidenote: The revolution of 1688 and the accession of William III, 1688-1702.]

William landed in November, 1688, and marched upon London, where he received general support from all the English Protestants, regardless of party. James started to oppose William, but his army refused to fight, and his courtiers deserted him. William was glad to forward James' flight to France, as he would hardly have known what to do with him had James insisted on remaining in the country. A new Parliament declared the throne vacant, on the ground that King James II, "by the advice of the Jesuits and other wicked persons, having violated the fundamental laws and withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government."

[Sidenote: The Declaration of Rights.]

A Declaration of Rights was then drawn up, condemning James' violation of the constitution and appointing William and Mary joint sovereigns. The Declaration of Rights, which is an important monument in English constitutional history, once more stated the fundamental rights of the English nation and the limitations which the Petition of Right and Magna Charta had placed upon the king. By this peaceful revolution of 1688 the English rid themselves of the Stuarts and their claims to rule by divine right, and once more declared themselves against the domination of the Church of Rome.

General Reading.--GARDINER, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00). GARDINER, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (Clarendon Press, $2.25). For Cromwell, CARLYLE, "The Hero as King" in Heroes and Hero Worship. MORLEY, Oliver Cromwell (The Century Company, $3.50). For the Puritans, CAMPBELL, The Puritans in Europe, Holland, England, and America (2 vols., Harper, $5.00). FISKE, The Beginnings of New England (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $2.00). MACAULAY, Essay on Milton.

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XXXI. THE ASCENDENCY OF FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV

[Sidenote: France at the accession of Louis XIV, 1643-1715.]

191. Under the despotic rule of Louis XIV (1643-1715) France enjoyed a commanding influence in European affairs. After the wars of religion were over, the royal authority had been reëstablished by the wise conduct of Henry IV. Richelieu had solidified the monarchy by depriving the Huguenots of the exceptional privileges granted to them for their protection by Henry IV; he had also destroyed the fortified castles of the nobles, whose power had greatly increased during the turmoil of the Huguenot wars. His successor, Cardinal Mazarin, who conducted the government during Louis XIV's boyhood, was able to put down a last rising of the discontented nobility.[348]

[Sidenote: What Richelieu and Mazarin had done for the French Monarchy.]

When Mazarin died in 1661, he left to the young monarch a kingdom such as no previous French king had enjoyed. The nobles, who for centuries had disputed the power with Hugh Capet and his successors, were no longer feudal lords but only courtiers. The Huguenots, whose claim to a place in the state beside the Catholics had led to the terrible civil wars of the sixteenth century, were reduced in numbers and no longer held fortified towns from which they could defy the king's agents. Richelieu and Mazarin had successfully taken a hand in the Thirty Years' War, and France had come out of it with enlarged territory and increased importance in European affairs.

[Sidenote: The government of Louis XIV.]

Louis XIV carried the work of these great ministers still farther. He gave that form to the French monarchy which it retained until the French Revolution. He made himself the very mirror of kingship. His marvelous court at Versailles became the model and the despair of other less opulent and powerful princes, who accepted his theory of the absolute power of kings but could not afford to imitate his luxury. By his incessant wars of aggression he kept Europe in turmoil for over half a century. The distinguished generals who led his newly organized troops, and the wily diplomats who arranged his alliances and negotiated his treaties, made France feared and respected by even the most powerful of the other European states.

[Sidenote: The theory of the 'divine right' of kings in France.]

192. Louis XIV had the same idea of kingship that James I had tried in vain to induce the English people to accept. God had given kings to men, and it was His will that monarchs should be regarded as His lieutenants and that all those subject to them should obey them absolutely, without asking any questions or making any criticisms; for in yielding to their prince they were really yielding to God Himself. If the king were good and wise, his subjects should thank the Lord; if he proved foolish, cruel, or perverse, they must accept their evil ruler as a punishment which God had sent them for their sins. But in no case might they limit his power or rise against him.[349]

[Sidenote: Different attitude of the English and French nations toward absolute monarchy.]

Louis had two great advantages over James. In the first place the English nation has always shown itself far more reluctant than France to place absolute power in the hands of its rulers. By its Parliament, its courts, and its various declarations of the nation's rights, it had built up traditions which made it impossible for the Stuarts to establish their claim to be absolute rulers. In France, on the other hand, there was no Great Charter or Bill of Rights; the Estates General did not hold the purse strings, and the king was permitted to raise money without asking their permission or previously redressing the grievances which they chose to point out. They were therefore only summoned at irregular intervals. When Louis XIV took charge of the government, forty-seven years had passed without a meeting of the Estates General, and a century and a quarter was still to elapse before another call to the representatives of the nation was issued in 1789. Moreover, the French people placed far more reliance upon a powerful king than the English, perhaps because they were not protected by the sea from their neighbors, as England was. On every side France had enemies ready to take advantage of any weakness or hesitation which might arise from dissension between a parliament and the king. So the French felt it best, on the whole, to leave all in the king's hands, even if they suffered at times from his tyranny.

[Sidenote: Personal characteristics of Louis XIV.]

Louis had another great advantage over James. He was a handsome man, of elegant and courtly mien and the most exquisite perfection of manner; even when playing billiards he retained an air of world mastery. The first of the Stuarts, on the contrary, was a very awkward man, whose slouching gait, intolerable manners, and pedantic conversation were utterly at variance with his lofty pretensions. Louis added to his graceful exterior a sound judgment and quick apprehension. He said neither too much nor too little. He was, for a king, a hard worker and spent several hours a day attending to the business of government. It requires, in fact, a great deal of energy and application to be a real despot. In order really to understand and to solve the problems which constantly face the ruler of a great state, a monarch must, like Frederick the Great or Napoleon, rise early and toil late. Louis was greatly aided by the able ministers who sat in his council, but he always retained for himself the place of first minister. He would never have consented to be dominated by an adviser, as his father had been by Richelieu. "The profession of the king," he declared, "is great, noble, and delightful if one but feels equal to performing the duties which it involves,"--and he never harbored a doubt that he himself was born for the business.

[Sidenote: The king's palace at Versailles.]

193. Louis XIV was careful that his surroundings should suit the grandeur of his office. His court was magnificent beyond anything that had been dreamed of in the West. He had an enormous palace constructed at Versailles, just outside of Paris, with interminable halls and apartments and a vast garden stretching away behind it. About this a town was laid out, where those who were privileged to be near his majesty or supply the wants of the royal court lived. This palace and its outlying buildings, including two or three less gorgeous residences for the king when he occasionally tired of the ceremony of Versailles, probably cost the nation about a hundred million dollars, in spite of the fact that thousands of peasants and soldiers were forced to turn to and work without remuneration. The furnishings and decorations were as rich and costly as the palace was splendid. For over a century Versailles continued to be the home of the French kings and the seat of their government.

[Sidenote: Life at Louis XIV's court.]

This splendor and luxury helped to attract the nobility, who no longer lived on their estates in well-fortified castles, planning how they might escape the royal control. They now dwelt in the effulgence of the king's countenance. They saw him to bed at night and in stately procession they greeted him in the morning. It was deemed a high honor to hand him his shirt as he was being dressed, or, at dinner, to provide him with a fresh napkin. Only by living close to the king could the courtiers hope to gain favors, pensions, and lucrative offices for themselves and their friends, and perhaps occasionally to exercise some little influence upon the policy of the government. For they were now entirely dependent upon the good will of their monarch.[350]

[Sidenote: The reforms of Colbert.]

The reforms which Louis carried out in the earlier part of his reign were largely the work of the great financier, Colbert, to whom France still looks back with gratitude. He early discovered that Louis' officials were stealing and wasting vast sums. The offenders were arrested and forced to disgorge, and a new system of bookkeeping was introduced similar to that employed by business men. He then turned his attention to increasing the manufactures of France by establishing new industries and seeing that the older ones kept to a high standard, which would make French goods sell readily in foreign markets. He argued justly that if foreigners could be induced to buy French goods, these sales would bring gold and silver into the country and so enrich it. He made rigid rules as to the width and quality of cloths which the manufacturers might produce and the dyes which they might use. He even reorganized the old mediæval guilds; for through them the government could keep its eye on all the manufacturing that was done, and this would have been far more difficult if every one had been free to carry on any trade which he might choose. There were serious drawbacks to this kind of government regulation, but France accepted it, nevertheless, for many years.[351]

[Sidenote: Art and literature in the reign of Louis XIV.]

It was, however, as a patron of art and literature that Louis XIV gained much of his celebrity. Molière, who was at once a playwright and an actor, delighted the court with comedies in which he delicately satirized the foibles of his time. Corneille, who had gained renown by the great tragedy of The Cid in Richelieu's time, found a worthy successor in Racine, the most distinguished perhaps of French tragic poets. The charming letters of Madame de Sévigné are models of prose style and serve at the same time to give us a glimpse into the more refined life of the court. In the famous memoirs of Saint-Simon, the weaknesses of the king, as well as the numberless intrigues of the courtiers, are freely exposed with inimitable skill and wit.

[Sidenote: The government fosters the development of the French language and literature.]

Men of letters were generously aided by the king with pensions. Colbert encouraged the French Academy, which had been created by Richelieu. This body gave special attention to making the French tongue more eloquent and expressive by determining what words should be used. It is now the greatest honor that a Frenchman can obtain to be made one of the forty members of this association. A magazine which still exists, the Journal des Savants, was founded for the promotion of science. Colbert had an astronomical observatory built at Paris; and the Royal Library, which only possessed about sixteen thousand volumes, began to grow into that great collection of two and a half million volumes--by far the largest in existence--which to-day attracts scholars to Paris from all parts of the world. In short, Louis and his ministers believed one of the chief objects of any government to be the promotion of art, literature, and science, and the example they set has been followed by almost every modern state.[352]

[Sidenote: Louis XIV's warlike enterprises.]

194. Unfortunately for France, the king's ambitions were by no means altogether peaceful. Indeed, he regarded his wars as his chief glory. He employed a carefully reorganized army and the skill of his generals in a series of inexcusable attacks on his neighbors, in which he finally squandered all that Colbert's economies had accumulated and led France to the edge of financial ruin.

[Sidenote: He aims to restore the 'natural boundaries' of France.]

Louis XIV's predecessors had had, on the whole, little time to think of conquest. They had first to consolidate their realms and gain the mastery of their feudal dependents, who shared the power with them; then the claims of the English Edwards and Henrys had to be met, and the French provinces freed from their clutches; lastly, the great religious dispute was only settled after many years of disintegrating civil war. But Louis was now at liberty to look about him and consider how he might best realize the dream of his ancestors and perhaps reëstablish the ancient boundaries which Cæsar reported that the Gauls had occupied. The "natural limits" of France appeared to be the Rhine on the north and east, the Jura Mountains and the Alps on the southeast, and to the south the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. Richelieu had believed that it was the chief end of his ministry to restore to France the boundaries determined for it by nature. Mazarin had labored hard to win Savoy and Nice, and to reach the Rhine on the north. Before his death France at least gained Alsace and reached the Pyrenees, "which," as the treaty with Spain says (1659), "formerly divided the Gauls from Spain."

[Sidenote: Louis lays claim to the Spanish Netherlands.]

Louis first turned his attention to the conquest of the Spanish Netherlands, to which he laid claim through his wife, the elder sister of the Spanish king, Charles II (1665-1700). In 1667 he surprised Europe by publishing a little treatise in which he set forth his claims not only to the Spanish Netherlands, but even to the whole Spanish monarchy. By confounding the kingdom of France with the old empire of the Franks he could maintain that the people of the Netherlands were his subjects.

[Sidenote: The invasion of the Netherlands, 1667.]

Louis placed himself at the head of the army which he had reformed and reorganized, and announced that he was to undertake a "journey," as if his invasion was only an expedition into another part of his undisputed realms. He easily took a number of towns on the border, and completely conquered Franche-Comté. This was an outlying province of Spain, isolated from her other lands, and a most tempting morsel for the hungry king of France. These conquests alarmed Europe, and especially Holland, which could not afford to have the barrier between it and France removed, for Louis would be an uncomfortable neighbor. A Triple Alliance, composed of Holland, England, and Sweden, was accordingly organized to induce France to make peace with Spain. Louis contented himself for the moment with the dozen border towns that he had taken and which Spain ceded to him on condition that he would return Franche-Comté (Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668).

[Sidenote: Louis breaks up the Triple Alliance and allies himself with Charles II of England.]

The success with which Holland had held her own against the navy of England[353] and brought the proud king of France to a halt, produced an elation on the part of that tiny country which was very aggravating to Louis. He was thoroughly vexed that he should have been blocked by so trifling an obstacle as Dutch intervention. He consequently conceived a strong dislike for the United Provinces, which was increased by the protection that they afforded to political writers who annoyed him with their attacks. He broke up the Triple Alliance by inducing Charles II of England to conclude a treaty which arranged that England should help France in a new war against the Dutch.

[Sidenote: Louis' invasion of Holland, 1672.]

Louis then startled Europe again by seizing the duchy of Lorraine, which brought him to the border of Holland. At the head of a hundred thousand men he crossed the Rhine (1672) and easily conquered southern Holland. For the moment the Dutch cause appeared to be lost. But William of Orange showed the spirit of his great ancestor, William the Silent; the sluices in the dikes were opened and the country flooded, so the French army was checked before it could take Amsterdam and advance into the north. Holland found an ally in the elector of Brandenburg, and the war became general. The emperor sent an army against Louis, and England deserted him and made peace with Holland.

[Sidenote: Peace of Nimwegen, 1678.]

[Sidenote: Louis' encroachments on German territory.]

When a general peace was concluded at Nimwegen, at the end of six years, the chief provisions were that Holland should be left intact, and that France should retain Franche-Comté, which had been conquered by Louis in person. This bit of the Burgundian heritage thus became at last a part of France, after France and Spain had quarreled over it for a century and a half. For the ten years following there was no open war, but Louis busied himself in the interval by instituting courts in the debatable region between France and Germany, to decide what neighboring districts belonged to the various territories and towns which had been ceded to France by the treaties of Westphalia and later ones. The vestiges of the old feudal entanglements gave ample scope for claims, which were reënforced by Louis' troops. Louis, moreover, seized the important free city of Strasburg, and made many other less conspicuous but equally unwarranted additions to his territory. The emperor was unable to do more than protest against these outrageous encroachments, for he was fully occupied with the Turks, who had just laid siege to Vienna.[354]

[Sidenote: Situation of the Huguenots at the beginning of Louis XIV's reign.]

195. Louis XIV exhibited as woeful a want of statesmanship in the treatment of his Protestant subjects as in the prosecution of disastrous wars. The Huguenots, deprived of their former military and political power, had turned to manufacture, trade, and banking; "as rich as a Huguenot" had become a proverb in France. There were perhaps a million of them among fifteen million Frenchmen, and they undoubtedly formed by far the most thrifty and enterprising part of the nation. The Catholic clergy, however, did not cease to urge the complete suppression of heresy.

[Sidenote: Louis' policy of suppression.]

Louis XIV had scarcely taken the reins of government into his own hands before the perpetual nagging and injustice to which the Protestants had been subjected at all times took a more serious form. Upon one pretense or another their churches were demolished. Children were authorized to renounce Protestantism when they reached the age of seven. If they were induced by the offer of a toy or a sweetmeat to say, for example, the words "Ave Maria" (Hail, Mary), they might be taken from their parents to be brought up in a Catholic school. In this way Protestant families were pitilessly broken up. Rough and licentious dragoons were quartered upon the Huguenots with the hope that the insulting behavior of the soldiers might drive the heretics to accept the religion of the king.

[Sidenote: Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and its results.]

At last Louis was led by his officials to believe that practically all the Huguenots had been converted by these drastic measures. In 1685, therefore, he revoked the Edict of Nantes, and the Protestants thereby became outlaws and their ministers subject to the death penalty. Even liberal-minded Catholics, like the kindly writer of fables, La Fontaine, and the charming letter writer, Madame de Sévigné, hailed the reëstablishment of "religious unity" with delight. They believed that only an insignificant and seditious remnant still clung to the beliefs of Calvin. But there could have been no more serious mistake. Thousands of the Huguenots succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the royal officials and fled, some to England, some to Prussia, some to America, carrying with them their skill and industry to strengthen France's rivals. This was the last great and terrible example of that fierce religious intolerance which had produced the Albigensian Crusade, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.[355]

[Sidenote: Louis' operations in the Rhenish Palatinate.]

Louis now set his heart upon conquering the Rhenish Palatinate, to which he easily discovered that he had a claim. The rumor of his intention and the indignation occasioned in Protestant countries by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, resulted in an alliance against the French king headed by William of Orange. Louis speedily justified the suspicions of Europe by a frightful devastation of the Palatinate, burning whole towns and destroying many castles, including the exceptionally beautiful one of the elector at Heidelberg. Ten years later, however, Louis agreed to a peace which put things back as they were before the struggle began. He was preparing for the final and most ambitious undertaking of his life, which precipitated the longest and bloodiest war of all his warlike reign.

[Sidenote: The question of the Spanish succession.]

196. The king of Spain, Charles II, was childless and brotherless, and Europe had long been discussing what would become of his vast realms when his sickly existence should come to an end. Louis had married one of his sisters, and the emperor, Leopold I, another, and these two ambitious rulers had been considering for some time how they might divide the Spanish possessions between the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. But when Charles II died, in 1700, it was discovered that he had left a will in which he made Louis' younger grandson, Philip, the heir to his twenty-two crowns, but on the condition that France and Spain should never be united.

