At the commencement of the year 1789 the thoughts of European statesmen were mainly turned to the events which were passing in the east of Europe. The alliance between Catherine of Russia and the Emperor Joseph II. was regarded with anxiety not only by Pitt in England and by King Frederick William II. of Prussia, but by the French ministers and by all the smaller states of Europe. The projects of Russia and Austria for the extension of their boundaries at the expense of Turkey, Poland, and Bavaria, were viewed with alarm, and the ambitious ideas of their rulers with dismay. The attention of educated people, who were not statesmen or politicians, but disciples of the philosophical teachers of the eighteenth century, was entirely concentrated on the progress of the Emperor Joseph’s policy in the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium. Success seemed to have crowned the warlike measures of General d’Alton; the Belgian patriots were in prison or in exile; and the philanthropic and centralising reforms of the Emperor seemed to have ended in Belgium in the establishment of a military despotism. France was known to be in an almost desperate financial condition; and the convocation of the States-General for 1st May 1789, was generally looked upon as a means adopted by Louis XVI. to obtain financial relief. The great results, which were to follow the meeting of the States-General, were little expected by even the most acute political observers, and it was not foreseen that for more than a quarter of a century the interest of Europe was to be fixed upon France, and that a series of events in that country, unparalleled in history, were to bring about an entire modification in the political system of Europe, and to open a new era in the history of mankind.

The campaign of 1788 had, upon the whole, terminated favourably for the Austrians and Russians in their war with the Turks. Loudon, who commanded the Austrian forces, had taken Dubitza, and penetrating into Bosnia had reduced Novi on 3d October. Francis Josias, of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, commonly known as the Prince of Coburg, at the head of an Austrian army, had in conjunction with a Russian force under Prince Soltikov taken Choczim on 20th September. But, on the other hand, the Turks had overrun and laid waste the Banat of Temesvar and routed the Austrian army in that quarter, which was under the personal command of the Emperor. The Russians had also made some progress, and on 6th December Potemkin, with terrible loss of life, and owing mainly to the intrepidity of SuvÓrov and Repnin stormed Oczakoff (Ochakov). These successes, despite his own failure, greatly inspirited Joseph, who, in a letter to Prince Charles of Nassau, made the following curious predictions in January 1789:[3]—‘If the Grand Vizier should come to meet me or the Russians near the Danube, he must offer a battle; and then, after having defeated him, I shall drive him back to take refuge under the cannon of Silistria. In October 1789 I shall call a congress, at which the Osmanlis will be obliged to beg for peace from the Giaours. The treaties of Carlowitz and Passarowitz will serve as the basis for my ambassadors on which to conclude peace; in it, however, I shall claim Choczim and part of Moldavia. Russia will keep the Crimea, Prince Charles of Sweden will be Duke of Courland, and the Grand Duke of Florence King of the Romans. Then there will be universal peace in Europe. Until then, France will have settled affairs with the notables of the nation; and the other gentlemen think too much about themselves and too little about Austria.’

The campaign of 1789 was far from fulfilling the expectations of the Emperor Joseph. His own health had suffered too much from the privations of the previous year to enable him to take the field again in person, but he was well served by his generals. The Grand Vizier determined to adopt the offensive, and crossed the Danube at Rustchuk in March at the head of an army of 90,000 men, with the intention of invading Transylvania. But an unexpected event led to the recall of the most experienced Turkish general. The Sultan Abdul Hamid died at Constantinople on 7th April, and his nephew and successor, Selim III., at once disgraced the Grand Vizier, and replaced him in the command of the western army and the office of Grand Vizier by the Pasha of Widdin. This incompetent commander rashly advanced, and was defeated by the Prince of Coburg and SuvorÓv at Foksany on 31st July in an attempt to prevent the junction of the Austrians and Russians. The allies then took the offensive and inflicted a crushing defeat on the main Turkish army on the Rymnik, in which 18,000 Austrians and 7000 Russians routed nearly 100,000 Turks, and took all their baggage and artillery. This great victory was vigorously followed up. Loudon was appointed Commander-in-chief of the Austrian army, and he took Belgrade on 9th October, and after occupying the whole of Servia, laid siege to Orsova. For these services Joseph conferred upon him the title of generalissimo, which had only been borne before by Wallenstein, Montecuculi, and Prince EugÈne. Among other results of the victory on the Rymnik, the Prince of Coburg took Bucharest and occupied Moldavia, while the Prince of Hohenlohe-Kirchberg forced his way into Wallachia. In the eastern quarter of the Turkish frontier Prince Potemkin was equally successful. He defeated the Turkish High Admiral, Hassan Pasha, in a pitched battle at Tobac, and conquered Bessarabia, capturing Bender, and laying siege to Ismail.

Doubtless Catherine and Joseph would have met with even greater successes, and perhaps they might have driven the Turks out of Europe, had not their attention been diverted directly by the affairs of Sweden and Belgium, and indirectly by the startling events which were taking place in France. The Triple Alliance looked with great disfavour on the alliance between Austria and Russia. Pitt, as has been said, prepared a great fleet, which is known in English naval history as the Russian Armament, and Frederick William II. began to negotiate an alliance with Turkey. But they limited their direct interference to inducing Denmark to make peace with Sweden. Gustavus III. of Sweden had, in 1788, forced his way at the head of 30,000 men into Russian Finland, and the sound of his guns had been heard in Saint Petersburg, which, owing to the absence of the bulk of the Russian troops, was almost defenceless. But the Swedish nobility had great influence over the army; they disliked the war with Russia; and took this opportunity to declare themselves. Under the secret leadership of Prince Charles, Duke of Sudermania, they refused to obey the king’s orders, and hoped in the embarrassment which ensued to regain their former power. At this moment Christian VII., King of Denmark and Norway, at the instance of Catherine, invaded Sweden and prepared to besiege Gothenburg. Gustavus saw the opportunity which this invasion offered to rouse the patriotic feelings of the Swedes. He appealed to the people, and leaving the command of the army in Finland to the Duke of Sudermania, raised a fresh army of volunteers to resist the invaders. In spite of his efforts, Sweden was in great danger of falling before the combined attacks of Russia and Denmark. The Triple Alliance now intervened promptly and decisively, and by threatening to attack Denmark by land and sea, they induced Bernstorff, the Danish minister, to evacuate Sweden and to agree to an armistice. Gustavus III. returned to Stockholm with the reputation of having repulsed the invaders, and summoned the Diet to meet on 2d February 1789. Sure of the support of the Commons he proposed a new Constitution, or rather a new fundamental law for the Swedish monarchy, which is summed up in one of the articles: ‘The king can administer the affairs of the State as seems good to him.’ The nobility opposed a fruitless resistance; Gustavus imprisoned their leaders and completed the work of his former revolution of 1772 by this coup d’État. He then renewed the war with Russia, but the military operations of his campaign in 1789 were not marked by any event of importance.