[Sidenote: Louis' grandson, Philip, becomes king of Spain.]

It was a weighty question whether Louis should permit his grandson to accept this hazardous honor. Should Philip become king of Spain, Louis and his family would control all of southwestern Europe from Holland to Sicily, as well as a great part of North and South America. This would mean the establishment of an empire more powerful than that of Charles V. It was clear that the disinherited emperor and the ever watchful William of Orange, now king of England, would never permit this unprecedented extension of French influence. They had already shown themselves ready to make great sacrifices in order to check far less serious aggressions on the part of the French king. Nevertheless, family pride and personal ambition led Louis criminally to risk the welfare of his country. He accepted the will and informed the Spanish ambassador at the French court that he might salute Philip V as his new king. The leading French newspaper of the time boldly proclaimed that the Pyrenees were no more.

[Sidenote: The War of the Spanish Succession.]

King William soon succeeded in forming a new Grand Alliance (1701) in which Louis' old enemies, England, Holland, and the emperor, were the most important members. William himself died just as hostilities were beginning, but the long War of the Spanish Succession was carried on vigorously by the great English general, the duke of Marlborough, and the Austrian commander, Eugene of Savoy. The conflict was even more general than the Thirty Years' War; even in America there was fighting between French and English colonists, which passes in American histories under the name of Queen Anne's War. All the more important battles went against the French, and after ten years of war, which was rapidly ruining the country by the destruction of its people and its wealth, Louis was willing to consider some compromise, and after long discussion a peace was arranged in 1713.

[Sidenote: The Treaty of Utrecht, 1713.]

The Treaty of Utrecht changed the map of Europe as no previous treaty had done, not even that of Westphalia. Each of the chief combatants got its share of the Spanish booty over which they had been fighting. The Bourbon Philip V was permitted to retain Spain and its colonies on condition that the Spanish and French crowns should never rest on the same head. To Austria fell the Spanish Netherlands, hereafter called the Austrian Netherlands, which continued to form a barrier between Holland and France. Holland received certain fortresses to make its position still more secure. The Spanish possessions in Italy, i.e., Naples and Milan, were also given to Austria, and in this way Austria got the hold on Italy which it retained until 1866. England acquired from France, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Hudson Bay region, and so began the expulsion of the French from North America. Besides these American provinces she received the island of Minorca with its fortress, and the rock and fortress of Gibraltar, which still gives her command of the narrow entrance to the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: The development of international law.]

The period of Louis XIV is remarkable for the development of international law. The incessant wars, the great alliances embracing several powers, and the prolonged peace negotiations, such as those which preceded the treaties of Westphalia and Utrecht, made increasingly clear the need of well-defined rules governing independent states in their relations with one another both in peace and in war. It was of the utmost importance to determine, for instance, the rights of ambassadors and of the vessels of neutral powers not engaged in the war, and what should be considered fair conduct in warfare and in the treatment of prisoners.

[Sidenote: Grotius' War and Peace.]

The first great systematic treatise on international law was published by Grotius in 1625, when the horrors of the Thirty Years' War were impressing men's minds with the necessity of finding some other means than war of settling disputes between nations. Grotius' War and Peace was followed, in Louis XIV's time, by Pufendorf's On the Law of Nature and Nations (1672). While the rules laid down by these and later writers on international law have by no means put an end to war, they have prevented many conflicts by settling certain questions and by increasing the ways in which nations may come to an understanding with one another through their ambassadors without recourse to arms.

Louis XIV outlived his son and grandson, and left a sadly demoralized kingdom to his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV (1715-1774). The national treasury was depleted, the people were reduced in numbers and were in a miserable state, and the army, once the finest in Europe, was in no condition to gain further victories. Later we must study the conditions in France which led to the great Revolution. Now, however, we turn to the rise of two new European powers, Prussia and Russia, which began in the eighteenth century to play a prominent rôle in European affairs.

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XXXII. RISE OF RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA

197. We have had little occasion hitherto, in dealing with the history of western Europe, to speak of the Slavic peoples, to whom the Russians, Poles, Bohemians, and many other nations of eastern Europe belong. Together they form the most numerous race in Europe, but, as has been well said, "they occupy a greater place on the map than in history." In the eighteenth century, however, Russia began to take an increasingly important part in European affairs, and it is now a great force in the politics of the world. The realms of the Tsar which lie in Europe exceed in extent those of all the other rulers of the continent put together, and yet they are scarcely more than a quarter of his whole dominion, which embraces northern and central Asia, and forms together an empire occupying toward three times the area of the United States.

[Sidenote: Movements of the Slavs during the period of the German invasions.]

The Slavs were settled along the Dnieper, Don, and Vistula long before the Christian era. After the East Goths had penetrated into the Roman empire, the Slavs followed their example and invaded, ravaged, and conquered the Balkan Peninsula, which they held for some time. When the German Lombards went south into Italy, about 569, the Slavs pressed behind them into Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, where they still live within the bounds of the Austrian empire. Other Slavic hordes had driven the Germans across the Oder and upper Elbe. Later the German emperors, beginning with Charlemagne, began to push them back, but the Bohemians and Moravians still hold an advanced position on the borders of Bavaria and Saxony.

[Sidenote: Beginnings of Russia.]

In the ninth century some of the Northmen invaded the districts to the east of the Baltic, while their relatives were causing grievous trouble in France and England. It is generally supposed that one of their leaders, Rurik, was the first to consolidate the Slavic tribes about Novgorod into a sort of state in 862. Rurik's successor extended the bounds of the new empire so as to include the important town of Kiev on the Dnieper. The word Russia is probably derived from Rous, the name given by the neighboring Finns to the Norman adventurers. Before the end of the tenth century the Greek form of Christianity was introduced and the Russian ruler was baptized. The frequent intercourse with Constantinople might have led to rapid advance in civilization had it not been for a great disaster which put Russia back for centuries.

[Sidenote: The Tartar invasion of the thirteenth century.]

Russia is geographically nothing more than an extension of the vast plain of northern Asia, which the Russians were destined finally to conquer. It was therefore exposed to the great invasion of the Tartars or Mongols, who swept in from the east in the thirteenth century. The powerful Tartar ruler, Genghiz Khan (1162-1227), conquered northern China and central Asia, and the mounted hordes of his successors crossed into Europe and overran Russia, which had fallen apart into numerous principalities. The Russian princes became the dependents of the Great Khan, and had frequently to seek his far distant court, some three thousand miles away, where he freely disposed of both their crowns and their heads. The Tartars exacted tribute of the Russians, but left them undisturbed in their laws and religion.

[Sidenote: Influence of the Tartar occupation on manners and customs.]

[Sidenote: Ivan the Terrible assumes the title of Tsar.]

Of the Russian princes who went to prostrate themselves at the foot of the Great Khan's throne, none made a more favorable impression upon him than the prince of Moscow, in whose favor the Khan was wont to decide all cases of dispute between the prince and his rivals. When the Mongol power had begun to decline in strength and the princes of Moscow had grown stronger, they ventured to kill the Mongol ambassadors sent to demand tribute in 1480, and thus freed themselves from the Mongol yoke. But the Tartar occupation had left its mark, for the princes of Moscow imitated the Khans rather than the western rulers, of whom, in fact, they knew nothing. In 1547 Ivan the Terrible assumed the Asiatic title of Tsar,[356] which appeared to him more worthy than that of king or emperor. The costumes and etiquette of the court were also Asiatic. The Russian armor suggested that of the Chinese, and their headdress was a turban. It was the task of Peter the Great to Europeanize Russia.

[Sidenote: Peter the Great, 1672-1725.]

198. At the time of Peter's accession, Russia, which had grown greatly under Ivan the Terrible and other enterprising rulers, still had no outlet to the sea. In manners and customs the kingdom was Asiatic, and its government was that of a Tartar prince. Peter had no quarrel with the despotic power which fell to him and which the Russian monarchs still exercise, since there is no parliament or constitution in that country down to the present day. But he knew that Russia was very much behind the rest of Europe, and that his crudely equipped soldiers could never make head against the well armed and disciplined troops of the West. He had no seaport and no ships, without which Russia could never hope to take part in the world's affairs. His two great tasks were, therefore, to introduce western habits and to "make a window," as he expressed it, through which Russia might look abroad.

[Sidenote: Peter's travels in Europe.]

In 1697-1698 Peter himself visited Germany, Holland, and England with a view to investigating every art and science of the West, as well as the most approved methods of manufacture, from the making of a man-of-war to the etching of an engraving. Nothing escaped the keen eyes of this rude, half-savage northern giant. For a week he put on the wide breeches of a Dutch laborer and worked in the shipyard at Saardam near Amsterdam. In England, Holland, and Germany he engaged artisans, scientific men, architects, ship captains, and those versed in artillery and the training of troops, all of whom he took back with him to aid in the reform and development of Russia.

[Sidenote: Suppression of revolt against foreign ideas.]

He was called home by the revolt of the royal guard, who had allied themselves with the very large party of nobles and churchmen who were horrified at Peter's desertion of the habits and customs of his forefathers. They hated what they called "German ideas," such as short coats, tobacco smoking, and beardless faces. The clergy even suggested that Peter was perhaps Antichrist. Peter took a fearful revenge upon the rebels, and is said to have himself cut off the heads of many of them. Like the barbarian that he was at heart, he left their heads and bodies lying about all winter, unburied, in order to make the terrible results of revolt against his power quite plain to all.

[Sidenote: Peter's reform measures.]

Peter's reforms extended through his whole reign. He made his people give up their cherished oriental beards and long flowing garments. He forced the women of the better class, who had been kept in a sort of oriental harem, to come out and meet the men in social assemblies, such as were common in the West. He invited foreigners to settle in Russia, and insured them protection, privileges, and the free exercise of their religion. He sent young Russians abroad to study. He reorganized the government officials on the model of a western kingdom, and made over his army in the same way.

[Sidenote: Founding of a new capital, St. Petersburg.]

Finding that the old capital of Moscow clung persistently to its ancient habits, he prepared to found a new capital for his new Russia. He selected for this purpose a bit of territory on the Baltic which he had conquered from Sweden,--very marshy, it is true, but where he might hope to construct Russia's first real port. Here he built St. Petersburg at enormous expense and colonized it with Russians and foreigners. Russia was at last becoming a European power.

[Sidenote: The military prowess of Charles XII of Sweden.]

In his ambition to get to the sea, Peter naturally collided with Sweden, to which the provinces between Russia and the Baltic belonged. Never had Sweden, or any other country, had a more warlike king than the one with whom Peter had to contend, the youthful prodigy, Charles XII. When Charles came to the throne in 1697 he was only fifteen years old, and it seemed to the natural enemies of Sweden an auspicious time to profit by the supposed weakness of the boy ruler. So a union was formed between Denmark, Poland, and Russia, with the object of increasing their territories at Sweden's expense. But Charles turned out to be a second Alexander the Great in military prowess. He astonished Europe by promptly besieging Copenhagen and forcing the king of Denmark to sign a treaty of peace. He then turned like lightning against Peter, who was industriously besieging Narva, and with eight thousand Swedes wiped out an army of fifty thousand Russians (1700). Lastly he defeated the king of Poland.

[Sidenote: Defeat and death of Charles XII.]

Though Charles was a remarkable military leader, he was a foolish ruler. He undertook to wrest Poland from its king, to whom he attributed the formation of the league against him. He had a new king crowned at Warsaw, whom he at last succeeded in getting recognized. He then turned his attention to Peter, who had meanwhile been conquering the Baltic provinces. This time fortune turned against the Swedes. The long march to Moscow proved as fatal to them as to Napoleon a century later. Charles XII was totally defeated in the battle of Pultowa (1709). He fled to Turkey and spent some years there in vainly urging the Sultan to attack Peter. At last he returned to his own kingdom, which he had utterly neglected for years. He was killed in 1718 while besieging a town.

[Sidenote: Russia acquires the Baltic provinces and attempts to get a footing on the Black Sea.]

Soon after Charles' death a treaty was concluded between Sweden and Russia by which Russia gained Livonia, Esthonia, and the other Swedish provinces at the eastern end of the Baltic. Peter had made less successful attempts to get a footing on the Black Sea. He had first taken Azof, which he soon lost during the war with Sweden, and then several towns on the Caspian. It had become evident that if the Turks should be driven out of Europe, Russia would be a mighty rival of the western powers in the division of the spoils.[357]

For a generation after the death of Peter the Great, Russia fell into the hands of incompetent rulers. It only appears again as a European state when the great Catherine II came to the throne in 1762. From that time on, the western powers had always to consider the vast Slavic empire in all their great struggles. They had also to consider a new kingdom in northern Germany, which was just growing into a great power as Peter began his work. This was Prussia, whose beginnings we must now consider.

[Sidenote: Brandenburg and the Hohenzollerns.]

199. The electorate of Brandenburg had figured on the map of Germany for centuries, and there was no particular reason to suppose that it was to become one day the dominant state in Germany. At the time of the Council of Constance the old line of electors had died out, and the impecunious Emperor Sigismund had sold it to a hitherto inconspicuous house, the Hohenzollerns, which is known to us now through such names as those of Frederick the Great, William I, the first German emperor, and his grandson, the present emperor. Beginning with a strip of territory extending some ninety or a hundred miles to the east and to the west of the little town of Berlin, the successive representatives of the line have gradually extended their boundaries until the present kingdom of Prussia embraces nearly two thirds of Germany. Of the earlier little annexations nothing need be said. While it has always been the pride of the Hohenzollern family that practically every one of its reigning members has added something to what his ancestors handed down to him, no great extension took place until just before the Thirty Years' War. About that time the elector of Brandenburg inherited Cleves, and thus got his first hold on the Rhine district.

[Sidenote: Prussia acquired by the elector of Brandenburg.]

[Sidenote: The elector of Brandenburg assumes the title of King of Prussia, 1701.]

What was quite as important, he won, far to the east, the duchy of Prussia, which was separated from Brandenburg by Polish territory. Prussia was originally the name of a region on the Baltic inhabited by heathen Slavs. These had been conquered in the thirteenth century by one of the orders of crusading knights, who, when the conquest of the Holy Land was abandoned, looked about for other occupation. The region filled up with German colonists, but it came under the sovereignty of the neighboring kingdom of Poland, whose king annexed the western half of the territory of the Teutonic Order, as the German knights were called.[358] In Luther's day the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, who happened to be a relative of the electors of Brandenburg, concluded to abolish the order and become duke of Prussia. In good time his family died out, and the duchy fell to the electors of Brandenburg. When one of them was permitted by the emperor, in the year 1701, to assume the title of king, he chose to be called King of Prussia.[359]

[Sidenote: The Great Elector, 1640-1688.]

Brandenburg accepted the Protestant religion before Luther's death, but played a pitiful part in the Thirty Years' War. Its real greatness dates from the Great Elector (1640-1688). In the treaties of Westphalia he acquired a goodly strip on the Baltic, and he succeeded in creating an absolute monarchy on the model furnished by his contemporary, Louis XIV. He joined England and Holland in their alliances against Louis, and the army of Brandenburg began to be known and feared.

[Sidenote: Frederick William I, 1713-1740.]

While it was reserved for Frederick the Great to stir Europe to its depths and establish the right of the new kingdom of Prussia to be considered one of the great European powers, he owed to his father, Frederick William I, the resources which made his victories possible. Frederick William strengthened the government and collected an army nearly as large as that maintained by France or Austria. He had, moreover, by miserly thrift and entire indifference to the amenities and luxuries of life, treasured up a large sum of money. Consequently Frederick, upon his accession, had an admirable army ready for use and an ample supply of gold.[360]

[Sidenote: The Hapsburgs in Austria.]

200. Prussia's aspiration to become a great European power made it necessary for her to extend her territory. This inevitably brought her into rivalry with Austria. It will be remembered that Charles V, shortly after his accession, ceded to his brother, Ferdinand I, the German or Austrian possessions of the house of Hapsburg, while he himself retained the Spanish, Burgundian, and Italian dominions. Ferdinand, by a fortunate marriage with the heiress of the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary, greatly augmented his territory. Hungary was, however, almost completely occupied by the Turks at that time, and till the end of the seventeenth century the energies of the Austrian rulers were largely absorbed in a long struggle against the Mohammedans.

[Sidenote: Conquests of the Turks in Europe.]

A Turkish tribe from western Asia had, at the opening of the fourteenth century, established themselves in western Asia Minor under their leader Othman (d. 1326). It was from him that they derived their name of Ottoman Turks, to distinguish them from the Seljuk Turks, with whom the crusaders had come into contact. The leaders of the Ottoman Turks showed great energy. They not only extended their Asiatic territory far toward the east, and later into Africa, but they gained a footing in Europe as early as 1353. They gradually conquered the Slavic peoples in Macedonia and occupied the territory about Constantinople, although it was a hundred years before they succeeded in capturing the ancient capital of the Eastern Empire.

[Sidenote: The defense of Europe against the Turks.]

This advance of the Turks naturally aroused grave apprehensions in the states of western Europe lest they too might be deprived of their independence. The brunt of the defense against the common foe devolved upon Venice and the German Hapsburgs, who carried on an almost continuous war with the Turks for nearly two centuries. As late as 1683 the Mohammedans collected a large force and besieged Vienna, which might very well have fallen into their hands had it not been for the timely assistance which the city received from the king of Poland. From this time on, the power of the Turks in Europe rapidly decreased, and the Hapsburgs were able to regain the whole territory of Hungary and Transylvania, their possession of which was formally recognized by the Sultan in 1699.