While Catherine of Russia was being distracted from the vigorous prosecution of the war against Turkey by the invasion of the Swedes, her ally, the Emperor Joseph, was chiefly concerned with the state of affairs in the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium. It seemed at first as if he was to be as successful as Gustavus in changing the old constitution of the country. But there was this difference. Whereas Gustavus III. was enacting the part of a national deliverer, and had the Swedish people on his side in his overthrow of the nobility, Joseph II. was opposed not only by the Belgian nobles, but by the clergy and the people also. The country seemed quiet enough under the government of Count Trautmannsdorf and the military rule of the Captain-General d’Alton. The suppression of the risings at Brussels and Louvain, Malines and Antwerp seemed to have established the Austrian sway most firmly, and the leading opponents of the Emperor’s policy were in exile. The Estates of the different provinces were convoked as usual, and all of them, except those of Hainault and Brabant, voted the customary subsidies. The Estates of Hainault were at once dissolved by a military force, and their constitution abolished on 31st January 1789. By this example the Emperor hoped to overawe the wealthy and populous province of Brabant, and when it did not have the expected effect, he directed Trautmannsdorf to summon a special meeting of the Estates of Brabant, and to require them to increase the number of deputies of the Third Estate or Commons, and to grant a permanent subsidy. He also maintained his attitude towards the Church, and tried to compel Cardinal Frankenberg, the Archbishop of Malines, to withdraw his opposition to the new Imperial Seminary at Brussels, or to resign his see. The Archbishop stoutly refused to comply, and the Estates of Brabant proved equally stubborn. Joseph then decided on a sudden blow, and by his orders Count Trautmannsdorf, on 18th June 1789, declared the ‘Joyeuse EntrÉe,’ or Constitution of Brabant abolished. The day was the anniversary of the battle of Kolin, in which, at the crisis of the Seven Years’ War, the Austrians had defeated Frederick the Great. D’Alton thought he made a happy comparison in saying: ‘The 18th of June is a happy epoch for the House of Austria; for on that day the glorious victory of Kolin saved the monarchy, and the Emperor became master of the Netherlands.’ But the victory was not to be won so easily. The two parties of opposition, the Van der Nootists, or partisans of Van der Noot, the supporter of the ancient constitutional rights, and the Vonckists, or followers of Vonck, the advocate of popular or democratic ideas, united. The Triple Alliance was as glad to hamper Joseph’s activity in the East by encouraging these Belgian patriots, as it had been to leave Gustavus free to harass Catherine, by stopping the interference of Denmark in the north, and the ministers of England, Holland, and Prussia all entered into relations with Van der Noot. That partisan, encouraged by hopes of active assistance, formed a patriotic committee at Breda, on the Dutch frontier, and raised an army of exiles, which was placed under the command of Colonel Van der Mersch. Joseph was not to be intimidated. D’Alton put down popular riots, which broke out in various towns, notably at Tirlemont, Louvain, Namur, and Brussels, with unrelenting severity. A sweeping decree was issued on 19th October against the exiles or ÉmigrÉs, declaring that ordinary emigration would be punished by banishment and confiscation of property, and that joining an armed force on the frontier for the purpose of invasion would be punished by death, and that informers against ÉmigrÉs would receive a reward of 10,000 livres and absolute impunity.[4] But all the Emperor’s measures and decrees were of no effect. The meeting of the States-General in France had been followed by the capture of the Bastille and the bringing of the King of France from Versailles to Paris by a Parisian mob; and the effects of the French Revolution on affairs in Belgium was soon to be perceived.

In the bishopric of LiÈge, which, from its situation, always reflected and repeated any political troubles that took place in Belgium, the influence of the French Revolution was immediately felt. The inhabitants of the bishopric had long resented the rule of the prince-bishops, and felt the anomaly of being subject to an ecclesiastical sovereign. Many exiles from the democratic party in Belgium assembled in the bishopric, and on the news of the capture of the Bastille, the people of LiÉge needed little persuasion to renew their former insurrection. The revolution was carried out without the shedding of blood. On 16th and 17th August 1789 the people of the city of LiÉge rose in rebellion; on the 18th MM. Chestret and Fabry were chosen burgomasters by popular acclamation, the garrison was disarmed, and the citadel occupied by bourgeois national guards. On the same day the Prince-Bishop, Count CÆsar Constantine Francis de Hoensbroeck, was brought into the city, and he signed a proclamation acknowledging the revolution and abrogating the despotic settlement of 1684. The other towns in the bishopric followed the example of the capital, and in each of them free municipalities were elected and national guards raised and armed. The Prince-Bishop, after accepting the loss of his political power, fled to TrÈves, and considered himself fortunate to be allowed to escape.

It is now time to examine the course of the events in France, which led to such important developments upon its north-east frontier, and which distracted the attention of all the monarchs and ministers of Europe, except Catherine of Russia, from the wars in the North and East. It was owing to the increasing difficulty of raising money for carrying on the administration of the State and paying the interest on the national debt, and the consequent necessity for revising the system of taxation and reorganising the financial resources of France that Louis XVI., on the advice of his minister, LomÉnie de Brienne, had vaguely promised in November 1787 to summon the States-General for July 1792, and had definitely convoked the ancient assembly of France on 8th August 1788 to meet at Versailles on 1st May 1789. But the arrangements for the elections were not made by LomÉnie de Brienne, who retired from office in the same month as the States-General was convoked, but by his successor Necker, who was recalled to office as an expert financier, in view of the fact that the summons of the States-General was looked on as a purely financial expedient. The procedure to be adopted in electing deputies gave rise to much anxious deliberation and heated controversy in the public press, and the Notables of 1787 were again assembled to give their advice. The burning question was as to the representation of the Tiers État, Third Estate or Commons. The ancient representative assembly of France was known to consist of the three orders of the Nobility, the Clergy, and the Tiers État, and the disputed question was as to the proportion of the number of deputies of the Tiers État to that of the two other orders. This and the other electoral questions were finally settled by the RÉsultat du Conseil published on 27th December 1788. It was decreed that the royal bailliages and royal sÉnÉchaussÉes, feudal circumscriptions which had long fallen into disuse, should be treated as electoral units, and that they should elect, according to the extent of their population, one or more deputations, each consisting of four members, one chosen by the Nobility, one by the Clergy, and two by the Tiers État. The elections were to be made in two and sometimes in three degrees, and at each stage cahiers or statements of grievances and projects for reform were to be drawn up by the electoral assemblies.[5] In provinces, where there were no royal bailliages or sÉnÉchaussÉes, and consequently no Grand Baillis or Grand SÉnÉchals to preside, corresponding circumscriptions were adopted or invented. During the early months of 1789 the French people were fully occupied in the election of the deputies to the States-General. Whatever might be the opinion of the French Court or the French Ministry, the people,—and more especially the educated bourgeois of the towns and the country lawyers,—looked upon the future assembly as something more than a financial expedient; they trusted to it to draw up a new political system for the State, which should admit the representative principle and allow the taxpayer a voice not only in the granting, but in the spending of the national revenue. The working classes, whether in the towns or the rural districts, did not take much active interest in the elections, and their representatives in the secondary electoral assemblies were generally educated bourgeois, but they vaguely built high hopes on the meeting of the States-General, and expected it to give them land or higher wages. Considering the novelty of choosing representatives in France, it is extraordinary that the electoral operations were carried out as peacefully and as efficiently as they were. This was mainly due to the success of a little revolutionary movement in DauphinÉ, where an unauthorised and irregular assembly had met in July 1788 to protest against the abolition of the provincial Parlements by LomÉnie de Brienne. That minister had left office when he was not permitted to put down the assembly in DauphinÉ by force, and Necker hoped to save the prestige of the monarchy by summoning a new assembly of the province in its place. But the ruse was quickly perceived; the men who had sat in the illegal assembly were elected to its successor, and in the eyes of France the representatives of the DauphinÉ had won a signal victory over the Court. The new assembly in DauphinÉ became the court of appeal in every electoral difficulty, and its secretary, Mounier, the leader of the Tiers État of France. Owing to his energy and ability local jealousies of town against town, province against province, class jealousies and personal rivalry, were set at rest, and it was more owing to Mounier than to any one else that the deputies to the States-General were legally and quietly elected, and that the acts of the future assembly could not be stigmatised as the work of a factious or unrepresentative minority of the French nation.