[Sidenote: The question of the Austrian succession.]

In 1740, a few months before the accession of Frederick II of Prussia, the emperor Charles VI, who was the last representative of the direct line of the Hapsburgs, died. Foreseeing the difficulties which would arise at his death in regard to the inheritance of his possessions, he had spent a great part of his life in trying to induce the European powers to promise that his daughter, Maria Theresa, should be recognized as his successor. England, Holland, and even Prussia were ready to bid Godspeed to the new archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, but France, Spain, and the neighboring Bavaria held back in the hope of gaining some portion of the scattered Austrian dominions for themselves. The duke of Bavaria insisted that he was the rightful heir and managed to have himself elected emperor under the title of Charles VII.

[Sidenote: Accession of Frederick II of Prussia, called 'the Great,' 1740-1786.]

[Sidenote: Frederick's attack upon Silesia.]

201. In his early years Frederick II grieved and disgusted his boorish but energetic old father by his dislike for military life and his interest in books and music. He was a particular admirer of the French and preferred their language to his own. No sooner had he become king, however, than he suddenly developed marvelous energy and skill in warlike enterprises. He realized that Prussia must widen its boundaries, and he saw no better way of accomplishing this than by robbing the seemingly defenseless Maria Theresa of Silesia, a strip of territory lying to the southeast of Brandenburg. He accordingly marched his army into the coveted district, and occupied the important city of Breslau without declaring war or offering any excuse except a vague claim to a portion of the land.

[Sidenote: The War of the Austrian Succession.]

France, stimulated by Frederick's example, joined with Bavaria in the attack upon Maria Theresa. It seemed for a time as if her struggle to maintain the integrity of her realm would be vain; but the loyalty of all the various peoples under her scepter was roused by her extraordinary courage and energy. The French were driven back, but Maria Theresa was forced to grant Silesia to Frederick in order to induce him to retire from the war. Finally, England and Holland joined in an alliance for maintaining the balance of power, for they had no desire to see France annex the Austrian Netherlands. On the death of the emperor Charles VII (1745), Maria Theresa's husband, Francis, duke of Lorraine, was chosen emperor. A few years later (1748) all the powers, tired of the war, laid down their arms and agreed to what is called in diplomacy the status quo ante bellum, which simply means that things were to be restored to the condition in which they had been before the opening of hostilities.

[Sidenote: Frederick promotes the material development of Prussia.]

[Sidenote: Frederick and Voltaire.]

Frederick was, however, permitted to keep Silesia, which increased his dominions by about one third of their former extent. He now turned his attention to making his subjects happier and more prosperous, by draining the swamps, promoting industry, and drawing up a new code of laws. He found time, also, to gratify his interest in men of letters, and invited Voltaire, the most distinguished writer of the eighteenth century, to make his home at Berlin. It will not seem strange to any one who knows anything of the character of these two men, that they quarreled after two or three years, and that Voltaire left the Prussian king with very bitter feelings.[361]

[Sidenote: The Seven Years' War.]

202. Maria Theresa was by no means reconciled to the loss of Silesia, and she began to lay her plans for expelling the perfidious Frederick and regaining her lost territory. This led to one of the most important wars in modern history, in which not only almost every European power joined, but which involved the whole world, from the Indian rajahs of Hindustan to the colonists of Virginia and New England. This Seven Years' War (1756-1763) will be considered in its broader aspects in the next chapter. We note here only the part played in it by the king of Prussia.

[Sidenote: The alliance against Prussia.]

Maria Theresa's ambassador at Paris was so skillful in his negotiations with the French court that in 1756 he induced it, in spite of its two hundred years of hostility to the house of Hapsburg, to enter into an alliance with Austria against Prussia. Russia, Sweden, and Saxony also agreed to join in a concerted attack on Prussia. Their armies, coming as they did from every point of the compass, threatened the complete annihilation of Austria's rival. It seemed as if the new kingdom of Prussia might disappear altogether from the map of Europe.

[Sidenote: Frederick's victorious defense.]

However, it was in this war that Frederick earned his title of "the Great" and showed himself the equal of the ablest generals the world has seen, from Alexander to Napoleon. Learning the object of the allies, he did not wait for them to declare war against him, but occupied Saxony at once and then moved on into Bohemia, where he nearly succeeded in taking the capital, Prague. Here he was forced to retire, but in 1757 he defeated the French and his German enemies in the most famous, perhaps, of his battles, at Rossbach. A month later he routed the Austrians at Leuthen, not far from Breslau. Thereupon the Swedes and Russians retired from the field and left Frederick for the moment master of the situation.

[Sidenote: Frederick finally triumphs over Austria.]

England now engaged the French and left Frederick at liberty to deal with his other enemies. While he exhibited marvelous military skill, he was by no means able to gain all the battles in which he engaged. For a time, indeed, it looked as if he might after all be vanquished. But the accession of a new Tsar, who was an ardent admirer of Frederick, led Russia to conclude peace with Prussia, whereupon Maria Theresa reluctantly agreed to give up once more her struggle with her inveterate enemy.

[Sidenote: The kingdom of Poland and its defective constitution.]

Frederick was able during his reign greatly to strengthen his kingdom by adding to it the Polish regions which had hitherto divided his possessions in Brandenburg from those which lay across the Vistula. The kingdom of Poland, which in its declining years was to cause western Europe much trouble, was shut in between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The Slavic population of this region had come under an able ruler about the year 1000, and the Polish kings had succeeded for a time in extending their power over a large portion of Russia, Moravia, and the Baltic regions. They had never been able, however, to establish a successful form of government. This was largely due to the fact that the kings were elected by the nobles, the crown not passing from father to son, as in the neighboring kingdoms. The elections were tumultuous affairs, and foreigners were frequently chosen. Moreover, each noble had the right to veto any law proposed in the diet, and consequently a single person might prevent the passage of even the most important measure. The anarchy which prevailed in Poland had become proverbial.

[Sidenote: The first partition of Poland, 1772.]

On the pretense that this disorderly country was a menace to their welfare, the neighboring powers, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, agreed to reduce the danger by each helping itself to a slice of the unfortunate kingdom. This amicable arrangement resulted in what is known as the first partition of Poland. It was succeeded by two others (1793 and 1795), by the last of which this ancient state was wiped from the map altogether.[362]

[Sidenote: Achievements of Frederick the Great.]

When Frederick died (1786) he left the state which had been intrusted to him by his father nearly doubled in size. He had rendered it illustrious by his military glory, and had vastly increased its resources by improving the condition of the people in the older portions of his territory and by establishing German colonies in the desolate regions of West Prussia, which he strove in this way to bind closely to the rest of the kingdom.

General Reading.--TUTTLE, History of Prussia (4 vols., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $8.25). CARLYLE, Frederick the Great (3 vols., Chapman, $2.25). LONGMAN, F.W., Frederick the Great (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00). RAMBAUD, History of Russia (2 vols., Coryell & Co., $2.00). For Peter the Great and his Age, WALISZEWSKI, Life of Peter the Great (D. Appleton & Co., $2.00). For the Seven Years' War and France, PERKINS, France under Louis XV (2 vols., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $4.00).

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XXXIII. THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND

203. In the last chapter we reviewed the progress of affairs in eastern Europe and noted the appearance of two new and important powers, Prussia and Russia, which, together with Austria, were engaged during the eighteenth century in extending their bounds at the expense of their weak neighbors, Poland and Turkey.

[Sidenote: In the eighteenth century England lays the foundation of her commercial greatness.]

In the west, England was rapidly becoming a dominant power. While she did not play a very important part in the wars on the continent, she was making herself mistress of the seas. At the close of the War of the Spanish Succession her navy was superior to that of any other European power, for both France and Holland had been greatly weakened by the long conflict. Fifty years after the Treaty of Utrecht, England had succeeded in driving the French from both North America and India and in laying the foundation of her vast colonial empire, which still gives her the commercial supremacy among the European countries.

[Sidenote: Questions settled by the accession of William and Mary.]

With the accession of William and Mary, England may be regarded as having practically settled the two great questions which had produced such serious dissensions during the previous fifty years. In the first place, the nation had clearly shown that it proposed to remain Protestant; and the relations between the Church of England and the dissenters were gradually being satisfactorily adjusted. In the second place, the powers of the king had been carefully defined, and from the opening of the eighteenth century to the present time no English monarch has ventured to veto an act of Parliament.[363]

[Sidenote: Queen Anne, 1702-1714.]

[Sidenote: The union of England and Scotland, 1707.]

William III was succeeded in 1702 by his sister-in-law, Anne, a younger daughter of James II. Far more important than the war which her generals carried on against Spain was the final union of England and Scotland. As we have seen, the difficulties between the two countries had led to much bloodshed and suffering ever since Edward I's futile attempt to conquer Scotland.[364] The two countries had, it is true, been under the same ruler since the accession of James I, but each had maintained its own independent parliament and system of government. Finally, in 1707, both nations agreed to unite their governments into one. Forty-five members of the British House of Commons were to be chosen thereafter in Scotland, and sixteen Scotch lords were to be added to the British House of Lords. In this way the whole island of Great Britain was placed under a single government, and the occasions for strife were thereby greatly reduced.

[Sidenote: Accession of George I (1714-1727), the first of the house of Hanover.]

Since none of Anne's children survived her, she was succeeded, according to an arrangement made before her accession, by the nearest Protestant heir. This was the son of James I's granddaughter Sophia. She had married the elector of Hanover[365]; consequently the new king of England, George I, was also elector of Hanover and a member of the Holy Roman Empire.

[Sidenote: The king ceases to attend the meetings of the cabinet, which comes to be regarded as the real governing body.]

The new king was a German who could not speak English and was forced to communicate with his ministers in bad Latin. The king's leading ministers had come to form a little body by themselves, called the cabinet. As George could not understand the discussions he did not attend the meetings of his ministers, and thereby set an example which has been followed by his successors. In this way the cabinet came to hold its meetings and transact its business independently of the king. Before long it became a recognized principle in England that it was the cabinet that really governed rather than the king; and that its members, whether the king liked them or not, might retain their offices so long as they continued to enjoy the confidence and support of Parliament.

James I (1603-1625) | +------------------+------------+ | | Charles I Elizabeth, m. Frederick V, (1625-1649) | Elector of the | | Palatinate | | (Winter King +--------+-------------------+ | of Bohemia) | | | Charles II (1) Anne Hyde, m. James II, m. (2) Mary of Sophia, m. Ernest (1660-1685) | (1685-1689) | Modena | Augustus, | | | Elector of +-------+-----+ | | Hanover | | | | William III, m. Mary Anne | | (1689-1702) (1689-1694) (1702-1714) | George I | (1714-1727) | | | George II James (the (1727-1760) Old Pretender) | | Frederick, | Prince of Wales Charles Edward (d. 1751) (the Young Pretender) | | George III (1760-1820)

[Sidenote: England and the 'balance of power.']

204. William of Orange had been a continental statesman before he became king of England, and his chief aim had always been to prevent France from becoming over-powerful. He had joined in the War of the Spanish Succession in order to maintain the "balance of power" between the various European countries.[366] During the eighteenth century England continued, for the same reason, to engage in the struggles between the continental powers, although she had no expectation of attempting to extend her sway across the Channel. The wars which she waged in order to increase her own power and territory were carried on in distant parts of the world, and more often on sea than on land.

[Sidenote: Peace under Walpole as prime minister, 1721-1742.]

For a quarter of a century after the Treaty of Utrecht, England enjoyed peace.[367] Under the influence of Walpole, who for twenty-one years was the head of the cabinet and the first to be called "prime minister," peace was maintained within and without. Not only did Walpole avoid going to war with other countries, but he was careful to prevent the ill-feeling at home from developing into civil strife. His principle was to "let sleeping dogs lie"; so he strove to conciliate the dissenters and to pacify the Jacobites,[368] as those were called who still desired to have the Stuarts return.

[Sidenote: England in the War of the Austrian Succession.]

[Sidenote: 'Prince Charlie,' the Young Pretender, in Scotland.]

When, in 1740, Frederick the Great and the French attacked Maria Theresa, England's sympathies were with the injured queen. As elector of Hanover, George II (who had succeeded his father in 1727), led an army of German troops against the French and defeated them on the river Main. Frederick then declared war on England; and France sent the grandson of James II,[369] the Young Pretender, as he was called, with a fleet to invade England. The attempt failed, for the fleet was dispersed by a storm. In 1745 the French defeated the English and Dutch forces in the Netherlands; this encouraged the Young Pretender to make another attempt to gain the English crown. He landed in Scotland, where he found support among the Highland chiefs, and even Edinburgh welcomed "Prince Charlie." He was able to collect an army of six thousand men, with which he marched into England. He was quickly forced back into Scotland, however, and after a disastrous defeat on Culloden Moor (1746) and many romantic adventures, he was glad to reach France once more in safety.

205. Soon after the close of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748, England entered upon a series of wars which were destined profoundly to affect not only her position, but also the fate of distant portions of the globe. In order to follow these changes intelligently we must briefly review the steps by which the various European states had extended their sway over regions separated from them by the ocean.

[Sidenote: Colonial policy of Portugal, Spain, and Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.]

The voyages which had brought America and India within the ken of Europe during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries were, as we know, mainly undertaken by the Portuguese and Spaniards. Portugal was the first to realize the advantage of extending her commerce by establishing stations in India and on the Brazilian coast of South America; then Spain laid claim to Mexico, the West Indies, and a great part of South America. These two powers found their first rival in the Dutch; for when Philip II was able to add Portugal to the realms of the Spanish monarchs for a few decades (1580-1640), he immediately closed the port of Lisbon to the Dutch ships. Thereupon the United Provinces, whose merchants could no longer procure the spices which the Portuguese brought from the East, resolved to take possession of the source of supplies. They accordingly expelled the Portuguese from a number of their settlements in India and the Spice Islands and brought Java, Sumatra, and other tropical regions under Dutch control.[370]

[Sidenote: Settlements of the French and English in North America.]

In North America the chief rivals were England and France, both of which succeeded in establishing colonies in the early part of the seventeenth century. Englishmen successively settled at Jamestown in Virginia (1607), then in New England, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. The colonies owed their growth to the influx of refugees,--Puritans, Catholics, and Quakers,--who exiled themselves in the hope of gaining the right freely to enjoy their particular forms of religion.[371]

Just as Jamestown was being founded by the English the French were making their first successful settlement in Nova Scotia and at Quebec. Although England made no attempt to oppose the French occupation of Canada, it progressed but slowly. In 1673 Marquette, a Jesuit missionary, and Joliet, a merchant, discovered the Mississippi River. La Salle sailed down the great stream and named the new country which he entered Louisiana, after his king. The city of New Orleans was founded near the mouth of the river in 1718, and the French established a chain of forts between it and Montreal.

England was able, however, by the Treaty of Utrecht, to establish herself in the northern regions, for France thereby ceded to her Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the borders of Hudson Bay. While the number of English in North America at the beginning of the Seven Years' War is supposed to have been over a million, the French scarcely exceeded a twentieth of that number. Yet careful observers at the time were by no means sure that France was not destined to dominate the new country, rather than England.

[Sidenote: Extent of India.]

The rivalry of England and France was not confined to the wildernesses of North America, occupied by half a million of savage red men. At the opening of the eighteenth century both countries had gained a foothold on the borders of the vast Indian empire, inhabited by two hundred millions of people and the seat of an ancient and highly developed civilization. One may gain some idea of the extent of India by laying the map of Hindustan upon that of the United States. If the southernmost point, Cape Comorin, be placed over New Orleans, Calcutta will lie nearly over New York City and Bombay in the neighborhood of Des Moines, Iowa.

[Sidenote: The Mongolian emperors of Hindustan.]

A generation after Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut,[372] a Mongolian conqueror, Baber,[373] had established his empire in India. The dynasty of Mongolian rulers which he founded had been able to keep the whole country under its control for toward two centuries; then their empire had fallen apart in much the same way as that of Charlemagne had done. Like the counts and dukes of the Carolingian period, the emperor's officials, the subahdars and nawabs (nabobs), and the rajahs--i.e., Hindu princes temporarily subjugated by the Mongols--had gradually got the power in their respective districts into their own hands. Although the emperor, or Great Mogul, as the English called him, continued to maintain himself in his capital of Delhi, he could no longer be said to rule the country at the opening of the eighteenth century when the French and English were seriously beginning to turn their attention to his coasts.

[Sidenote: English and French settlements in India.]

In the time of Charles I (1639), a village had been purchased by the English East India Company on the southeastern coast of Hindustan, which grew into the important English station of Madras. About a generation later the district of Bengal was occupied and Calcutta founded. Bombay was already an English station. The Mongolian emperor of India at first scarcely deigned to notice the presence of a few foreigners on the fringe of his vast realms. But before the end of the seventeenth century hostilities began between the English East India Company and the native rulers which made it plain that the foreigners would be forced to defend themselves.

The English had not only to face the opposition of the natives, but that of a European power as well. France also had an East India Company, and Pondicherry, at the opening of the eighteenth century, was its chief center with a population of sixty thousand, of which two hundred only were Europeans. It soon became apparent that there was little danger from the Great Mogul; moreover, the Portuguese and Dutch were out of the race. So the native princes and the French and English were left to fight among themselves for the supremacy.

[Sidenote: England victorious in the struggle for supremacy in America.]

206. Just before the general clash of European rulers known as the Seven Years' War came in 1756, the French and English had begun their struggle for control in both America and India. In America the so-called French and Indian War began in 1754 between the English and French colonists. General Braddock was sent from England to capture Fort Duquesne, which the French had established to keep their rivals out of the Ohio valley. Braddock knew nothing of border warfare, and he was killed and his troops routed. Fortunately for England, France, as the ally of Austria, was soon engaged in a war with Prussia that prevented her from giving proper attention to her American possessions. A famous statesman, the elder Pitt, was now at the head of the English ministry. He was able not only to succor the hard-pressed king of Prussia with money and men, but also to support the militia of the thirteen American colonies. The French forts at Ticonderoga and Niagara were taken in 1759. Quebec was won in Wolfe's heroic attack, and the following year all Canada submitted to the English. England's supremacy on the sea was demonstrated by three admirals, each of whom destroyed a French fleet in the same year that Quebec was lost to France.

[Sidenote: Dupleix and Clive in India.]

In India conflicts between the French and the English had occurred during the War of the Austrian Succession. The governor of the French station of Pondicherry was Dupleix, a soldier of great energy, who proposed to drive out the English and firmly establish the power of France over Hindustan. His chances of success were greatly increased by the quarrels among the native rulers, some of whom belonged to the earlier Hindu inhabitants and some to the Mohammedan Mongolians who had conquered India in 1526. Dupleix had very few French soldiers, but he began the enlistment of the natives, a custom eagerly adopted by the English. These native soldiers, whom the English called Sepoys, were taught to fight in the manner of Europeans.[374]

[Sidenote: Clive defeats Dupleix.]

But the English colonists, in spite of the fact that they were mainly traders, discovered among the clerks in Madras a leader equal in military skill and energy to Dupleix himself. Robert Clive, who was but twenty-five years old at this time, organized a large force of Sepoys and gained a remarkable ascendency over them by his astonishing bravery. Dupleix paid no attention to the fact that peace had been declared in Europe at Aix-la-Chapelle, but continued to carry on his operations against the English. But Clive proved more than his equal and in two years had established English supremacy in the southeastern part of India.

[Sidenote: Clive renders English influence supreme in India.]

[Sidenote: The 'Black Hole' of Calcutta.]

[Sidenote: Battle of Plassey, 1757.]

At the moment that the Seven Years' War was beginning, bad news reached Clive from the English settlement of Calcutta, about a thousand miles to the northeast of Madras. The subahdar of Bengal had seized the property of some English merchants and imprisoned one hundred and forty-five Englishmen in a little room, where most of them died of suffocation before morning. Clive hastened to Bengal, and with a little army of nine hundred Europeans and fifteen hundred Sepoys he gained a great victory at Plassey over the subahdar's army of fifty thousand men. Clive then replaced the subahdar of Bengal by a man whom he believed to be friendly to the English. Before the Seven Years' War was over the English had won Pondicherry and deprived the French of all their former influence in the region of Madras.

[Sidenote: England's gains in the Seven Years' War.]

When the Seven Years' War was brought to an end in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, it was clear that England had gained far more than any other power. She was to retain her two forts commanding the Mediterranean, Gibraltar, and Port Mahon on the island of Minorca; in America, France ceded to her the vast region of Canada and Nova Scotia, as well as several of the islands in the West Indies. The region beyond the Mississippi was ceded to Spain by France, who thus gave up all her claims to North America. In India, France, it is true, received back the towns which the English had taken from her, but she had permanently lost her influence over the native rulers, for Clive had made the English name greatly feared among them.

[Sidenote: Beginning of trouble with the American colonies.]

207. England, with the help of her colonists, had thus succeeded in driving the French from North America and in securing the continent, with the exception of Mexico, for the English race. She was not, however, long to enjoy her victory, for no sooner had the Peace of Paris been signed than she and her American colonies became involved in a dispute over taxation, which led to a new war and the creation of an independent English-speaking nation, the United States of America.

[Sidenote: The Stamp Act and its repeal.]

It seemed right to England that the colonies should help pay the expenses of the late war, which were very heavy, and also support a small standing army of English soldiers. Parliament therefore passed the Stamp Act in 1765, which required the colonists to pay for stamps to be used on legal documents. The Americans declared that Parliament had no right to tax them, since they were not represented in that body. The opposition to the stamp tax was so great that Parliament repealed the act, but with the explicit assertion that it nevertheless had the right to tax the colonies as well as to make laws for them.

[Sidenote: Opposition to 'taxation without representation.']

The effort to make the Americans pay a very moderate import duty on tea produced further trouble in 1773. The young men of Boston seditiously boarded a tea ship in the harbor and threw the cargo into the water. Burke, perhaps the most able member of the House of Commons, urged the ministry to leave the Americans to tax themselves, but George III (1760-1820) and Parliament as a whole could not forgive the colonists their opposition. They believed that the trouble was largely confined to New England and could be easily overcome. In 1774 acts were passed prohibiting the landing and shipping of goods at Boston, and the colony of Massachusetts was deprived of its former right to choose its judges and the members of the upper house of its legislature. These appointments were now placed in the hands of the king.

[Sidenote: The Continental Congress.]

[Sidenote: Outbreak of war.]

[Sidenote: Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.]

Such measures, instead of bringing Massachusetts to terms, so roused the apprehension of the rest of the colonists that a congress was summoned, and met at Philadelphia. This decided that all trade with Great Britain should cease until the grievances of the colonies had been redressed. The following year the Americans made a brave stand against British troops at Lexington and in the battle of Bunker Hill. The new Congress decided to prepare for war and raised an army which was put under the command of George Washington, a Virginia planter who had gained some distinction in the late French and Indian War. Up to this time the colonies had not intended to secede from the mother country, but the proposed compromises came to nothing, and in July, 1776, Congress declared that "these United States are, and of right ought to be, free and independent."

[Sidenote: The United States seeks and receives aid from France.]

This occurrence naturally excited great interest in France. The outcome of the Seven Years' War had been most lamentable for that country, and any trouble which came to her old enemy England could not but be a source of congratulation to the French. The United States regarded France as her natural ally and immediately sent Benjamin Franklin to Versailles with the hope of obtaining the aid of the new French king, Louis XVI. The king's ministers were doubtful whether the colonies could long maintain their resistance against the overwhelming strength of the mother country. It was only after the Americans had defeated Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777, that France concluded a treaty with the United States in which the independence of the new republic was recognized. This was tantamount to declaring war upon England. The enthusiasm for the Americans was so great in France that a number of the younger nobles, the most conspicuous of whom was Lafayette, crossed the Atlantic to fight in the American army.[375]

[Sidenote: Close of the war, 1783.]

[Sidenote: England acknowledges the independence of the United States.]

In spite of the skill and heroic self-sacrifice of Washington, the Americans lost more battles than they gained. It is extremely doubtful if they would have succeeded in bringing the war to a favorable close, by forcing the English general, Cornwallis, to capitulate at Yorktown (1781), had it not been for the aid of the French fleet. Before the war was terminated by the Peace of Paris (1783), Spain had joined in the hostilities, and the Spanish and French fleets laid siege to Gibraltar. Their floating batteries were finally destroyed by the red-hot shot of the British, and the enemies of England gave up further attempts to dislodge her from this important station. The chief result of the war was the recognition by England of the United States, whose territory was to extend to the Mississippi River. To the west of the Mississippi, the vast territory of Louisiana still remained in the hands of Spain.

[Sidenote: Results in Europe of wars between Treaty of Utrecht and Peace of Paris.]

208. The results of the European wars during the sixty years which elapsed between the Treaty of Utrecht and the Peace of Paris may be summarized as follows. In the northeast two new powers, Russia and Prussia, had come into the European family of nations. Prussia had greatly extended her territory by gaining Silesia and West Poland. She and Austria were, in the nineteenth century, to engage in a struggle for supremacy in Germany, which was to result in substituting the present German empire under the headship of the Hohenzollerns for the Holy Roman Empire, of which the house of Hapsburg had so long been the nominal chief.

[Sidenote: Origin of the 'eastern question.']

The power of the Sultan was declining so rapidly that Austria and Russia were already considering the seizure of his European possessions. This presented a new problem to the European powers, which came to be known in the nineteenth century as the "eastern question." Were Austria and Russia permitted to aggrandize themselves by adding the Turkish territory to their possessions, it would gravely disturb the balance of power which England had so much at heart. So it came about that, from this time on, Turkey was admitted in a way to the family of western European nations, for it soon appeared that some of the states of western Europe were willing to form alliances with the Sultan, and even aid him directly in defending himself against his neighbors.

[Sidenote: England's colonial possessions.]

England had lost her American colonies, and by her perverse policy had led to the creation of a sister state speaking her own language and destined to occupy the central part of the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. She still retained Canada, however, and in the nineteenth century added a new continent in the southern hemisphere, Australia, to her vast colonial empire. In India she had no further rivals among European nations, and gradually extended her influence over the whole region south of the Himalayas. In 1877 Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India as the successor of the Grand Mogul.

[Sidenote: France under Louis XV, 1715-1774.]

As for France, she had played a rather pitiful rôle during the long reign of Louis XIV's great grandson, Louis XV (1715-1774). She had, however, been able to increase her territory by the addition of Lorraine (1766) and, in 1768, of the island of Corsica. A year later a child was born in the Corsican town of Ajaccio, who one day, by his genius, was to make France the center for a time of an empire rivaling that of Charlemagne in extent. When the nineteenth century opened France was no longer a monarchy, but a republic; and her armies were to occupy in turn every European capital, from Madrid to Moscow. In order to understand the marvelous transformations produced by the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, we must consider somewhat carefully the conditions in France which led to a great reform of her institutions in 1789, and to the founding of a republic four years later.

General Reading.--For the French in America, PARKMAN, The Pioneers of France in the New World (Little, Brown & Co., $2.00), also A Half Century of Conflict (same publisher, 2 vols., $6.00). For India, MALLESON, Clive (Oxford, University Press, 60 cents), and Macaulay's Essay on Clive. For the growth of the British Empire, H. DE B. GIBBINS, History of Commerce in Europe (The Macmillan Company, 90 cents), and SEELEY, The Expansion of England (Little, Brown & Co., $1.75).

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XXXIV. THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

209. When we meet the words "French Revolution," they are pretty sure to call up before our mind's eye the guillotine and its hundreds of victims, the storming of the Bastile, the Paris mob shouting the Marseillaise hymn as they parade the streets with heads of unfortunate "aristocrats" on their pikes. Every one knows something of this terrible episode in French history. Indeed, it has made so deep an impression on posterity that we sometimes forget that the Reign of Terror was not the French Revolution. Mere disorder and bloodshed never helped mankind along; and the Revolution must assuredly have produced some great and lasting alteration in France and in Europe to deserve to be ranked--as it properly is--with the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, as one of the three most momentous changes of the last six hundred years. The Reign of Terror was, in fact, only a sequel to the real Revolution.

[Sidenote: The Ancien Régime.]

The French Revolution, in the truest sense of the term, was a great and permanent reform, which did away with many absurd and vexatious laws and customs, and with abuses of which the whole nation was heartily tired, from the king down to the humblest peasant. Whenever a Frenchman, in the eighteenth century, seriously considered the condition of his country, most of the institutions in the midst of which he lived appeared to him to be abuses, contrary to reason and humanity. These vicious institutions,--relics of bygone times and outlived conditions,--which the Revolution destroyed forever, are known by the general name Ancien Régime, that is, "the old system." Whole volumes have been written about the causes of the French Revolution. The real cause is, however, easily stated; the old system was bad, and almost every one, both high and low, had come to realize that it was bad, and consequently the French did away with it and substituted a modern and more rational order for the long-standing disorder.

[Sidenote: France not a well-organized state in the eighteenth century.]

Of the evils which the Revolution abolished, none was more important than the confusion due to the fact that France was not in the eighteenth century a well-organized, homogeneous state whose citizens all enjoyed the same rights and privileges. A long line of kings had patched it together, adding bit by bit as they could. By conquest and bargain, by marrying heiresses, and through the extinction of the feudal dynasties, the original restricted domains of Hugh Capet about Paris and Orleans had been gradually increased by his descendants until, when Louis XVI came to the throne in 1774, he found himself ruler of practically the whole territory which makes up France to-day.

Some of the districts which the kings of France brought under their sway, like Languedoc, Provence, Brittany, and Navarre, were considerable states in themselves, each with its own laws, customs, and system of government. When these provinces had come, at different times, into the possession of the king of France, he had not changed their laws so as to make them correspond with those of his other domains. He was satisfied if his new provinces paid their due share of the taxes and treated his officials with respect. In some cases the provinces retained their local assemblies, and controlled, to a certain extent, their own affairs. The provinces into which France was divided before the Revolution were not, therefore, merely artificial divisions created for the purposes of administrative convenience, like the modern French departments,[376] but represented real historical differences.

[Sidenote: Various systems of law.]

While in a considerable portion of southern France the Roman law still prevailed, in the central parts and in the west and north there were no less than two hundred and eighty-five different local codes of law in force; so that one who moved from his own to a neighboring town might find a wholly unfamiliar legal system.

[Sidenote: Interior customs lines.]

Neither was France commercially a single state. The chief customs duties were not collected upon goods as they entered French territory from a foreign country; for the customs lines lay within France itself, so that the central provinces about Paris were cut off from the outlying ones as from a foreign land.[377] A merchant of Bordeaux sending goods to Paris would have to see that the duties were paid on them as they passed the customs line, and, conversely, a merchant of Paris would have to pay a like duty on commodities sent to places without the line.

[Sidenote: Inequalities of taxation illustrated by the salt tax.]

The monstrous inequalities in levying one of the oldest and heaviest of the taxes, i.e., the salt tax, still better illustrates the strange disorder that existed in France in the eighteenth century. The government raised this tax by monopolizing the sale of salt and then charging a high price for it. There would have been nothing remarkable in this had the same price been charged everywhere, but as it was, the people in one town might be forced to pay thirty times as much as their neighbors in an adjacent district. The accompanying map shows how France was arbitrarily divided. To take a single example: at Dijon, a certain amount of salt cost seven francs; a few miles to the east, on entering Franche-Comté, one had to pay, for the same amount, twenty-five francs; to the north, in Burgundy, fifty-eight francs; to the south, in the region of the little salt tax, twenty-eight francs; while still farther off, in Gex, there was no tax whatever. The government had to go to great expense to guard the boundary lines between the various districts, for there was every inducement to smugglers to carry salt from those parts of the country where it was cheap into the land of the great salt tax.

[Sidenote: The privileged classes.]

210. Besides these unfortunate local differences, there were class differences which caused great discontent. All Frenchmen did not enjoy the same rights as citizens. Two small but very important classes, the nobility and the clergy, were treated differently by the state from the rest of the people. They did not have to pay one of the heaviest of the taxes, the notorious taille, and on one ground or another they escaped other burdens which the rest of the citizens bore. For instance, they were not required to serve in the militia or help build the roads.

[Sidenote: The Church.]

We have seen how great and powerful the mediæval Church was. In France, as in other Catholic countries of Europe, it still retained in the eighteenth century a considerable part of the power that it had possessed in the thirteenth, and it still performed important public functions. It took charge of education and of the relief of the sick and the poor. It was very wealthy and is supposed to have owned one fifth of all the land in France. The clergy still claimed, as Boniface VIII had done, that their property, being dedicated to God, was not subject to taxation. They consented, however, to help the king from time to time by a "free gift," as they called it. The church still collected the tithes from the people, and its vast possessions made it very independent. Those who did not call themselves Roman Catholics were excluded from some of the most important rights of citizenship. Since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes no Protestant could be legally married or have the births of his children registered, or make a legal will.

[Sidenote: The clergy.]

A great part of the enormous income of the church went into the pockets of the higher clergy, the bishops, archbishops, and abbots. These were appointed by the king,[379] often from among his courtiers, and they paid but little attention to their duties as officers of the church and were generally nothing but "great lords with a hundred thousand francs income." While they amused themselves at Versailles, the real work was performed--and well performed--by the lower clergy, who often received scarcely enough to keep soul and body together. We shall see that, when the Revolution began, the parish priests sided with the people instead of with their ecclesiastical superiors.[380]

[Sidenote: The privileges of the nobility.]

The privileges of the nobles, like those of the clergy, had originated in the mediæval conditions described in an earlier chapter.[381] A detailed study of their rights would reveal many survivals of the conditions which prevailed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the great majority of the people were serfs living upon the manors. While serfdom had largely disappeared in France long before the eighteenth century, and the peasants were generally free men who owned or rented their land, the lords still enjoyed the right to collect a variety of time-honored dues from the inhabitants living within the limits of the former manors.

The privileges and dues enjoyed by the nobles varied greatly in different parts of France. It was quite common for the noble landowner to have a right to a certain portion of the peasants' crops; occasionally he could collect a toll on sheep and cattle driven past his house. In some cases the lord maintained, as he had done in the Middle Ages, the only mill, wine press, or oven within a certain district, and could require every one to make use of these and pay him a share of the product. Even when a peasant owned his land, the neighboring lord usually had the right to exact one fifth of its value every time it was sold. The nobles, too, enjoyed the aristocratic privilege of the hunt. The game which they preserved for their amusement often did great damage to the crops of the peasants, who were forbidden to interfere with hares, deer, pigeons, etc.