On 5th May 1789 the first States-General held in France since the year 1614 met at Versailles. Barentin, the Keeper of the Seals, and Necker harangued the collected deputies, and the latter explained the desperate financial situation of the State and the necessity for immediate action to relieve the national treasury. The representatives of the nobility and clergy then retired to separate chambers, leaving their colleagues of the Tiers État in the great hall. No word was spoken about the relation of the three orders to each other. It was assumed that each order was to deliberate separately. The representatives of the Tiers État were placed in a most difficult position. There was no advantage in their being as numerous as the two other orders put together, if the three orders were to be independent of each other, for in that case the majorities of the privileged orders could outweigh the opinion of the majority among themselves. The question of vote par ordre, which would give each order equal authority, or vote par tÊte, which would allow the numerical preponderance of the Tiers État to take effect, had been long recognised as crucial. It had been assumed from the grant of double representation to the Tiers État that the Government intended to sanction the vote par tÊte, and the tacit acknowledgment of the separation of the orders and consequent recognition of the vote par ordre on 5th May disconcerted for the moment the popular leaders.

But the deputies of the Tiers État, under the guidance of Le Chapelier, a Breton lawyer from Rennes, and of Rabaut de Saint-Étienne, a Protestant pastor from NÎmes, proceeded to take up a most skilful attitude. They resolved on a policy of masterly inactivity. They refused to form themselves into the assembly of the Order of the Tiers État; they refused to open letters addressed to them under that title; they refused to elect a president or secretaries; and stated that they were a body of citizens, representatives of the French nation, waiting in that hall to be joined by the other deputies. This attitude received the unanimous approval of the people of Paris, and threw upon the Government the onus of declaring that the double representation of the Tiers État was merely a sterile gift. The representatives of the two privileged orders treated the situation very differently. The nobility accepted the separation of the orders to distinct chambers, and resolved to constitute their chamber by 188 votes to 47, while the clergy only decided in the same sense by 133 votes to 114. Even this majority was not really significant. For, owing to a tendency which had developed during the course of the elections, the greater part of the deputies of the clergy were poor country curÉs, who sympathised with the Tiers État, from which they sprung, and not with the prelates and dignitaries of the Church, who belonged to the nobility. This tendency of the true majority of the clergy was well known to the leaders of the Tiers État and encouraged them in their passive attitude. In vain the King and Necker attempted to terminate the deadlock; the deputies of the Tiers État persisted that they did not form an order, and they were reinforced by the representatives of Paris, where the elections were not concluded until the end of May. At last, on 10th June, on the proposition of the AbbÉ SieyÈs, deputy for Paris, a final invitation was sent to the deputies of the nobility and the clergy to join the deputies of the Tiers État, and it was resolved that whether the request was granted or refused the Tiers État would constitute itself into a regular deliberative body. The invitation was rejected by the nobility, and only a few curÉs, including the AbbÉ GrÉgoire, belonging to the Order of the Clergy, complied with it. The deputies then verified their powers, and elected Bailly, a famous astronomer and deputy for Paris, to be their president. But what sort of assembly were they? They denied that they were representatives of an Order, and they were certainly not the States-General of France. The question was hotly debated, and on 16th June they declared themselves the National Assembly. They then declared all the taxes, hitherto levied, to be illegal, and ordered that they should only be paid provisionally. This defiant conduct disconcerted the King and his ministers, and it was announced that a SÉance Royale, or Royal Session, would be held by the King in person to settle all disputed questions.

On 20th June the deputies of the Tiers État, or of the National Assembly, as they now termed themselves, were excluded from their usual meeting-place. They therefore met in the Jeu de Paume or Tennis Court at Versailles, and, amidst a scene of wild excitement, swore that they would not separate until they had drawn up a new Constitution for France. By this act they practically became rebels, and the French Revolution really commenced. On 22d June they met in the Church of Saint Louis at Versailles, where they were joined by 149 deputies of the clergy, who thus recognised the act of rebellion. On 23d June the SÉance Royale was held. In the speech from the throne it was announced that the King, ‘of his own goodness and generosity,’ would levy no taxes in future without the assent of the representatives of the people, but it was also declared that the financial privileges of the nobility and clergy were unassailable, and that the States-General was to vote par ordre. This was the most critical moment in the first stage of the Revolution. If the deputies of the Tiers État had given way, the oath of the Tennis Court would have seemed only an idle threat. But they found a leader in the Comte de Mirabeau, deputy for the Tiers État of Aix, a man of extraordinary ability, who in the course of a tempestuous career had travelled much and learned much. He courageously faced the situation, and after making a reply to the Grand Master of the Ceremonies that the deputies of France would only be expelled by force, he induced the National Assembly to declare the persons of its members inviolable. SieyÈs summed up the situation by telling the deputies: ‘Gentlemen, you are to-day what you were yesterday.’ Before this daring opposition the King gave way: on 25th June the minority of the Order of the Nobility, consisting of forty-seven deputies, headed by the Marquis de Lafayette, the friend of Washington, joined the National Assembly, and two days later the majority of that Order reluctantly followed their example at the command of the King.