All these privileges were vestiges of the powers which the nobles had enjoyed when they ruled their estates as feudal lords. Louis XIV had, as we know, induced them to leave their domains and gather round him at Versailles, where all who could afford it lived for at least part of the year. The higher offices in the army were reserved for the nobles, as well as the easiest and most lucrative places in the church and about the king's person.[382]

[Sidenote: The third estate.]

211. Everybody who did not belong to either the clergy or nobility was regarded as being of the third estate. The third estate was therefore nothing more than the nation at large, which was made up in 1789 of about twenty-five million souls. The privileged classes can scarcely have counted altogether more than two hundred and seventy thousand individuals. A great part of the third estate lived in the country and tilled the soil. Most historians have been inclined to make out their condition as very bad indeed. They were certainly oppressed by an abominable system of taxation and were irritated by the dues which they had to pay to the lords. They also suffered frequently from local famines. Yet there is no doubt that the evils of their situation have been greatly exaggerated. When Thomas Jefferson traveled through France in 1787 he reports that the country people appeared to be comfortable and that they had plenty to eat. Arthur Young, a famous English traveler who has left us an admirable account of his journeys in France during the years 1787-1789, found much prosperity and contentment, although he gives, too, some forlorn pictures of destitution.

[Sidenote: Favorable situation of the peasant in France compared with other countries.]

[Sidenote: Rapid increase of population in the eighteenth century.]

The latter have often been unduly emphasized by historical writers; for it has commonly been thought that the Revolution was to be explained by the misery and despair of the people who could tolerate the old system no longer. If, however, instead of comparing the situation of the French peasant under the old régime with that of an English or American farmer to-day, we contrast his position with that of his fellow-peasant in Prussia, Austria, or Italy, it will be clear that in France the agricultural classes were really much better off than elsewhere on the continent. In Prussia, for example, the peasants were still serfs: they had to work three whole days in each week for their lord; they could not marry or dispose of their land without his permission. Moreover, the fact that the population of France had steadily increased from seventeen million after the close of the wars of Louis XIV to about twenty-five million at the opening of the Revolution, indicates that the general condition of the people was improving rather than growing worse.

[Sidenote: Popular discontent, not the exceptionally miserable condition of the French people, accounts for the Revolution.]

The real reason why France was the first among the European countries to carry out a great reform and do away with the irritating survivals of feudalism was not that the nation was miserable and oppressed above all others, but that it was sufficiently free and enlightened to realize the evils and absurdities of the old régime. Mere oppression and misery does not account for a revolution, there must also be active discontent; and of that there was a great abundance in France, as we shall see. The French peasant no longer looked up to his lord as his ruler and protector, but viewed him as a sort of legalized robber who demanded a share of his precious harvest, whose officers awaited the farmer at the crossing of the river to claim a toll, who would not let him sell his produce when he wished, or permit him to protect his fields from the ravages of the pigeons which it pleased the lord to keep.[383]

[Sidenote: France still a despotism in the eighteenth century.]

212. In the eighteenth century France was still the despotism that Louis XIV had made it.[384] Louis XVI once described it very well in the following words: "The sovereign authority resides exclusively in my person. To me solely belongs the power of making the laws, and without dependence or coöperation. The entire public order emanates from me, and I am its supreme protector. My people are one with me. The rights and interests of the nation are necessarily identical with mine and rest solely in my hands." In short, the king still ruled "by the grace of God," as Louis XIV had done. He needed to render account to no man for his governmental acts; he was responsible to God alone. The following illustrations will make clear the dangerous extent of the king's power.

[Sidenote: The king's control of the government funds.]

In the first place, it was he who levied each year the heaviest of the taxes, the hated taille, from which the privileged classes were exempted. This tax brought in about one sixth of the whole revenue of the state. The amount collected was kept secret, and no report was made to the nation of what was done with it or with any other part of the king's income. Indeed, no distinction was made between the king's private funds and the state treasury, whereas in England the monarch was given a stated allowance. The king of France could issue as many drafts payable to bearer as he wished; the royal officials must pay all such orders and ask no questions. Louis XV is said to have spent no less than seventy million dollars in this fashion in a single year.

[Sidenote: Lettres de cachet.]

But the king not only controlled his subjects' purses; he had a terrible authority over their persons as well. He could issue orders for the arrest and arbitrary imprisonment of any one he pleased. Without trial or formality of any sort, a person might be cast into a dungeon for an indefinite period, until the king happened to remember him again or was reminded of him by the poor man's friends. These notorious orders of arrest were called lettres de cachet, i.e., sealed letters. They were not difficult to obtain for any one who had influence with the king or his favorites, and they furnished a particularly easy and efficacious way of disposing of an enemy. These arbitrary orders lead one to appreciate the importance of the provision of Magna Carta which establishes that "no freeman shall be taken or imprisoned except by the lawful sentence of his peers and in accordance with the law of the land." Some of the most distinguished men of the time were shut up by the king's order, often on account of books or pamphlets written by them which displeased the king or those about him. The distinguished statesman, Mirabeau, was imprisoned several times through lettres de cachet obtained by his father as a means of checking his reckless dissipation.[385]

[Sidenote: Limitations placed upon the power of the French king.]

213. Yet, notwithstanding the seemingly unlimited powers of the French king, and in spite of the fact that France had no written constitution and no legislative body to which the nation sent representatives, the monarch was by no means absolutely free to do just as he pleased. He had not the time nor inclination to carry on personally the government of twenty-five million subjects, and he necessarily and willingly left much of the work to his ministers and the numerous public officials, who were bound to obey the laws and regulations established for their control and guidance.

[Sidenote: The parlements and their protests.]

Next to the king's council the most important governmental bodies were the higher courts of law, the parlements. These resembled the English Parliament in almost nothing but name. The French parlements--of which the most important one was at Paris and a dozen more were scattered about the provinces--did not, however, confine themselves strictly to the business of trying lawsuits. They claimed, and quite properly, that when the king decided to make a new law he must send it to them to be registered, else they would have no means of knowing just what the law was of which they were to be the guardians. Now, although they acknowledged that the right to make the laws belonged to the monarch, they nevertheless often sent a "protest" to the king instead of registering a law of which they disapproved. They would urge that the ministers had abused His Majesty's confidence. They would see, too, that their protest was printed and sold on the streets at a penny or two a copy, so that people should get the idea that the parlement was defending the nation against the oppressive measures of the king's ministers.

When the king received one of these protests two alternatives were open to him. He might recall the distasteful decree altogether or modify it so as to suit the court; or he could summon the parlement before him and in a solemn session (called a lit de justice) command it with his own mouth to register the law in its books. The parlement would then reluctantly obey, but as the Revolution approached it began to claim that a decree registered against its will was not valid.

[Sidenote: The parlements help to prepare the way for the Revolution.]

Struggles between the parlements and the ministers were very frequent in the eighteenth century. They prepared the way for the Revolution, first, by bringing important questions to the attention of the people; for there were no newspapers and no parliamentary or congressional debates to enable the public to understand the policy of the government. Secondly, the parlements not only frankly criticised the proposed measures of the king and his ministers, but they familiarized the nation with the idea that the king was not really at liberty to alter what they called "the fundamental laws" of the state. By this they meant that there was an unwritten constitution, of which they were the guardians and which limited the king's power. In this way they promoted the growing discontent with a government which was carried on in secret, and which left the nation at the mercy of the men in whom the king might for the moment repose confidence.

[Sidenote: Public opinion.]

It is a great mistake to suppose that public opinion did not exercise a powerful check upon the king, even under the autocratic old régime. It was, as one of Louis XVI's ministers declared, "an invisible power which, without treasury, guards, or an army, ruled Paris and the court,--yes, the very palace of the king." The latter half of the eighteenth century was a period of outspoken and acrid criticism of the whole existing social and governmental system. Reformers, among whom many of the king's ministers were counted, loudly and eloquently discussed the numerous abuses and the vicious character of the government, which gradually came to seem just as bad to the people of that day as it would to us now.

[Sidenote: Discussion of public questions.]

Although there were no daily newspapers to discuss public questions, large numbers of pamphlets were written and circulated by individuals whenever there was an important crisis, and they answered much the same purpose as the editorials in a modern newspaper. These pamphlets and the books of the time sometimes treated the government, the clergy, or the Catholic religion, with such open contempt, that the king, the clergy, or the courts felt it necessary to prevent their circulation. The parlement of Paris now and then ordered some offensive writing to be burned by the common hangman. Several distinguished writers were even imprisoned for expressing themselves too freely, and some booksellers and printers banished. But the attempted suppression of free discussion seemed an outrage to the more thoughtful among the public, and rather promoted than prevented the consideration of the weaknesses of the church and of the king's government.

[Sidenote: Voltaire, 1694-1778.]

214. By far the most conspicuous and important reformer of the eighteenth century was Voltaire (1694-1778), who was born twenty years before Louis XIV died, and yet lived to see Louis XVI mount the throne. "When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of Learning or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious era" (Morley). To understand Voltaire and the secret of his fame would be to understand France before the Revolution. His mission was to exalt and popularize reason; and since a great part of the institutions of his day were not based upon reason, but upon mere tradition, and were utterly opposed to common sense, "the touch of reason was fatal to the whole structure, which instantly began to crumble."

[Sidenote: Voltaire's wide influence and popularity.]

Voltaire had little respect for the past which had bequeathed to France her disorderly government and, above all, her church. His keen eye was continually discovering some new absurdity in the existing order, which, with incomparable wit and literary skill, he would expose to his eager readers. He was interested in almost everything; he wrote histories, dramas, philosophic treatises, romances, epics, and innumerable letters to his innumerable admirers. He was a sort of intellectual arbiter of Europe, such as Petrarch and Erasmus had been. The vast range of his writings enabled him to bring his bold questionings to the attention of all sorts and conditions of men,--not only to the general reader, but even to the careless playgoer.

[Sidenote: Voltaire's attack upon the church.]

While Voltaire was successfully inculcating free criticism in general, he led in a relentless attack upon the most venerable, probably the most powerful, institution in France, the Roman Catholic church. The absolute power of the king did not greatly trouble him, but the church, with, as he deemed, its deep-seated opposition to a free exercise of reason and its hostility to reform, seemed to him fatally to block all human progress. He was wont to close his letters with the exhortation, "Crush the infamous thing." The church, as it fully realized, had never encountered a more deadly enemy. Not only was Voltaire supremely skillful in his varied methods of attack, but there were thousands of both the thoughtful and the thoughtless ready to applaud him; for many had reached the same conclusions, although they might not be able to express their thoughts so persuasively as he. Voltaire repudiated the beliefs of the Protestant churches as well as of the Roman church. He was, however, no atheist, as his enemies--and they have been many and bitter--have so often asserted. He believed in God, and at his country home near Geneva he dedicated a temple to Him. Like many of his contemporaries he was a deist, and held that God had revealed Himself in nature and in our hearts, not in Bible or church.

Were there space at command a great many good things and plenty of bad ones might be told of this extraordinary man. He was often superficial in his judgments, and sometimes jumped to unwarranted conclusions. He saw only the evil in the church, and seemed incapable of understanding all that it had done for mankind during the bygone ages. He maliciously attributed to evil motives teachings which were accepted by the best and loftiest of men. He bitterly ridiculed even the holiest and purest aspirations, along with the alleged deceptions of the Jesuits and the quarrels of the theologians. He could, however, fight bravely against wrong and oppression.[386] The abuses against which he fought were in large part abolished by the Revolution. It is extremely unfair to notice only his mistakes and exaggerations, as many writers, both Catholic and Protestant, have done, for he certainly did more than any one else to prepare the way for the great and permanent reform of the church, as a political and social institution, in 1789-1790.

[Sidenote: Rousseau, 1712-1778.]

Next to Voltaire the writer who did most to cultivate discontent was Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). His famous little treatise, The Social Contract, takes up the great question, By what right does one man rule over others? The book opens with the words: "Man is born free and yet is now everywhere in chains. One man believes himself the master of others and yet is after all more of a slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can render it legitimate? I believe that I can answer that question." It is, Rousseau declares, the will of the people that renders government legitimate. The real sovereign is the people. Although they may appoint a single person, a king, to manage the government for them, they should make the laws, since it is they who must obey them. We shall find that the first French constitution accepts Rousseau's doctrine and defines law as "the expression of the general will,"--not the will of a king reigning by the grace of God.

[Sidenote: Montesquieu.]

Montesquieu, the most profound of the political writers of the eighteenth century, did his part in opening the eyes of thoughtful Frenchmen to the disadvantages of their government by his eulogy of the limited monarchy of England. He pointed out that the freedom which Englishmen enjoyed was due to the fact that the three powers of government--legislative, executive, and judicial--were not as in France in the same hands. Parliament made the laws, the king executed them, and the courts, independent of both, saw that they were observed. He believed that the English would lose their liberties so soon as these powers fell under the control of one person or body of persons. This principle of "the separation of powers" is now recognized in many modern governments, notably in that of the United States.

[Sidenote: The new science of political economy.]

215. About the middle of the eighteenth century the science of political economy was born. Scholars began to investigate far more thoroughly than ever before the sources and distribution of the wealth of the nation. The unjust system of taxation, which tended to exempt the richer classes from their just share of the public burdens; the wasteful and irritating methods of collecting the taxes; the interior customs lines, preventing the easy passage of goods from one part of France to another; the extravagance of the king's household; the pensions granted to undeserving persons; every evil of the bungling, iniquitous old régime was brought under the scrutiny of the new thinkers, who tested the existing system by the light of reason and the welfare of the great mass of the people.

[Sidenote: Economists argue against government restrictions on trade and manufacture.]

The economists wrote treatises on taxation, scattered pamphlets about, and conducted a magazine or two. They not only brought the existing economic evils home to the intelligent reader, but suggested remedies for them.

The French government had been in the habit of regulating well-nigh everything. In order that the goods that were produced in France might find a ready sale abroad, the government fixed the quality and width of the cloth which might be manufactured and the character of the dyes which should be used.[387] The king's ministers kept a constant eye upon the dealers in grain and breadstuffs, forbidding the storing up of these products or their sale outside a market. In this way they had hoped to prevent speculators from accumulating grain in times of scarcity in order to sell it at a high rate.

It was now pointed out that these government restrictions produced some very bad results. They failed to prevent famine, and in the case of industry they discouraged new inventions and the adoption of better methods. The economists claimed that it would be far better to leave the manufacturer to carry on his business in his own way. They urged the king to adopt the motto, laissez faire, "Let things alone," if he would see his realms prosper.[388]

[Accession of Louis XVI.]

216. In 1774 the old king, Louis XV, died after a long and disgraceful reign. His unsuccessful wars had brought France to the verge of bankruptcy, and his ministers had been unable to meet the obligations of the government. The taxes were already so oppressive as to arouse great discontent, and yet the government was running behind seventy million dollars a year. His grandson and successor, Louis XVI (1774-1793), was a young man of excellent intentions. He was only twenty, and his wife, the beautiful Marie Antoinette, daughter of Maria Theresa, was still younger. The new king almost immediately summoned Turgot, the ablest of the economists, and placed him in the most important of the government offices, that of controller general.

[Sidenote: Turgot controller general, 1774-1776.]

Turgot was an experienced government official as well as a scholar. For thirteen years he had been the king's representative in Limoges, one of the least prosperous portions of France. There he had had ample opportunity to see the vices of the prevailing system of taxation. He had made every effort to induce the government to better its methods, and had tried to familiarize the people with the principles of political economy. Consequently, when he was put in charge of the nation's finances, it seemed as if he and the conscientious young king might find some remedy for the long-standing abuses.

[Sidenote: Turgot advocates economy.]

The first and most natural measure was economy, for only in that way could the government be saved from bankruptcy, and the burden of taxation be lightened. Turgot felt that the vast amount spent in maintaining the luxury of the royal court at Versailles should be reduced. The establishments of the king, the queen, and the princes of the blood royal cost the state annually toward twelve million dollars. Then the French king had long been accustomed to grant "pensions" in a reckless manner to his courtiers, and this required nearly twelve million dollars more. Any attempt, however, to reduce this amount would arouse the immediate opposition of the courtiers, and it was the courtiers who really governed France. They had every opportunity to influence the king's mind against a man whose economies they disliked. They were constantly about the monarch from the moment when he awoke in the morning until he went to bed at night; therefore they had an obvious advantage over the controller general, who only saw him in business hours.[389]

Although the privileged class so stoutly opposed Turgot's reforms that he did not succeed in abolishing the abuses himself,[390] he did a great deal to forward their destruction not many years after his retirement. Immediately after coming into power he removed a great part of the restrictions on the grain trade. He prefaced the edict with a very frank denunciation of the government's traditional policy of preventing persons from buying and selling their grain when and where they wished. He showed that this did not obviate famines, as the government hoped that it might, and that it caused great loss and hardship. If the government would only let matters alone the grain would always go to those provinces where it was most needed, for there it would bring the best price. Turgot seized this and every similar opportunity to impress important economic truths upon the minds of the people.[391]

[Sidenote: Turgot's position.]