The rapid transformation of the deputies of the Tiers État into a National Assembly, which defied the royal authority and spoke of drawing up a new Constitution for France, exasperated the courtiers, who looked with disgust at all attempts to modify the ancien rÉgime. The King did not share their feelings; he was honestly desirous of doing his duty by his people, and preferred the diminution of his royal prerogative to coming into open conflict with his subjects and to initiating a civil war. He had hitherto trusted to Necker and followed Necker’s advice. But the result had not been encouraging. His minister had repeatedly put him in a false position. He had been made to speak in a haughty tone to the deputies of the Tiers État at the SÉance Royale on 23d June, and then to eat his words by directing the deputies of the Nobility to join the self-created National Assembly. This great concession seemed to have been wrung from him; the deputies of the Tiers État appeared to have won a great victory in the face of the royal opposition, when in reality the King had yielded from the goodness of his heart. Since he found that following the advice of Necker had only resulted in a loss of authority, combined with profound unpopularity, without improving the financial prospect, Louis XVI. not unnaturally turned his attention to the enemies of the minister. These enemies were headed by the Queen, Marie Antoinette, who resented Necker’s endeavours to restrain the extravagance of the Court and his admission of the need to make concessions to the will of the people, and by the King’s younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, a staunch supporter of the absolute prerogative of the Crown and of the system of the ancien rÉgime. Yielding unwillingly to the arguments of the enemies of Necker and of the National Assembly, the King determined to use force, and he began to concentrate troops in the neighbourhood of Paris and Versailles. The National Assembly did not know what to do; Mounier and other leaders had formed a committee to draw up the bases of a new constitution; but they had no force on which they could depend to resist the royal troops, and felt that they would probably be arrested and the Assembly dissolved long before the foundation of the Constitution was laid. At this crisis Mirabeau again came to the front. With the most daring audacity he attacked and revealed the policy of the Court on 8th July, and on 9th July carried an address to the King on the part of the Assembly, requesting the immediate removal of the troops collected in the neighbourhood, but protesting the loyalty of the Assembly to the person of the King. But the King was now under the influence of the opponents of the Assembly. His answer to Mirabeau’s address was the dismissal of Necker and his colleagues on 12th July, the banishment of Necker, and the appointment of the MarÉchal de Broglie, an experienced general, who detested the idea of change, to be Minister for War and Marshal-General of the troops in the neighbourhood of Paris.

Hitherto the struggle had been between the Court and the deputies of the Tiers État; the popular element was now to intervene; and the people of Paris was for the first time to make its influence felt. The news of Necker’s dismissal was received in Paris with wrath and dismay. A young lawyer without practice, named Camille Desmoulins, announced the event to the crowd collected in the Palais Royal and incited his hearers to resistance. His words were eagerly applauded. The population of Paris, both bourgeois and proletariat, had watched the course of events at Versailles with unflagging interest, and the formation of a camp of soldiers in the neighbourhood with terror. The working classes, who lived near the margin of starvation, expected that the National Assembly would cause in some way a rise in wages and a decrease in the price of necessaries, and were exasperated at the prospect of the non-fulfilment of their hopes. They had already sacked the house of a manufacturer, named RÉveillon, who was reported to have spoken scornful words of their poverty, on 28th April, and were ready for any mischief. From the Palais Royal, excited by the news and the words of Camille Desmoulins, started a tumultuous procession bearing busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orleans, a prince of the royal house, who had been exiled by the King for previous opposition to him, and who was regarded as a supporter of the popular claims. The procession was charged by a German cavalry regiment in the French service, commanded by the Prince de Lambesc, a near relative of the Queen, and the mob dispersed to riot and to pillage. The more patriotic rioters broke into the gunsmiths’ shops to seize weapons, the rest pillaged the butchers’ and bakers’ shops, and burned the barriers where octroi duties were collected. This scene of riot brought about its own remedy. The bourgeois, terrified for the safety of their shops, took up arms, and on the following day formed themselves into companies of national guards for the preservation of the peace. The guidance of this movement was taken by the electors of Paris, who, after completing their work of electing deputies for Paris, continued to meet at the HÔtel-de-Ville.

The 14th of July found the capital of France organised for resistance. The Gardes FranÇaises, the force maintained for the security of Paris, were devoted to the cause of the National Assembly, and were resolved to fight with the people, not against them. And it was ascertained that the soldiers in the camp were very lukewarm in their attachment to their officers, and were likely to refuse to attack the citizens. Under these circumstances an idea arose that an armed demonstration of the Parisians at Versailles would strengthen the King, whose sentiments were well known, to resist the Court party and to recall Necker. With this notion, large crowds approached the HÔtel des Invalides and the Bastille, the two principal store-houses of arms in Paris. The crowd, which went to the HÔtel des Invalides, had no difficulty in seizing the arms there, in spite of the opposition of the Governor. But it was otherwise at the Bastille. The mob, which collected in the Governor’s Court in that fortress and shouted for arms, was isolated by the raising of the outer drawbridge and fired upon by the weak garrison in the Bastille itself. The sound of this firing brought a number of armed men from other parts of the city; the outer drawbridge was cut down, and preparations were being made to force a way into the fortress itself, when the garrison surrendered. The result of the firing upon the mob in the Governor’s Court had been to kill eighty-three persons and wound many others. The sight of the corpses and the cries of the wounded excited the anger of the successful conquerors of the fortress. A panic arose, and three officers and four soldiers of the garrison were murdered. Then the more disciplined of the conquerors started to take the rest of the defenders of the Bastille to the HÔtel-de-Ville. On the way the Governor and the Major of the fortress were murdered by the mob, and M. de Flesselles, the Provost of the merchants of Paris, who was accused of encouraging the Governor to resist, was also slain. By these events the people of Paris felt that they had commenced a war against the Crown; entrenchments were thrown up and barricades were erected in the streets; all shops were shut up; the barriers were closed; no one was allowed to leave the city, and preparations were made to stand a siege.

But if the people of Paris were ready to fight, the King was not. As has been said, he loathed the idea of civil war, and when he heard of the capture of the Bastille and of the martial attitude of Paris, he at once gave up the idea of opposing the revolutionary movement by force. He dismissed his reactionary ministers and recalled Necker, and he declared himself ready to co-operate with the National Assembly in restoring order. The first victories of the Assembly had been won by its statesmanlike inaction in the month of May and its courage on 23d June; the victory over the party of force had been won by Paris on 14th July. The Assembly prepared to take advantage of this fresh success. On 16th July it legalised the establishment of National Guards and elective municipalities all over France, and recognising that the only way to convince the Parisians that the King had accepted the new situation and had abandoned the idea of employing force, was to induce the King to visit Paris in person, it proposed that he should do so at once. Louis XVI. was not devoid of personal courage, and consented. On 17th July, accordingly, he entered Paris accompanied by 100 deputies, and amidst wild acclamation put on the tricolour cockade, which the Parisians had assumed as their badge, and consented to the nomination of Bailly, the President of the National Assembly, to be Mayor of Paris, and of Lafayette to be Commander-in-chief of the Paris National Guard. These concessions, and the victory of the National Assembly and of Paris threw consternation among the court party of reaction: the Comte d’Artois and those of his adherents, who were most hated as conspicuous reactionaries or who had advocated the employment of force, fled from the country.