An Italian economist, when he heard of Turgot's appointment, wrote to a friend in France as follows: "So Turgot is controller general! He will not remain in office long enough to carry out his plans. He will punish some scoundrels; he will bluster about and lose his temper; he will be anxious to do good, but will run against obstacles and rogues at every turn. Public credit will fall; he will be detested; it will be said that he is not fitted for his task. Enthusiasm will cool; he will retire or be sent off, and we shall have a new proof of the mistake of filling a position like his in a monarchy like yours with an upright man and a philosopher."

[Sidenote: Turgot dismissed, May 1776.]

The Italian could not have made a more accurate statement of the case had he waited until after the dismissal of Turgot, which took place in May, 1776, much to the satisfaction of the court. The king, although upright and well-intentioned, was not fond of the governmental duties to which Turgot was always calling his attention. It was much the easiest way to let things go along in the old way; for reforms not only required much extra work, but they also forced him to refuse the customary favors to those around him. The discontent of his young queen or of an intimate companion outweighed the woes of the distant peasant.

[Sidenote: Necker succeeds Turgot.]

[Sidenote: Necker's financial report.]

217. Necker, who after a brief interval succeeded Turgot, contributed to the progress of the coming revolution in two ways. He borrowed vast sums of money in order to carry on the war which France, as the ally of the United States, had undertaken against England. This greatly embarrassed the treasury later and helped to produce the financial crisis which was the immediate cause of the Revolution. Secondly, he gave the nation its first opportunity of learning what was done with the public funds, by presenting to the king (February, 1781) a report on the financial condition of the kingdom; this was publicly printed and eagerly read. There the people could see for the first time how much the taille and the salt tax actually took from them, and how much the king spent on himself and his favorites.[392]

[Sidenote: Calonne, controller general, 1783-1787.]

[Sidenote: Calonne informs the king that France is on the verge of bankruptcy, August, 1786.]

Necker was soon followed by Calonne, who may be said to have precipitated the momentous reform which constitutes the French Revolution. He was very popular at first with king and courtiers, for he spent the public funds far more recklessly than his predecessors. But, naturally, he soon found himself in a position where he could obtain no more money. The parlements would consent to no more loans in a period of peace, and the taxes were as high as it was deemed possible to make them. At last Calonne, finding himself desperately put to it, informed the astonished king that the state was on the verge of bankruptcy and that in order to save it a radical reformation of the whole public order was necessary. This report of Calonne's may be taken as the beginning of the French Revolution, for it was the first of the series of events that led to the calling of a representative assembly which abolished the old régime and gave France a written constitution.

General Reading.--For general conditions in France before the Revolution, LOWELL, Eve of the French Revolution (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $2.00). MACLEHOSE, The Last Days of the French Monarchy (The Macmillan Company, $2.25). DE TOCQUEVILLE, State of Society in France before the Revolution of 1789 (John Murray, $3.00), a very remarkable work. TAINE, The Ancient Régime (Henry Holt & Co., $2.50) contains excellent chapters on the life at the king's court and upon the literature of the period. ARTHUR YOUNG, Travels in France in 1787-1789 (The Macmillan Company, $1.00), very interesting and valuable. For Turgot's reforms, STEPHENS, Life and Writings of Turgot (Longmans, Green & Co., $4.50), containing translations from Turgot's writings. MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws (The Macmillan Company, 2 vols., $2.00). ROUSSEAU, The Social Contract (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25, or Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.00). Translations and Reprints, Vol. VI, No. 1, gives short extracts from some of the most noted writers of the eighteenth century. In Vol. V, No. 2, of the same series, may be found a "Protest of the Cour des Aides," one of the higher courts of France, issued in 1775, which casts a great deal of light upon the evils of the old régime. John Morley has written a number of works upon France before the Revolution: Voltaire, Rousseau, 2 vols., Diderot and the Encyclopædists, 2 vols. (The Macmillan Company, $1.50 a volume).

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XXXV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: Reforms proposed by Calonne.]

218. It was necessary, in order to avoid ruin, Calonne claimed, "to reform everything vicious in the state." He proposed, therefore, to reduce the taille, reform the salt tax, do away with the interior customs lines, correct the abuses of the guilds, etc. But the chief reform, and by far the most difficult one, was to force the privileged classes to surrender their important exemptions from taxation. He hoped, however, that if certain concessions were made to them they might be brought to consent to a land tax to be paid by all alike. So he proposed to the king that he should summon an assembly of persons prominent in church and state, called Notables, to ratify certain changes which would increase the prosperity of the country and give the treasury money enough to meet the necessary expenses.

[Sidenote: Summoning of the Notables, 1786.]

The summoning of the Notables in 1786 was really a revolution in itself. It was a confession on the part of the king that he found himself in a predicament from which he could not escape without the aid of his people. The Notables whom he selected--bishops, archbishops, dukes, judges, high government officials--were practically all members of the privileged classes; but they still represented the nation, after a fashion, as distinguished from the king's immediate circle of courtiers. At any rate it proved an easy step from calling the Notables to summoning the ancient Estates General, and that, in its turn, speedily became a modern representative body.

[Sidenote: Calonne denounces the abuses.]

In his opening address Calonne gave the Notables an idea of the sad financial condition of the country. The government was running behind some forty million dollars a year. He could not continue to borrow, and economy, however strict, would not suffice to cover the deficit. "What, then," he asked, "remains to fill this frightful void and enable us to raise the revenue to the desired level? The Abuses! Yes, gentlemen, the abuses offer a source of wealth which the state should appropriate, and which should serve to reëstablish order in the finances.... The abuses which must now be destroyed for the welfare of the people are the most important and the best guarded of all, the very ones which have the deepest roots and the most spreading branches. For example, those which weigh on the laboring classes, the pecuniary privileges, exceptions to the law which should be common to all, and many an unjust exemption which can only relieve certain taxpayers by embittering the condition of others; the general want of uniformity in the assessment of the taxes and the enormous difference which exists between the contributions of different provinces and of the subjects of the same sovereign; the severity and arbitrariness in the collection of the taille; the apprehensions, embarrassment, almost dishonor, associated with the trade in breadstuffs; the interior custom-houses and barriers which make the various parts of the kingdom like foreign countries to one another ...,"--all these evils, which public-spirited citizens had long deprecated, Calonne proposed to do away with forthwith.

[Sidenote: Calonne and the Notables dismissed.]

The Notables, however, had no confidence in Calonne, and refused to ratify his programme of reform. The king then dismissed him and soon sent them home, too (May, 1787). Louis XVI then attempted to carry through some of the more pressing financial reforms in the usual way by sending them to the parlements to be registered.

[Sidenote: The parlement of Paris refuses to register new taxes and calls for the Estates General.]

219. The parlement of Paris resolved, as usual, to make the king's ministry trouble and gain popularity for itself. This time it resorted to a truly extraordinary measure. It not only refused to register two new taxes which the king desired, but asserted that "Only the nation assembled in the Estates General can give the consent necessary to the establishment of a permanent tax." "Only the nation," the parlement continued, "after it has learned the true state of the finances can destroy the great abuses and open up important resources." This declaration was followed in a few days by the humble request that the king assemble the Estates General of his kingdom.

The refusal of the parlement to register the new taxes led to one of the old struggles between it and the king's ministers. A compromise was arranged in the autumn of 1787; the parlement agreed to register a great loan, and the king pledged himself to assemble the Estates General within five years. In the early months of 1788 many pamphlets appeared, criticising the system of taxation and the unjust privileges and exemptions enjoyed by a few of the citizens to the detriment of the great mass of the nation.

[Sidenote: The parlement of Paris protests against the 'reform' of the judicial system.]

Suddenly the parlement of Paris learned that the king's ministers were planning to put an end to its troublesome habit of opposing their measures. The ministers proposed to remodel the whole judicial system and take from the courts the right to register new decrees and consequently the right to protest. This the parlement loudly proclaimed was in reality a blow at the nation itself. The ministers were attacking the court simply because it had acknowledged its lack of power to grant new taxes and had requested the king to assemble the representatives of the nation. The ministers, it claimed, were bent upon establishing an out-and-out despotism in which there should no longer be any check whatever on the arbitrary power of the king.

[Sidenote: Protests from the provinces.]

Some of the provinces became very apprehensive when they learned that the king proposed to take from the local parlements the right to examine edicts before registering them. Might not the tyrannically inclined ministers proceed to make new laws for the whole realm and ignore the special privileges which the king had pledged himself to maintain when Brittany, Dauphiny, Bearn, and other important provinces were originally added to France? The cause of the parlements became in this way the cause of the people.

[Sidenote: The Estates General summoned.]

Meanwhile the ministers were becoming very hard pressed for funds to meet the regular expenses of the government. The parlements had not only refused to register taxes but had done everything that they could to embarrass the ministers and destroy the confidence of those who might otherwise have lent money to the government. There seemed no other resort except to call the representatives of the people together. The Estates General were accordingly summoned to meet on May 1, 1789.

[Sidenote: General ignorance in regard to the Estates General.]

[Sidenote: The old system of voting by classes in the Estates General.]

220. It was now discovered that no one knew much about this body of which every one was talking, for it had not met since 1614. The king accordingly issued a general invitation to scholars to find out all they could about the customs observed in the former meetings of the Estates. The public naturally became very much interested in a matter which touched them so closely, and there were plenty of readers for the pamphlets which now began to appear in greater numbers than ever before. The old Estates General had been organized in a way appropriate enough to the feudal conditions under which they originated.[393] All three of the estates of the realm--clergy, nobility, and third estate--each sent an equal number of representatives, who were expected to consider not the interests of the nation but the special interests of the particular social class to which they respectively belonged. Accordingly, the deputies of the three estates did not sit together, or vote as a single body. The members of each group first came to an agreement among themselves and then a single vote was cast for the whole order.

[Sidenote: Objections to this system.]

It was natural that this system should seem preposterous to the average Frenchman in 1788. If the estates should be convoked according to the ancient forms, the two privileged classes would be entitled to twice the number of representatives allotted to the other twenty-five million inhabitants of France. What was much worse, it seemed impossible that any important reforms could be adopted in an assembly where those who had every selfish reason for opposing the most necessary changes were given two votes out of three. Necker, whom the king had recalled in the hope that he might succeed in adjusting the finances, agreed that the third estate might have as many deputies as both the other orders put together, namely six hundred, but he would not consent to having the three orders sit and vote together like a modern representative body.

[Sidenote: The cahiers.]

Besides the great question as to whether the deputies should vote by head or by order, the pamphlets discussed what reforms the Estates should undertake.[394] We have, however, a still more interesting and important expression of public opinion in France at this time, in the cahiers,[395] or lists of grievances and suggestions for reform which, in pursuance of an old custom, the king asked the nation to prepare. Each village and town throughout France had an opportunity to tell quite frankly exactly what it suffered from the existing system, and what reforms it wished that the Estates General might bring about. These cahiers[396] were the "last will and testament" of the old régime, and they constitute a unique historical document, of unparalleled completeness and authenticity. No one can read the cahiers without seeing that the whole nation was ready for the great transformation which within a year was to destroy a great part of the social and political system under which the French had lived for centuries.

[Sidenote: Desire of the nation for a constitutional, instead of an absolute, monarchy.]

Almost all the cahiers agreed that the prevailing disorder and the vast and ill-defined powers of the king and his ministers were perhaps the fundamental evils. One of the cahiers says: "Since arbitrary power has been the source of all the evils which afflict the state, our first desire is the establishment of a really national constitution, which shall define the rights of all and provide the laws to maintain them." No one dreamed at this time of displacing the king or of taking the government out of his hands. The people only wished to change an absolute monarchy into a limited, or constitutional, one. All that was necessary was that the things which the government might not do should be solemnly and irrevocably determined and put upon record, and that the Estates General should meet periodically to grant the taxes, give the king advice in national crises, and expostulate, if necessary, against any violations of the proposed charter of liberties.[397]

[Sidenote: The Estates General meet May 5, 1789.]

[Sidenote: The representatives of the third estate declare themselves a 'National Assembly.']

221. With these ideas in mind, the Estates assembled in Versailles and held their first session on May 5, 1789. The king had ordered the deputies to wear the same costumes that had been worn at the last meeting of the Estates in 1614; but no royal edict could call back the spirit of earlier centuries. In spite of the king's commands the representatives of the third estate refused to organize themselves in the old way as a separate order. They sent invitation after invitation to the deputies of the clergy and nobility, requesting them to join the people's representatives and deliberate in common on the great interests of the nation. Some of the more liberal of the nobles--Lafayette, for example--and a large minority of the clergy wished to meet with the deputies of the third estate. But they were outvoted, and the deputies of the third estate, losing patience, finally declared themselves, on June 17, a "National Assembly." They argued that, since they represented at least ninety-six per cent of the nation, the deputies of the privileged orders might be neglected altogether. This usurpation of power on the part of the third estate transformed the old feudal Estates, voting by orders, into the first modern national representative assembly on the continent of Europe.

[Sidenote: The 'Tennis-Court' oath.]

Under the influence of his courtiers the king tried to restore the old system by arranging a solemn joint session of the three orders, at which he presided in person. He presented a long programme of excellent reforms, and then bade the Estates sit apart, according to the old custom. But it was like bidding water to run up hill. Three days before, when the commons had found themselves excluded from their regular place of meeting on account of the preparations for the royal session, they had betaken themselves to a neighboring building called the "Tennis Court." Here, on June 20, they took the famous "Tennis-Court" oath, "to come together wherever circumstances may dictate, until the constitution of the kingdom shall be established." They were emboldened in their purpose to resist all schemes to frustrate a general reform by the support of over half of the deputies of the clergy, who joined them the day before the royal session.

[Sidenote: The nobility and clergy forced to join the third estate.]

Consequently, when the king finished his address and commanded the three orders to disperse immediately in order to resume their separate sessions, most of the bishops, some of the parish priests, and a great part of the nobility obeyed; the rest sat still, uncertain what they should do. When the master of ceremonies ordered them to comply with the king's commands, Mirabeau, the most distinguished statesman among the deputies, told him bluntly that they would not leave their places except at the point of the bayonet. The weak king almost immediately gave in and a few days later ordered all the deputies of the privileged orders who had not already done so to join the commons.

[Sidenote: The fall of the Bastille, July 14, 1789.]

222. The National Assembly now began in earnest the great task of preparing a constitution and regenerating France. It was soon interrupted, however, by events at Paris. The king had been advised by those about him to gather together the Swiss and German troops who formed the royal guard, so that if he decided to send the insolent deputies home he would be able to put down any disorder which might result. He was also induced to dismiss Necker, who enjoyed a popularity that he had done little to merit. When the people of Paris saw the troops gathering and when they heard of the dismissal of Necker, there was general excitement and some disorder.

On July 14 crowds of people assembled, determined to procure arms to protect themselves and mayhap to perform some daring "deed of patriotism." One of the bands, led by the old Parisian guards, turned to the ancient fortress of the Bastile, on the parapets of which guns had been mounted which made the inhabitants of that part of the city very nervous. The castle had long had a bad reputation as a place of confinement for prisoners of state and for those imprisoned by lettres de cachet. When the mob demanded admission, it was naturally denied them, and they were fired upon and nearly a hundred were killed. After a brief, courageous attack the place was surrendered, and the mob rushed into the gloomy pile. They found only seven prisoners, but one poor fellow had lost his wits and another had no idea why he had been kept there for years. The captives were freed amidst great enthusiasm, and the people soon set to work to demolish the walls.

[Sidenote: Formation of the 'national guard.']

The actual occurrences of this celebrated day were soon "disfigured and transfigured by legends," and the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile is still celebrated as the great national holiday of France.[398] The rising of the people to protect themselves against the machinations of the king's associates who, it was believed, wished to block reform, and the successful attack on a monument of ancient tyranny appeared to be the opening of a new era of freedom. The disorders of these July days led to the formation of the "national guard." This was made up of volunteers from among the more prosperous citizens, who organized themselves to maintain order and so took from the king every excuse for calling in the regular troops for that purpose. Lafayette was put in command of this body.

[Sidenote: Establishment of communes in Paris and other cities.]

The government of Paris was reorganized, and a mayor, chosen from among the members of the National Assembly, was put at the head of the new commune, as the municipal government was called. The other cities of France also began with one accord, after the dismissal of Necker and the fall of the Bastile, to promote the Revolution by displacing or supplementing their old royal or aristocratic governments by committees of their citizens. These improvised communes, or city governments, established national guards, as Paris had done, and thus maintained order. The news that the king had approved the Paris revolution confirmed the opinion that the citizens of other cities had done right in taking the control into their own hands. We shall hear a good deal of the commune of Paris later, as it played a very important rôle in the Reign of Terror.

[Sidenote: Disorder in the country districts.]

By the end of the month of July the commotion reached the country districts. A curious panic swept over the land, which the peasants long remembered as "the great fear." A mysterious rumor arose that the "brigands" were coming! The terrified people did what they could to prepare for the danger; neighboring communities combined with one another for mutual protection. When the panic was over and people saw that there were no brigands after all, they turned their attention to an enemy by no means imaginary, i.e., the old régime. The peasants assembled on the village common or in the parish church and voted to pay the feudal dues no longer. The next step was to burn the castles of the nobles in order to destroy the records of the peasants' obligations to their feudal lords.[399]

[Sidenote: The decree abolishing the survivals of serfdom and feudalism, August, 1789.]

223. About the first of August news began to reach the National Assembly of the serious disorders in the provinces. This led to the first important reforms of the Assembly. A momentous decree abolishing the survivals of serfdom and feudalism was passed in a night session (August 4-5) amid great excitement, the representatives of the privileged orders vying with each other in surrendering their ancient privileges. The exclusive right of the nobility to hunt and to maintain pigeon houses was abolished, and the peasant was permitted to kill game which he found on his land. The president of the Assembly was "commissioned to ask the king to recall those persons who had been sent to the galleys or exiled simply for the violation of the hunting regulations." The tithes of the church were done away with. Exemptions from the payment of taxes were abolished forever. It was decreed that "taxes shall be collected from all citizens and from all property in the same manner and in the same form," and that "all citizens, without distinction of birth, are eligible to any office or dignity." Moreover, inasmuch as a national constitution would be of more advantage to the provinces than the privileges which some of these enjoyed, and,--so the decree continues,--"inasmuch as the surrender of such privileges is essential to the intimate union of all parts of the realm, it is decreed that all the peculiar privileges, pecuniary or otherwise, of the provinces, principalities, districts, cantons, cities and communes, are once for all abolished and are absorbed into the law common to all Frenchmen."[400]

[Sidenote: Unification of France through the abolition of the ancient provinces and the creation of the present departments.]

This decree established the equality and uniformity for which the French people had sighed so long. The injustice of the former system of taxation could never be reintroduced. All France was to have the same laws, and its citizens were henceforth to be treated in the same way by the state, whether they lived in Brittany or Dauphiny. The Assembly soon went a step farther in consolidating and unifying France. It wiped out the old provinces altogether, by dividing the whole country into districts of convenient size, called departments. These were much more numerous than the ancient divisions, and were named after rivers and mountains. This obliterated from the map all reminiscences of the feudal disunion.

[Sidenote: The Declaration of the Rights of Man.]

224. Many of the cahiers had suggested that the Estates should draw up a clear statement of the rights of the individual citizen. It was urged that the recurrence of abuses and the insidious encroachments of despotism might in this way be forever prevented. The National Assembly consequently determined to prepare such a declaration in order to gratify and reassure the people and to form a basis for the new constitution.

This Declaration (completed August 26) is one of the most notable documents in the history of Europe. It not only aroused general enthusiasm when it was first published, but it appeared over and over again, in a modified form, in the succeeding French constitutions down to 1848, and has been the model for similar declarations in many of the other continental states. It was a dignified repudiation of the abuses described in the preceding chapter. Behind each article there was some crying evil of long standing against which the people wished to be forever protected.

[Sidenote: Contents of the Declaration.]

The Declaration sets forth that "Men are born and remain equal in rights. Social distinctions can only be founded upon the general good." "Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate, personally or through his representative, in its formation. It must be the same for all." "No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law." "No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided that their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law." "The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, being responsible, however, for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law." "All citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representative, as to the necessity of the public contribution, to grant this freely, to know to what uses it is put, and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection, and the duration of the taxes." "Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration." Well might the Assembly claim, in its address to the people, that "the rights of man had been misconceived and insulted for centuries," and boast that they were "reëstablished for all humanity in this declaration, which shall serve as an everlasting war cry against oppressors."

[Sidenote: Suspicion aroused against the court.]

225. The king hesitated to ratify the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and about the first of October rumors became current that, under the influence of the courtiers, he was calling together troops and preparing for another attempt to put an end to the Revolution, similar to that which the attack on the Bastile had frustrated. It was said that the new national colors--red, white, and blue--had been insulted at a banquet at Versailles. These things, along with the scarcity of food due to the poor crops of the year, aroused the excitable Paris populace.

[Sidenote: A Paris mob invades the king's palace and carries him off to Paris.]

On October 5 several thousand women and a number of armed men marched out to Versailles to ask bread of the king, in whom they had great confidence personally, however suspicious they might be of his friends and advisers. Lafayette marched after the mob with the national guard, but did not prevent some of the rabble from invading the king's palace the next morning and nearly murdering the queen, who had become very unpopular. She was believed to be still an Austrian at heart and to be in league with the counter-revolutionary party.

The mob declared that the king must accompany them to Paris, and he was obliged to consent. Far from being disloyal, they assumed that the presence of the royal family would insure plenty and prosperity. So they gayly escorted the "baker and the baker's wife and the baker's boy," as they jocularly termed the king and queen and the little dauphin, to the Palace of the Tuilleries, where the king took up his residence, practically a prisoner, as it proved. The National Assembly soon followed him and resumed its sittings in a riding school near the Tuilleries.

This transfer of the king and the Assembly to the capital was the first great misfortune of the Revolution. At a serious crisis the government was placed at the mercy of the leaders of the disorderly elements of Paris. We shall see how the municipal council of Paris finally usurped the powers of the national government.[401]

[Sidenote: Unjust apportionment of the revenue of the church.]

226. As we have seen, the church in France was very rich and retained many of its mediæval prerogatives and privileges. Its higher officials, the bishops and abbots, received very large revenues and often a single prelate held a number of rich benefices, the duties of which he utterly neglected. The parish priests, on the other hand, who really performed the manifold and important functions of the church, were scarcely able to live on their incomes. This unjust apportionment of the vast revenue of the church naturally suggested the idea that, if the state confiscated the ecclesiastical possessions, it could see that those who did the work were properly paid for it, and might, at the same time, secure a handsome sum which would help the government out of its financial troubles. Those who sympathized with Voltaire's views were naturally delighted to see their old enemy deprived of its independence and made subservient to the state, and even many good Catholics could not but hope that the new system would be an improvement upon the old.

[Sidenote: The property of the church confiscated by the government.]

The tithes had been abolished in August along with the feudal dues. That deprived the church of perhaps thirty million dollars a year. On November 2 a decree was passed providing that "All the ecclesiastical possessions are at the disposal of the nation on condition that it provides properly for the expenses of maintaining religious services, for the support of those who conduct them and for the succor of the poor." This decree deprived the bishops and priests of their benefices and made them dependent on salaries paid by the state. The monks, monasteries, and convents, too, lost their property.

[Sidenote: The assignats, or paper currency.]

The National Assembly resolved to issue a paper currency for which the newly acquired lands should serve as security. Of these assignats, as this paper money was called, we hear a great deal during the revolutionary period. They soon began to depreciate, and ultimately a great part of the forty billions of francs issued during the next seven years was repudiated.

[Sidenote: The Civil Constitution of the Clergy.]

The Assembly set to work completely to reorganize the church. The anxiety for simplification and complete uniformity shows itself in the reckless way that it dealt with this most venerable institution of France, the customs of which were hallowed not only by age, but by religious veneration. The one hundred and thirty-four ancient bishoprics, some of which dated back to the Roman Empire, were replaced by the eighty-three new departments into which France had already been divided.[402] Each of these became the diocese of a bishop, who was looked upon as an officer of the state and was to be elected by the people. The priests, too, were to be chosen by the people, and their salaries were much increased, so that even in the smallest villages they received over twice the minimum amount paid under the old régime.

This Civil Constitution of the Clergy[403] was the first serious mistake on the part of the National Assembly. While the half-feudalized church had sadly needed reform, the worst abuses might have been remedied without shocking and alienating thousands of those who had hitherto enthusiastically applauded the great reforms which the Assembly had effected. The king gave his assent to the changes, but with the feeling that he might be losing his soul by so doing. From that time on, he became at heart an enemy of the Revolution.

[Sidenote: Harsh treatment of the 'non-juring' clergy.]

The discontent with the new system on the part of the clergy led to another serious error on the part of the Assembly. It required the clergy to take an oath to be faithful to the law and "to maintain with all their might the constitution decreed by the assembly." Only six of the bishops consented to this and but a third of the lower clergy, although they were much better off under the new system. Forty-six thousand parish priests refused to sacrifice their religious scruples, and before long the pope forbade them to take the required oath to the Constitution. As time went on, the "non-juring" clergy were dealt with more and more harshly by the government, and the way was prepared for the horrors of the Reign of Terror. The Revolution ceased to stand for liberty, order, and the abolition of ancient abuses, and came to mean, in the minds of many besides those who had lost their former privileges, irreligion, violence, and a new kind of oppression worse than the old.

General Reading.--There are a great many histories of the French Revolution. The best and most modern account is STEPHENS, The French Revolution (Charles Scribner's Sons, 3 vols., $2.50 each). SHAILER MATHEWS, The French Revolution (Longmans, Green & Co., $1.25), is an excellent short account. See also the brief but admirable chapters in ROSE, The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era (The Macmillan Company, $1.25). CARLYLE'S famous French Revolution is hardly a history but rather a series of vivid pictures, valuable only to those who already have some knowledge of the course of events. For Mirabeau see WILLERT, Mirabeau (The Macmillan Company, 75 cents).

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XXXVI. THE FIRST FRENCH REPUBLIC

[Sidenote: The permanent reforms of 1789.]

227. We have now studied the progress and nature of the revolution which destroyed the old régime and created modern France. Through it the unjust privileges, the perplexing irregularities, and the local differences were abolished, and the people admitted to a share in the government. This vast reform had been accomplished without serious disturbance and, with the exception of some of the changes in the church, it had been welcomed with enthusiasm by the French nation.

[Sidenote: The second revolution.]

This permanent, peaceful revolution, or reformation, was followed by a second revolution of unprecedented violence, which for a time destroyed the French monarchy. It also introduced a series of further changes many of which were absurd and unnecessary and could not endure since they were approved by only a few fanatical leaders. France, moreover, became involved in a war with most of the powers of western Europe. The weakness of her government which permitted the forces of disorder and fanaticism to prevail, combined with the imminent danger of an invasion by the united powers of Europe, produced the Reign of Terror. After a period of national excitement and disorder, France gladly accepted the rule of a foreigner, who proved himself far more despotic than its former kings had been. Napoleon did not, however, undo the great work of 1789; his colossal ambition was, indeed, the means of extending, directly or indirectly, many of the benefits of the Revolution to other parts of western Europe. When, after Napoleon's fall, the brother of Louis XVI came to the throne, the first thing that he did was solemnly to assure the people that all the great gains of the first revolution should be maintained.

[Sidenote: The emigration of the nobles.]

228. While practically the whole of the nation heartily rejoiced in the earlier reforms introduced by the National Assembly and celebrated the general satisfaction and harmony by a great national festival held at Paris on the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastile, some of the higher nobility refused to remain in France. The king's youngest brother, the count of Artois, set the example by leaving the country. He was followed by others who were terrified or disgusted by the burning of the châteaux, the loss of their privileges, and the unwise abolition of hereditary nobility by the National Assembly in June, 1790. Before long these emigrant nobles (émigrés), among whom were many military officers, organized a little army across the Rhine, and the count of Artois began to plan an invasion of France. He was ready to ally himself with Austria, Prussia, or any other foreign government which he could induce to help undo the Revolution and give back to the French king his former absolute power and to the nobles their old privileges.

[Sidenote: The conduct of the emigrant nobles discredits the king and queen.]

The threats and insolence of the emigrant nobles and their shameful negotiations with foreign powers discredited the members of their class who still remained in France. The people suspected that the plans of the runaways met with the secret approval of the king, and more especially of the queen, whose brother was now emperor and ruler of the Austrian dominions. This, added to the opposition of the non-juring clergy, produced a bitter hostility between the so-called "patriots" and those who, on the other hand, were supposed to be secretly hoping for a counter revolution which would reëstablish the old régime.

[Sidenote: The flight to Varennes, June 21, 1791.]

The worst fears of the people appeared to be justified by the secret flight of the royal family from Paris, in June, 1791. Ever since the king had reluctantly signed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, flight had seemed to him his only resource. There was a body of regular troops on the northeastern boundary; if he could escape from Paris and join them he hoped that, aided by a demonstration on the part of the queen's brother, he might march back and check the further progress of the revolutionary movement with which he could no longer sympathize. He had, it is true, no liking for the emigrants and heartily disapproved of their policy, nor did he believe that the old régime could ever be restored. But, unfortunately, his plans led him to attempt to reach the boundary just at that point where the emigrants were collected. He and the queen were, however, arrested on the way, at Varennes, and speedily brought back to Paris.

[Sidenote: Effect of the king's flight.]

The desertion of the king appears to have terrified rather than angered the nation. The grief of the people at the thought of losing, and their joy at regaining, a poor weak ruler like Louis XVI clearly shows that France was still profoundly royalist in its sympathies. The National Assembly pretended that the king had not fled, but that he had been carried off. This gratified France at large; still in Paris there were some who advocated the deposition of the king, and for the first time a republican party appeared, though it was still small.

[Sidenote: The constitution completed, 1791.]

The National Assembly at last put the finishing touches to the new constitution upon which it had been working for two years, and the king readily swore to observe it faithfully. A general amnesty was then proclaimed. All the discord and suspicion of the past months were to be forgotten. The National Assembly had completed its appointed task, perhaps the greatest that a single body of men ever undertook. It had made France over and had given her an elaborate constitution. It was now ready to give way to the regular Legislative Assembly provided for in the constitution. This held its first session October 1, 1791.[404]

[Sidenote: Sources of danger at the opening of the Legislative Assembly, October, 1791.]

229. In spite of the great achievements of the National Assembly it left France in a critical situation. Besides the emigrant nobles abroad, there were the non-juring clergy at home, and a king who was secretly corresponding with foreign powers with the hope of securing their aid. When the news of the arrest of the king and queen at Varennes reached the ears of Marie Antoinette's brother, the Austrian ruler, Leopold II, he declared that the violent arrest of the king sealed with unlawfulness all that had been done in France and "compromised directly the honor of all the sovereigns and the security of every government." He therefore proposed to the rulers of Russia, England, Prussia, Spain, Naples, and Sardinia that they should come to some understanding between themselves as to how they might "reëstablish the liberty and honor of the most Christian king and his family, and place a check upon the dangerous excesses of the French Revolution, the fatal example of which it behooves every government to repress."

[Sidenote: The Declaration of Pillnitz, August 27, 1791.]

On August 27 Leopold had issued, in conjunction with the king of Prussia, the famous Declaration of Pillnitz. In this the two sovereigns state that, in accordance with the wishes of the king's brothers (the leaders of the emigrant nobles), they are ready to join the other European rulers in an attempt to place the king of France in a position to establish a form of government "that shall be once more in harmony with the rights of sovereigns and shall promote the welfare of the French nation." In the meantime they promised to prepare their troops for active service.

[Sidenote: Effect of the Declaration.]

The Declaration was little more than an empty threat; but it seemed to the French people a sufficient proof that the monarchs were ready to help the seditious French nobles to reëstablish the old régime against the wishes of the nation and at the cost of infinite bloodshed. The idea of foreign rulers intermeddling with their internal affairs would in itself have been intolerable to a proud people like the French, even if the permanence of the new reforms had not been endangered. Had it been the object of the allied monarchs to hasten instead of to prevent the deposition of Louis XVI, they could hardly have chosen a more efficient means than the Declaration of Pillnitz.

[Sidenote: The newspapers.]

230. The political excitement and the enthusiasm for the Revolution were kept up by the newspapers which had been established, especially in Paris, since the meeting of the Estates General. The people did not need longer to rely upon an occasional pamphlet, as was the case before 1789. Many journals of the most divergent kinds and representing the most diverse opinions were published. Some were no more than a periodical editorial written by one man; for example, the notorious "Friend of the People," by the insane Marat. Others, like the famous "Moniteur," were much like our papers of to-day and contained news, reports of the debates in the assembly, announcements of theaters, etc. Some of the papers were illustrated, and the representations of contemporaneous events, especially the numerous caricatures, are highly diverting.

[Sidenote: The Jacobins.]

Of the numerous political clubs, by far the most famous was that of the Jacobins. When the Assembly moved into Paris, some of the provincial representatives of the third estate rented a large room in the monastery of the Jacobin monks, not far from the building where the National Assembly itself met. A hundred deputies perhaps were present at the first meeting. The next day the number had doubled. The aim of this society was to discuss questions which were about to come before the National Assembly. The club decided beforehand what should be the policy of its members and how they should vote; and in this way they successfully combined to counteract the schemes of the aristocratic party in the assembly. The club rapidly grew and soon admitted some who were not deputies to its sessions. In October, 1791, it decided to permit the public to attend its discussions.

Gradually similar societies were formed in the provinces.[406] These affiliated themselves with the "mother" society at Paris and kept in constant communication with it. In this way the Jacobins of Paris stimulated and controlled public opinion throughout France, and kept the opponents of the old régime alert. When the Legislative Assembly met, the Jacobins had not as yet become republicans, but they believed that the king should have hardly more power than the president of a republic. They were even ready to promote his deposition if he failed to stand by the Revolution.

[Sidenote: The emigrant nobles declared traitors.]

231. The growing discord in the nation was increased by the severe edicts that the Legislative Assembly directed against the emigrant nobles and the non-juring clergy. "The Frenchmen assembled on the frontier" were declared under suspicion of conspiring against their country. If they did not return to France by January 1, 1792, they were to be regarded as convicted traitors, to be punished, if caught, with death; their property was to be confiscated.

[Sidenote: Harsh measures of the Assembly toward non-juring clergy.]