The immediate results of the capture of the Bastille were no less important in the provinces of France. In every city, even in small country towns, mayors and municipalities were elected and National Guards formed; in many the local citadels were seized by the people; in all the troops fraternised with the people; and in some there was bloodshed. This movement was essentially bourgeois; where blood was shed and pillage took place at the hands of the working classes, the new National Guards soon restored order. The general excitement was so great that it is surprising that there was not more bloodshed and that peace was so quickly and efficiently established. Among these outbreaks the most noteworthy took place in Paris itself, where on 21st July Foullon de DouÉ, who had been nominated to succeed Necker on 12th July, and his son-in-law Berthier de Sauvigny were murdered almost before the eyes of Bailly, the new Mayor of Paris. But these occasional town riots were speedily quelled by the armed bourgeois. Far more widespread and important was the upheaval in the rural districts of France.

The peasants believed that the time had come, when they were to own their land free from copyhold rights or the relics of feudal servitudes. Even the better-educated farmers for their own interests favoured this idea. The result was a regular jacquerie in many parts of France. The chÂteaux of the lords were burnt, or in some instances only the charters stored in them, and the lords’ dovecotes and rabbit-warrens were generally destroyed. In certain provinces the National Guards of the neighbouring towns put down these rural outbreaks, occasionally with great severity, but as a rule they ran their course unchecked.

On 4th August a deputy named Salomon read a report on these occurrences to the National Assembly, or as it is generally called from the Constitution it framed, the Constituent Assembly. His report was followed by a curious scene, which marked the transition from feudal to modern France. The scene was opened by the sacrifice by some of the young liberal noblemen of their feudal rights. Privileges of all sorts, privileges of class, of town and of province were solemnly abandoned. Feudal customs and all relics of feudalism were condemned and declared to be abolished. Even tithes were swept away, in spite of a protest from SieyÈs, and the ‘orgie,’ as Mirabeau termed it, closed with a decree that a monument should be erected to Louis XVI., ‘the restorer of French liberty.’

But it was not possible to restore peace and prosperity to France by the abolition of the relics of feudalism. Destruction of former anomalies and of a crumbling system of government would inevitably lead to anarchy, unless accompanied by the construction of a new scheme of central and local administration. It was here that the Constituent Assembly failed. The deputies were quick to destroy but slow to construct. For two months they wasted time instead of hastening to draw up a new constitution for France. They first wrangled over the wording of a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which they resolved to compile in imitation of the founders of the American Republic. They then debated lengthily whether the future representative assembly of France should consist of one or two chambers, and whether the King should have power to veto its acts. The first question was decided in favour of a single chamber, more because the English Constitution sanctioned two chambers, and the deputies feared to be thought imitators, than for any logical reason. And the debate on the second question terminated in the grant to the King of a suspensive veto for six months, in spite of the eloquence of Mirabeau, who saw that a monarchical constitution, which gave the King no more power than the President of the United States of America, would prove unworkable, because it would divorce responsibility from real authority, leaving the former to the King and the latter to the Legislature.

During the two months occupied by these debates the situation had again become critical. Necker’s only idea to relieve the financial situation was to propose loans, which the Assembly granted, but which he could not succeed in raising. The King was again being acted upon by the Court party, which advocated the use of force and the dissolution of the Assembly, and this party was encouraged by the Queen and by the King’s sister, Madame Elizabeth. He was also urged to leave the neighbourhood of Paris and to establish himself in some provincial town, where the populace could be more easily restrained by the regular troops. He would not heartily agree to either of these courses, but weakly consented once more to concentrate troops round his person. Everything advised at Versailles was soon known in Paris. The journalists, who had since the capture of the Bastille sprung up in the capital to advocate the views of the popular party, and of whom the ablest were Loustalot, editor of the RÉvolutions de Paris, and Marat, editor of the Ami du Peuple, kept warning the people of Paris against treason on the part of the King, and prophesying dire consequences if he were allowed to leave the neighbourhood or to concentrate troops. Their words did not fall on unheeding ears. The working classes feared a siege of Paris again as they had done in July, and looked on the King’s presence in Paris as the only means to keep down the price of necessaries. The thinking bourgeois, whether liberal deputies in the Assembly or national guards in Paris, feared a sudden forced dissolution of the Assembly, and not only the loss of the advantages they had gained but punishment for the part they had played. Both these elements were perceptible in the movement which followed. The description given in the popular journals of a banquet at Versailles, honoured by the presence of the royal family, at which the national cockade had been trampled underfoot, on 1st October, roused the people of Paris to a frenzy of wrath and fear. On 5th October a crowd of women collected in Paris, declaring that they were starving, and were led to Versailles by Maillard, one of the conquerors of the Bastille, followed by a mob. The representatives of the women interviewed the King, and the mob prepared to spend the night outside the palace walls. Late at night they were followed by a powerful detachment of the National Guard of Paris, under the command of Lafayette, who protested that he came to save the King. Nevertheless, owing to bad management, some of the mob broke into the palace before daybreak on the morning of 6th October and murdered two of the royal bodyguards. Lafayette came to the rescue and demanded that the King and royal family should come to Paris and take up their residence at the Tuileries. The King, horrified by the events of the morning, and obliged to obey Lafayette, consented, and the royal family, accompanied by the mob, and escorted by the National Guard, at once proceeded to the capital. This second victory of the Parisians was not less important than the first: on 14th July the people of Paris had terrified the King into abandoning the idea of dissolving the National Assembly by force; on 6th October they brought him amongst them, so that if he again conceived the idea, he would be unable to execute it.

The capture of the Bastille caused the most profound astonishment in Europe. Where the people possessed some amount of political liberty, as in the United States of America and in England, it appealed to the imagination, and the French were regarded as the conquerors of their freedom. In the neighbourhood of France, in the Rhenish principalities, in Belgium, and above all in LiÈge, it caused a general sense of discontent and even riots. The despotic monarchs of Europe and their principal ministers did not pay so much attention to the capture of the Bastille as did the inhabitants of free countries; they did not for one moment believe that the National Assembly would be allowed to alter the old constitution of France, and looked upon the whole of the popular movement with a favourable eye as likely to weaken France and prevent her from interfering in the affairs of the Continent. They took care, however, to suppress all similar risings in their own states. The King of Sardinia and the Elector of Mayence were especially severe; the Emperor’s General d’Alton was more than severe in Belgium; and the King of Prussia sent General Schlieffen with a strong force to restore the authority of the Bishop of LiÈge. This attitude of the continental monarchs was encouraged by the first French ÉmigrÉs, who loudly declared that the success of the Assembly was due to the culpable weakness of Louis XVI.

The tidings of the events of 5th and 6th October showed both the French ÉmigrÉs and the continental monarchs that they were wrong in their estimate of the Revolution. That the French royal family should be triumphantly brought to Paris and be practically imprisoned in the Tuileries under the eyes of the Parisian populace was a startling proof of the power of the people. It proportionately encouraged the supporters of all the popular movements on the French borders. Of these, the most important was that which had already made so much progress two years before in Belgium. The first result of the removal of the King of France to Paris was the Belgian Revolution of 1789, which filled almost as large a place in the eyes of contemporaries as the French Revolution itself. Encouraged by the Triple Alliance, and more especially by Frederick William II. of Prussia, the Belgian exiles of both wings, the supporters of Van der Noot, the advocate of the ancient Constitution, and of Vonck, the radical, had formed a patriotic army at Breda. The news of the events of 5th and 6th October determined them to act. On 23d October the army under Van der Mersch crossed the border, and on 24th October Van der Noot issued a manifesto declaring the Emperor Joseph deprived of his sovereignty over the Duchy of Brabant for having violated its fundamental charter.