The harsh treatment of the emigrant nobles was perhaps justified by their desertion and treasonable intrigues; but the conduct of the Assembly toward the clergy was both unstatesmanlike and iniquitous. Those who had refused to take the oath to support a system which was in conflict with their religious convictions and which had been condemned by the pope, were commanded to do so within a week on penalty of losing their income from the state and being put under surveillance as suspects. As this failed to bring the clergy to terms, the Assembly later (May, 1792) ordered the deportation from the country of those who steadily persisted in their refusal to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. In this way the Assembly aroused the active hostility of a great part of the most conscientious among the lower clergy, who had loyally supported the commons in their fight against the privileged orders. It also lost the confidence of the great mass of faithful Catholics,--merchants, artisans, and peasants,--who had gladly accepted the abolition of the old abuses, but who would not consent to desert their religious leaders.

[Sidenote: The Legislative Assembly precipitate a war with Europe.]

232. By far the most important act of the Legislative Assembly during the one year of its existence was its precipitation of a war between France and Austria. It little dreamed that this was the beginning of a war between revolutionary France and the rest of western Europe, which was to last, with slight interruptions, for over twenty years.

To many of the leaders in the Assembly it seemed that the existing conditions were intolerable. The emigrant nobles were forming little armies on the boundaries of France and had, as we have seen, induced Austria and Prussia to consider interfering in French affairs. The Assembly suspected that Louis was negotiating with foreign rulers and would be glad to have them intervene and reëstablish him in his old despotic power. The deputies argued, therefore, that a war against the hated Austria would unite the sympathies of the nation and force the king to show his true character; for he would be obliged either to become the nation's leader or show himself the traitor they suspected him to be.

[Sidenote: France declares war upon Austria, April, 1792.]

[Sidenote: The king suspected and his life threatened.]

It was with a heavy heart that the king, urged on by the clamors of the Assembly, declared war upon Austria in April, 1792. The unpopularity of the king only increased, however. He refused to ratify certain popular measures of the Assembly and dismissed the ministers who had been forced upon him. In June a mob of Parisians invaded the Palace of the Tuilleries, and the king might have been killed had he not consented to don the "cap of liberty," the badge of the "citizen patriots."

[Sidenote: Growth of republican feeling.]

When France declared war, Prussia immediately allied itself with Austria. Both powers collected their forces and, to the great joy of the emigrant nobles, who joined them, prepared to march upon France. The early attempts of the French to get a footing in the Austrian Netherlands were not successful, and the troops and people accused the nobles, who were in command of the French troops, of treason. As the allies approached the boundaries it became clearer and clearer that the king was utterly incapable of defending France, and the Assembly began to consider the question of deposing him. The duke of Brunswick, who was at the head of the Prussian forces, took the very worst means of helping the king, by issuing a manifesto in which he threatened utterly to destroy Paris should the king suffer any harm.

[Sidenote: Insurrection of August 10, 1792.]

Angered by this declaration and aroused by the danger, the populace of Paris again invaded the Tuilleries, August 10, 1792, and the king was obliged to take refuge in the building in which the Assembly was in session. Those who instigated the attack were men who had set their heart upon doing away with the king altogether and establishing a republic. A group of them had taken possession of the city hall, pushed the old members of the municipal council off from their seats, and taken the government in their own hands. In this way the members of the Paris commune became the leaders in the revolution which established the first French republic.

[Sidenote: France proclaimed a republic, September 22, 1792.]

233. The Assembly agreed with the commune in desiring a republic. If, as was proposed, France was henceforth to do without a king, it was obviously necessary that the monarchical constitution so recently completed should be replaced by a republican one. Consequently, the Assembly arranged that the people should elect delegates to a constitutional Convention, which should draw up a new system of government. The Convention met on the 21st of September, and its first act was to abolish the ancient monarchy and proclaim France a republic. It seemed to the enthusiasts of the time that a new era of liberty had dawned, now that the long oppression by "despots" was ended forever. The twenty-second day of September, 1792, was reckoned as the first day of the Year One of French liberty.[407]

[Sidenote: The September massacres, 1792.]

Meanwhile the usurping Paris commune had taken matters into its own hands and had brought discredit upon the cause of liberty by one of the most atrocious acts in history. On the pretext that Paris was full of traitors, who sympathized with the Austrians and the emigrant nobles, they had filled the prisons with three thousand innocent citizens. On September 2 and 3 hundreds of these were executed with scarcely a pretense of a trial. The members of the commune who perpetrated this deed probably hoped to terrify those who might still dream of returning to the old system of government.

[Sidenote: Progress of the war with Austria and Prussia.]

Late in August the Prussians crossed the French boundary and on September 2 took the fortress of Verdun. It now seemed as if there was nothing to prevent their marching upon Paris. The French general, Dumouriez, blocked their advance, however, and without a pitched battle caused the enemy to retreat. Notwithstanding the fears of the French, the king of Prussia had but little interest in the war; the Austrian troops were lagging far behind, and both powers were far more absorbed in a second partition of Poland, which was approaching, than in the fate of the French king. The French now invaded Germany and took several important towns on the Rhine, including Mayence, which gladly opened its gates to them. They also occupied the Spanish Netherlands and Savoy.

[Sidenote: Trial and execution of the king, January, 1793.]

Meanwhile the new Convention was puzzled to determine what would best be done with the king. A considerable party felt that he was guilty of treason in secretly encouraging the foreign powers to come to his aid. He was therefore brought to trial, and when it came to a final vote, he was, by a small majority, condemned to death. He mounted the scaffold on January 21, 1793, with the fortitude of a martyr. Nevertheless, one cannot but feel that through his earlier weakness and indecision he brought untold misery upon his own kingdom and upon Europe at large. The French people had not dreamed of a republic until his absolute incompetence forced them, in self-defense, to abolish the monarchy in the hope of securing a more efficient government.

[Sidenote: The Convention proposes to aid other countries to rid themselves of their monarchs.]

[Sidenote: France declares war on England, February 1, 1793.]

234. The exultation of the Convention over the conquests which their armies were making, encouraged them to offer the assistance of the new republic to any country that wished to establish its freedom by throwing off the yoke of monarchy. They even proposed a republic to the English people. One of the French ministers declared, "We will hurl thither fifty thousand caps of liberty, we will plant there the sacred tree of liberty." February 1, 1793, France greatly added to her embarrassments by declaring war on England, a country which proved her most inveterate enemy.

[Sidenote: The allies settle their differences and renew the war against France.]

The war now began to go against the French. The allies had hitherto been suspicious of one another and fearful lest Russia should take advantage of their preoccupation with France to seize more than her share of Poland. They now came to an agreement. It was arranged that Prussia and Russia should each take another piece of Poland, while Austria agreed to go without her share if the powers would aid her in inducing the elector of Bavaria to exchange his possessions for the Spanish Netherlands.

[Sidenote: French driven from the Netherlands; desertion of Dumouriez.]

This adjustment of the differences between the allies gave a wholly new aspect to the war with France. When in March, 1793, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire joined the coalition, France was at war with all her neighbors. The Austrians defeated Dumouriez at Neerwinden and drove the French out of the Netherlands. Thereupon Dumouriez, disgusted by the failure of the Convention to support him and by their execution of the king, deserted to the enemy with a few hundred soldiers who consented to follow him.

[Sidenote: French government put in the hands of the Committee of Public Safety, April, 1793.]

The loss of the Netherlands and the treason of their best general made a deep impression upon the members of the Convention. If the new French republic was to defend itself against the "tyrants" without and its many enemies within, it could not wait for the Convention to draw up an elaborate, permanent constitution. An efficient government must be devised immediately to maintain the loyalty of the nation to the republic, and to raise and equip armies and direct their commanders. The Convention accordingly put the government into the hands of a small committee, consisting originally of nine, later of twelve, of its members. This famous Committee of Public Safety was given practically unlimited powers. "We must," one of the leaders exclaimed, "establish the despotism of liberty in order to crush the despotism of kings."

[Sidenote: The Girondists.]

235. Within the Convention itself there were two groups of active men who came into bitter conflict over the policy to be pursued. There was, first, the party of the Girondists, so called because their leaders came from the department of Gironde, in which the great city of Bordeaux lay. They were moderate republicans and counted among their numbers some speakers of remarkable eloquence. The Girondists had enjoyed the control of the Legislative Assembly in 1792 and had been active in bringing on the war with Austria and Prussia. They hoped in that way to complete the Revolution by exposing the bad faith of the king and his sympathy with the emigrant nobles. They were not, however, men of sufficient decision to direct affairs in the terrible difficulties in which France found herself after the execution of the king. They consequently lost their influence, and a new party, called the "Mountain" from the high seats that they occupied in the Convention, gained the ascendency.

[Sidenote: The extreme republicans, called the 'Mountain.']

This was composed of the most vigorous and uncompromising republicans. They believed that the French people had been depraved by the slavery to which their kings had subjected them. Everything, they argued, which suggested the former rule of kings must be wiped out. A new France should be created, in which liberty, equality, and fraternity should take the place of the tyranny of princes, the insolence of nobles, and the impostures of the priests. The leaders of the Mountain held that the mass of the people were by nature good and upright, but that there were a number of adherents of the old system who would, if they could, undo the great work of the Revolution and lead the people back to slavery under king and church. All who were suspected by the Mountain of having the least sympathy with the nobles or persecuted priests were branded as counter-revolutionary. The Mountain was willing to resort to any measures, however shocking, to rid the nation of those suspected of counter-revolutionary tendencies, and its leaders relied upon the populace of Paris to aid them in reaching their ends.

[Sidenote: Girondist leaders expelled from the Convention, June 2, 1793.]

The Girondists, on the other hand, abhorred the furious Paris mob and the cruel fanatics who composed the commune of the capital. They argued that Paris was not France, and that it had no right to assume a despotic rule over the nation. They proposed that the commune should be dissolved and that the Convention should remove to another town where they would not be subject to the intimidation of the Paris mob. The Mountain thereupon accused the Girondists of an attempt to break up the republic, "one and indivisible," by questioning the supremacy of Paris and the duty of the provinces to follow the lead of the capital. The mob, thus encouraged, rose against the Girondists. On June 2 it surrounded the meeting place of the Convention, and deputies of the commune demanded the expulsion from the Convention of the Girondist leaders, who were placed under arrest.

[Sidenote: France threatened with civil war.]

[Sidenote: The revolt of the peasants of Brittany against the Convention.]

The conduct of the Mountain and its ally, the Paris commune, now began to arouse opposition in various parts of France, and the country was threatened with civil war at a time when it was absolutely necessary that all Frenchmen should combine in the loyal defense of their country against the invaders who were again approaching its boundaries. The first and most serious opposition came from the peasants of Brittany, especially in the department of La Vendée. There the people still loved the monarchy and their priests and even the nobles; they refused to send their sons to fight for a republic which had killed their king and was persecuting the clergymen who declined to take an oath which their conscience forbade. The Vendean royalists defeated several corps of the national guard which the Convention sent against them, and it was not until autumn that the distinguished general, Kléber, was able to put down the insurrection.

[Sidenote: Revolt of the cities against the Convention.]

The great cities of Marseilles and Bordeaux were indignant at the treatment to which the Girondist deputies were subjected in Paris, and organized a revolt against the Convention. In the manufacturing city of Lyons the merchants hated the Jacobins and their republic, since the demand for silk and other luxuries produced at Lyons had come from the nobility and clergy, who were now no longer in a position to buy. The prosperous classes were therefore exasperated when the commissioners of the Convention demanded money and troops. The citizens gathered an army of ten thousand men and placed it under a royalist leader. The Convention, however, called in troops from the armies on the frontier, bombarded and captured the city, and wreaked a terrible vengeance upon those who had dared to revolt against the Mountain. Frightened by the experience of Lyons, Bordeaux and Marseilles decided that resistance was futile and admitted the troops of the Convention. Some of the Girondist deputies had escaped from Paris and attempted to gather an army in Normandy; but they failed, too. The Convention's Committee of Public Safety showed itself far more efficient than the scattered and disunited opponents who questioned its right to govern France.

[Sidenote: The French repulse the English and Austrians.]

While the Committee of Public Safety had been suppressing the revolts within the country, it had taken active measures to meet its foreign enemies. The distinguished military organizer, Carnot, had become a member of the Committee in August and immediately called for a general levy of troops. He soon had five hundred and fifty thousand men; these he divided into thirteen armies and dispatched them against the allies. The English and Hanoverians, who were besieging Dunkirk, were driven off and the Austrians were defeated, so that by the close of the year 1793 all danger from invasion was past, for the time being at least.

[Sidenote: The Reign of Terror.]

[Sidenote: The Revolutionary Tribunal.]

236. In spite of the marvelous success with which the Committee of Public Safety had crushed its opponents at home and repelled the forces of the coalition, it continued its policy of stifling all opposition by terror. Even before the fall of the Girondists a special court had been established in Paris, known as the Revolutionary Tribunal. Its duty was to try all those who were suspected of treasonable acts. At first the cases were very carefully considered and few persons were condemned. In September, after the revolt of the cities, two new men, who had been implicated in the September massacres, were added to the Committee of Public Safety. They were selected with the particular purpose of intimidating the counter-revolutionary party by bringing all the disaffected to the guillotine.[408] A terrible law was passed, declaring all those to be suspects who by their conduct or remarks had shown themselves enemies of liberty. The former nobles, including the wives, fathers, mothers, and children of the "emigrants," unless they had constantly manifested their attachment to the Revolution, were ordered to be imprisoned.

[Sidenote: Execution of Marie Antoinette, October, 1793.]

In October, the queen, Marie Antoinette, after a trial in which the most false and atrocious charges were brought against her, was executed in Paris, and a number of high-minded and distinguished persons suffered a like fate. But the most horrible acts of the Reign of Terror were perpetrated in the provinces. A representative of the Convention had thousands of the people of Nantes shot down or drowned. The convention proposed to destroy the great city of Lyons altogether, and though this decree was only partially carried out, thousands of its citizens were executed.[409]

[Sidenote: Schism in the party of the Mountain.]

[Sidenote: Robespierre as dictator.]

Soon the radical party which was conducting the government began to disagree among themselves. Danton, a man of fiery zeal for the republic, who had hitherto enjoyed great popularity with the Jacobins, became tired of bloodshed, and believed that the system of terror was no longer necessary. On the other hand, Hébert the leader of the commune felt that the revolution was not yet complete. He proposed, for example, that the worship of Reason should be substituted for the worship of God, and arranged a service in the great church of Notre Dame, where Reason, in the person of a handsome actress, took her place on the altar. The most powerful member of the Committee of Public Safety was Robespierre, who, although he was insignificant in person and a tiresome speaker, enjoyed a great reputation for republican virtue. He disapproved alike of Danton's moderation and of the worship of Reason advocated by the commune. Through his influence the leaders of both the moderate and the extreme party were arrested and executed (March and April, 1794).

[Sidenote: Fall of Robespierre, July 27, 1794.]

It was, of course, impossible for Robespierre to maintain his dictatorship permanently. He had the revolutionary tribunal divided into sections, and greatly increased the rapidity of the executions with a view of destroying all his enemies; but his colleagues in the Convention began to fear that he would demand their heads next. A coalition was formed against him, and the Convention ordered his arrest.[410] He called upon the commune to defend him, but the Convention roused Paris against the commune, which was no longer powerful enough to intimidate the whole city, and he and his supporters were sent to the guillotine.

[Sidenote: Reaction after the overthrow of Robespierre.]

237. In successfully overthrowing Robespierre the Convention and Committee of Public Safety had rid the country of the only man, who, owing to his popularity and his reputation for uprightness, could have prolonged the Reign of Terror. There was an immediate reaction after his death, for the country was weary of executions. The Revolutionary Tribunal henceforth convicted very few indeed of those who were brought before it. It made an exception, however, of those who had themselves been the leaders in the worst atrocities, for example, as the public prosecutor, who had brought hundreds of victims to the guillotine in Paris, and the brutes who had ordered the massacres at Nantes and Lyons. Within a few months the Jacobin Club at Paris was closed by the Convention, and the commune abolished.

[Sidenote: Constitution of the year III.]

The Convention now at last turned its attention to the great work for which it had originally been summoned, and drew up a constitution for the republic. This provided that the lawmaking power should be vested in a legislative assembly consisting of two houses. The lower house was called the Council of the Five Hundred, and the upper chamber the Council of the Elders. Members of the latter were required to be at least forty years of age. The executive powers were put in the hands of a Directory of five persons to be chosen by the two chambers.

[Sidenote: The dissolution of the Convention, October, 1795, its achievements.]

In October, 1795, the Convention finally dissolved itself, having governed the country during three years of unprecedented excitement, danger, and disorder. While it was responsible for the horrors of the Reign of Terror, its committees had carried France through the terrible crisis of 1793. The civil war had been brought to a speedy end, and the coalition of foreign powers had been defeated. Meanwhile other committees appointed by the Convention had been quietly working upon the problem of bettering the system of education, which had been taken by the state out of the hands of the clergy. Progress had also been made toward establishing a single system of law for the whole country to replace the old confusion. The new republican calendar was not destined to survive many years, but the metric system of weights and measures introduced by the Convention has now been adopted by most European countries, and is used by men of science in England and America.

On the other hand, the Reign of Terror, the depreciated paper currency,[411] and many hasty and unwise laws passed by the Convention had produced all sorts of disorder and uncertainty. The Directory did little to better conditions, and it was not until Napoleon's strong hand grasped the helm of government in the year 1800 that order was really restored.

General Reading.--In addition to the references given at the end of the preceding chapter, BELLOC, Danton (Charles Scribner's Sons, $2.50) and Robespierre by the same author (same publisher, $2.00).

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