The march of the patriotic army was both rapid and successful. Bruges and Ostend opened their gates to the exiles; the fort of St. Pierre at Ghent was stormed; and the Estates of Flanders at once assembled, published a declaration of independence, and called on the other provinces to join in the movement. In Brabant the excitement was at its height. Trautmannsdorf in vain promised to restore the ‘Joyeuse EntrÉe,’ to abolish the Imperial Seminary at Brussels, and to declare a general amnesty. The patriots would not trust him, and Van der Mersch advanced into the Duchy and occupied Tirlemont. The people of Brussels then rose in insurrection. From 7th to 12th December was a period of long-continued riot and street fighting. Many of the Austrian soldiers deserted to the popular side, and those who remained true to their colours were shot at from windows and refused to charge. The advance of Van der Mersch set the seal upon d’Alton’s discomfiture. He made a capitulation on 12th December, and marched out of Brussels, leaving his guns, military stores, and military chest containing 3,000,000 florins behind. He retreated to Luxembourg, the only province which remained faithful to the House of Austria, and his example was followed by the imperial garrisons of Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, which were abandoned to the patriots. D’Alton himself died at TrÈves, it is said by taking poison, on being summoned to Vienna to be tried by a court-martial, and was succeeded in command of the Austrian troops in Luxembourg by General Bender. On 18th December the patriot committee entered Brussels, headed by Van der Noot, who was hailed by the people as the Belgian Franklin. On 7th January 1790 representatives from all the provinces of the former Austrian Netherlands met at Brussels under the presidency of Cardinal Frankenberg, Archbishop of Malines, and on 10th January they passed a federal constitution for the ‘United Belgian States,’ resembling that of Holland, under which each province was to preserve its internal independence, and only foreign affairs and national defence were left to the central government. Van der Noot was chosen Minister of State, and he at once asked for the official recognition of the new Belgian Constitution by the Triple Alliance, whose ministers at the Hague, Lord Auckland, Count Keller, and Van der Spiegel had, he asserted, promised to guarantee the independence of the new United States of Belgium. Frederick William II. of Prussia endeavoured to carry out this promise. He authorised one of his officers, General SchÖnfeld, to organise the Belgian army, and ordered General Schlieffen at LiÉge to enter into communication with the new government. But England and Holland, though approving the insurrection of Belgium as affording a powerful counterpoise to the Emperor’s policy in the East, were in no hurry to guarantee the new Republic, and Van der Noot then determined, under the influence of the radicals or Vonckists, to solicit the help of France, and announced the new Belgian Constitution in a significant manner both to Louis XVI. and to the President of the National Assembly.

The news of the declaration of the independence of the Belgian provinces, and of the revolution which had led to it, proved to be the death-blow of the Emperor Joseph. To the Prince de Ligne, a native of Belgium, he said, just before his death, ‘Your country has killed me; the taking of Ghent is my agony; the evacuation of Brussels is my death. What a disgrace this is for me! I die; I must be made of wood, if I did not. Go to the Netherlands; make them return to their allegiance. If you do not succeed in the attempt, remain there. Do not sacrifice your fortune for me; you have children.’ The dying Emperor in his despair made concessions in every direction. He humbled his pride to entreat the Pope to use his influence with the Belgian clergy. He gave in to the Hungarian magnates, who demanded the repeal of his great reforms with threats of insurrection; and on 28th January 1790 he issued his ‘Revocatio Ordinationum quÆ sensu communi legibus adversari videbantur,’ by which he revoked all his reforms in Hungary, except the edict of toleration and the decrees against serfdom; and on 18th February he ordered the Crown of St. Stephen to be sent back to Pesth. He assented to the suspension of his reforming edicts in Bohemia, and even in the Tyrol, where an insurrection was on the point of breaking out. Then, feeling his life a failure, he prepared for death. He confessed and received the ordinances of the Church; the last words he was heard to say were: ‘I believe I have done my duty as a man and a prince,’ and on the morning of 20th February he died. The words he wished to be written on his grave were: ‘Here rests a prince, whose intentions were pure; but who had the misfortune to see all his plans miscarry;’ but the people of Vienna, with a deeper sense of the merits of the great ruler who had lived in their midst, placed on his statue the inscription, ‘Josepho secundo, arduis nato, magnis perfuncto, majoribus prÆcepto, qui saluti publicÆ vixit non diu, sed totus.’ The failure of the career of Joseph, the noblest sovereign of the eighteenth century,—one of the noblest sovereigns of any century,—was a proof of the fallacy of the eighteenth century conception of benevolent despotism. He had tried to accomplish in his dominions the very measures of reform which the Constituent Assembly had undertaken in France. The abolition of the relics of feudalism, the creation of a spirit of nationality, based upon the existence of uniform laws, the nationalisation of the Church and of education, the removal of all caste privileges, whether in the payment of taxes or in eligibility for public employment, and the maintenance of good internal administration, the primary aims and the great achievements of the Revolution in France, were also the objects of Joseph’s reforms. But everything was to be done for the people, nothing by the people, and it is doubtful whether, if Joseph had been in the place of Louis XVI., the French people would have relished the advantages he might have conferred. The spirit of locality was perhaps not so strong in France as in the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria. DauphinÉ and Burgundy did not differ from Brittany and Normandy as much as Bohemia and Hungary, Belgium and the Milanese differed from each other. Yet the abolition of local distinctions might have been resented in France, as it was in the dominions of Joseph, if it had been accomplished by the monarch, instead of being the work of elected representatives. It is indeed remarkable that, allowing for the want of exactness in the parallel, owing to the difference of local conditions, the very reforms, which rallied all France to the side of the Revolution, should have led to the disastrous termination of the Emperor Joseph’s reign, and it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the whole subject illustrates the grand distinction between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the distinction between alterations in the political, social, or economical conditions of a state made by a monarch for his people, and by a people for itself.

Louis XVI., indeed, showed himself a very different type of monarch from Joseph. He wished for the good of his people as ardently as his brother-in-law, but he had during the early years of his reign been satisfied with wishing for reforms, instead of energetically initiating them. When the success of the Revolution was assured by the policy of the deputies of the Tiers État, by the capture of the Bastille and by his own establishment at Paris, he never thought of setting himself at the head of the party of reform. He did not openly ally himself with the Tiers État, to vanquish the opposition of the nobles, as Gustavus III. of Sweden had done; he did not dream of outbidding the National Assembly for popularity by lavish promises, as other monarchs before and since have done; and he did not even try to share the credit of the representatives of the people by exhibiting an ardent zeal for reform. The horror he felt for civil war was not recognised; his partial yielding to the Court party of reaction in July and October, though at so late a date and so half-heartedly as to nullify any chance of its success, was imputed to him as a crime; and the difficulty presented by the fact that his dearest relatives, his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and his sister, Madame Elizabeth, were against all reform, was never fully appreciated. In consequence, the King’s real wishes to please his people and avoid bloodshed were looked on as simulated by the members of the National Assembly, and not only Louis himself, but the very principle of the French monarchy, were regarded as hostile to representative institutions. Louis XVI. was as weak as Joseph II. was energetic, but he was equally well-intentioned; and it was a distinct misfortune, both for himself and for France, that the value of the passive inertness, which he generally opposed to the reactionary schemes of his family and of the partisans of the ancien rÉgime, was not adequately recognised.

This attitude towards the King had an important effect upon the constitution which the Constituent Assembly was engaged in framing during the year 1790. Only the main points in the growth of this Constitution, which occupied the greater part of the time of the Assembly from 1789 to 1791, can here be touched upon. But one striking feature must first be observed, that it was drawn up and applied piecemeal, not as an organic whole, like the later French constitutions of the revolutionary period. The first important principle was decreed upon 12th November 1789, when it was resolved that all the old local divisions of France, which perpetuated the memory of the gradual growth of the French provinces into France, should be abolished, and that the country should be divided into eighty departments of nearly equal size. It was naturally some months before the new division was effected, and still longer before the further division of each department into districts, and each district into cantons was finished. No wiser step for converting France from a congeries of provinces into a nation could have been devised. On the basis of the new divisions a new local government was established. Each department and district was to be administered by elected authorities, elaborately chosen by a system of double election. Next to the local government, the judicial system was reorganised. The Parlements were all abolished, and local courts, consisting of elected judges of departmental and district tribunals, and elected justices of the peace, were substituted. A uniform system of law was projected, and juries were sanctioned in criminal but not in civil cases. In these sweeping reforms one natural blemish is perceptible: from having no elected officials the other extreme was adopted of having all officials elected.

The mania for election affected the reform of the ecclesiastical arrangements of France, and directly brought about the schism, which so largely contributed to the misfortunes of France during the revolutionary period. On 2d November 1789 it had been resolved, in the face of the financial distress, that the property of the Church in France should be confiscated or resumed, as it was represented by opposite parties, while acknowledging the duty of providing and paying curÉs and bishops. This implied the formation of a State Church, a measure which needed the most delicate handling. On 13th February 1790 all monasteries and religious houses were suppressed; but as there had already been a partial suppression a few years previously, this would not by itself have caused a schism. It was otherwise with regard to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. It was resolved to reduce the number of bishoprics to one for each department, and that all the beneficed clergy, from curÉs to bishops, should be elected. This violation of a fundamental principle of the Catholic Church could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and when the Constituent Assembly found that opposition was raised, it drove matters to a crisis by ordering that every beneficed ecclesiastic should take an oath to observe the new Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This oath was generally refused by the bishops and dignitaries, and largely by the parochial clergy, and it was resolved by the Assembly, on 27th November 1790, that all who refused the oath within one week should be held to be dismissed from their offices. The King sanctioned this decree on 26th December 1790, and the great schism in France began. It was doubtful at first whether apostolical succession could be preserved in the new Church of France. Only four beneficed bishops, including LomÉnie de Brienne, Cardinal Archbishop of Sens, and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, out of one hundred and thirty-five, and three coadjutor bishops, or bishops in partibus, including Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, consented to take the oath, but by them the first of the elected bishops of departmental sees were consecrated.

The measures of the Constituent Assembly in abolishing the old provincial divisions and law courts, and substituting new and more modern arrangements for administration, were in the nature of great reforms, though marred by the mania for election; the attempt to establish a Gallican Church, though obviously opposed to the discipline of the Catholic Church, and seriously discounted by the same mania, was patriotic, if not very wise; but the arrangements for the central administration were utterly absurd. In their dislike of the system of the ancien rÉgime, and their fear of a strong executive, the Constituent Assembly thought it could not do enough to hamper the authority of the throne and of the central administration. The King, under the new Constitution, was left powerless. He was to be the first functionary of the State, nothing more. His veto on the measures of the Legislature was to have effect for only six months; his guards were suppressed, and his position made untenable for a strong monarch, and unbearable for a weak one. The ministers were invested with supreme executive authority, but more regulations were made to ensure their responsibility and limit their actual power, than to define their functions. They were to be answerable to the Legislature, in which they were not allowed to sit; and their measures were to be criticised by an irresponsible representative assembly. Under such regulations the King and his ministers, that is, the executive, were put in a position of inferiority, which no vigorous man could be expected to accept, to the inevitable derangement of the whole administrative machine. In addition to the Constitution, the Constituent Assembly carried several measures of the greatest importance to a free state. All citizens, of whatever religion or class, were declared eligible for employment by the State; and on 13th April 1790 a noble decree, declaring the most absolute and entire toleration of every form of religion, was carried. The Constitution of 1791 was, on the whole, a praiseworthy effort of untried legislators to give their country a representative constitution. It was marred only by the fatal jealousy of giving due authority to the executive, and the mania for election. But it was in no way democratic. For the election to all offices was to be by at least two degrees, and no man was to have a vote unless he was an ‘active citizen.’ To be an active citizen, a man had to contribute to the direct taxation of the country an amount equivalent in value to three days’ wages in his locality. Further, to be eligible for office, a candidate had to pay taxes of the value of a ‘silver mark,’ which inevitably restricted all offices to the bourgeois, or very prosperous working men.

Though the main occupation of the Constituent Assembly was the building up of the Constitution of 1791, it interfered only too much in matters of current administration. It was soon obvious that its power exceeded that of the King, and it has been observed that Van der Noot announced the new Belgian Constitution alike to the King and the President of the Assembly, as to authorities of equal importance. The mischief produced by this constant interference was perceptible in every department of government. Mirabeau, who was a profound master of statecraft, saw through the fallacies of endeavouring to separate the legislative and executive powers in the State, and, what was implied in the preponderance of a legislature in which the ministers had no seat, to divorce authority from responsibility. He understood and approved of the English system, and as soon as the Constituent Assembly had removed to Paris in October 1789, after the establishment of the King at the Tuileries, and he had got the ear of the Court through his friend, La Marck, Mirabeau proposed the formation of a constitutional ministry, after the English fashion, from among the leading members of the Assembly. His scheme got noised abroad: the Assembly in its fear of the executive, which was afterwards consecrated in the Constitution of 1791, and stimulated by Lafayette, who dreaded the influence of a strong ministry, passed a motion on 7th November, that no member of the Assembly could take office as a minister while he remained a deputy, or for three years after his resignation.

The spirit, which lay at the root of this decree, showed itself in other ways. The fear of the influence of the Crown extended itself to the army and navy, as the natural instruments of the Crown for re-establishing its former authority. The army, already disorganised by the emigration of many of its officers, was practically destroyed in its efficiency as a fighting machine by the relaxation of discipline among the soldiers, caused not only by the actual decrees of the Assembly, but by the impunity allowed to desertion and mutiny. The Marquis de BouillÉ, the general commanding at Metz, did indeed put down a military mutiny at Nancy on 31st August 1790, but his action, though applauded by the Assembly, which could not openly encourage mutiny, was isolated and not imitated. In the navy matters were even more desperate, for a larger proportion of officers deserted, resigned, or emigrated than in the army, and loss of discipline is even more disastrous in a naval than in a military force. The weakness of the army was intended to be compensated by the enrolment of national guards. But these citizen soldiers could not be treated with the strictness of regular troops. They were chiefly of the bourgeois class, and had the prejudices of that class, caring more for the protection of their property than for military efficiency. In Paris they were of the most importance, owing to their numbers, and their commander-in-chief, Lafayette, probably the most powerful man in France in 1790. The framing of the Constitution, and the disorganisation of the central authority and its instruments were the chief results of the labours of the Constituent Assembly in 1790; but among its minor acts should be noted the abolition of titles of nobility, liveries and other relics of social pre-eminence on 13th July 1790, as an evidence of its desire to extirpate even the outward signs of the ancien rÉgime.

Only one man seems to have understood the dangers to which France was drifting owing to the policy of the Constituent Assembly, and that man was Mirabeau. He had done more than any man to assure the victory of the Tiers État in June 1789; he was the greatest orator and greatest statesman the revolutionary crisis had produced. Mirabeau, however, hated anarchy as much as he did despotism. He saw the absolute necessity of establishing a strong executive, if the crisis of 1789, the dissolution of the old authorities, the unpunished riots in towns, and the jacquerie in the rural districts were not to lead to anarchy. Foiled in his prudent scheme of selecting a strong ministry from the Constituent Assembly[6] by the vote of 7th November 1789, Mirabeau saw that it was impossible to overcome the distrust of the Assembly for the executive. He therefore turned to the Court, and in May 1790 he became the secret adviser of the King through the mediation of his friend La Marck. In a series of memoirs or notes for the Court of surpassing political wisdom, Mirabeau analysed the situation of affairs and proposed remedies. The two main dangers were the state of the finances and the fear of foreign intervention. Mirabeau’s horror of national bankruptcy was as great as his personal extravagance in expenditure. In September 1789 he advocated Necker’s scheme of a general contribution, though it was accompanied by stipulations which were certain to make it almost entirely unproductive, and he personally disapproved of it; in December 1789 he grudgingly acquiesced in the first issue of ‘assignats’ or promises to pay, based on the value of the property of the Church, resumed or confiscated by the Assembly, and to be extinguished as this property was sold. In August 1790 he went yet further. Comprehending that men are mainly influenced by their pecuniary interests, he advocated a wide extension of the system of assignats, down to small sums, on the grounds that they would then be able to reach the hands of the poorer classes and give them an interest in their maintaining their value, and would also frustrate the machinations of speculators, who began to make money by depreciating the exchange of specie against the new paper currency. But he also wisely proposed and successfully carried severe regulations for the extinction of assignats as the national property was realised, regulations which, unfortunately, were not strictly observed. His decree was followed in September 1790 by the retirement of Necker from office, and it is a significant proof of the change in popular opinion that the final retirement of the minister, whose dismissal in July 1789 had brought about the capture of the Bastille, was received without excitement.

The other great danger which France incurred, by the disorganising policy of the Constituent Assembly, was the possibility of the armed intervention of foreign powers. Mirabeau thought that if national bankruptcy and the interference of foreigners could be avoided, the anarchy, which was making itself felt, might soon be quelled. He did not fear civil war; indeed, he argued that it might be a positive advantage, and that as long as the King did not retract his concession of a representative constitution, a large portion of his subjects would support him in winning back the legitimate authority of the executive. But foreign war was to him an evil to be feared as much as national bankruptcy. He knew the spirit of his countrymen well, and that they would in case of national disaster submit to any despotism rather than submit to the dictation or the interference of a foreign power in their internal affairs. Success in a foreign war owing to the state of the army was not to be expected, but if it did come, it would with almost equal certainty lead to the despotism of the conquering government, whether it were the reigning monarch, his successor, or a victorious general. To avoid a foreign war it was necessary as far as possible to leave the conduct of foreign affairs in the hands of the King. This was Mirabeau’s intention in the great debate on the right of declaring peace and war in May 1790, and he succeeded in getting the Assembly to sanction the initiation of peace or war as part of the duties of the King. But at this period Louis XVI. was too weak or too unwilling to understand the paramount necessity of maintaining peace. Mirabeau, therefore, got himself elected to a special Diplomatic Committee of the Constituent Assembly, and as its reporter endeavoured throughout the year 1790 to keep France clear of international complications.

Unfortunately neither Louis XVI. nor his ministers, and still less Marie Antoinette, grasped the truth of Mirabeau’s memoirs for the Court. On the contrary, the one idea of the Queen was to get her brother, the Emperor Leopold, to interfere, and, if necessary, by force of arms to restore the power of the French monarch. The King, too, was startled at Mirabeau’s ideas; he felt no horror at the notion of a foreign war, but would suffer anything rather than engage in a civil war. The wise advice of the great statesman went unheeded; both King and Queen regarded their connection with him as the clever muzzling of a dangerous revolutionary leader. They could not comprehend his desire to establish a strong executive for the sake of France, and looked on it as a bit of personal ambition. The King was not sufficiently far-seeing, nor the Queen sufficiently patriotic to understand his views. If the Constituent Assembly distrusted the Court, the King and Queen no less strongly distrusted Mirabeau.

As reporter of the Diplomatic Committee, Mirabeau had three different problems to solve, in which the policy of the Assembly came in contact with foreign powers, the affairs of Avignon, the maintenance of the Pacte de Famille with Spain, and the interference caused by the legislation of the Assembly with the Princes of the Empire who owned fiefs of the Empire in Alsace.

The city of Avignon and the county of the Venaissin, though inhabited by Frenchmen and surrounded by French territory, were under the sovereignty of the Pope. As early as the ‘orgie’ of 4th August 1789 the Constituent Assembly had pronounced on the expediency of uniting both the city and the county with France. A French party was formed in Avignon; and a free municipal constitution after the model of those just established in France was framed and assented to by the Cardinal Vice-Legate in April 1790. The Pope, however, annulled his deputy’s assent, with the result that fierce street fighting took place in the city, which was only stopped by the intervention of the National Guard of the neighbouring French city of Orange. The result of these events was that the city of Avignon, or at least the French party there, declared Avignon united to France on 12th June 1790. The inhabitants of the Venaissin, on the other hand, declared their attachment for the Pope, and their wish to remain subject to him. When these circumstances became known in Paris a strong party showed itself in the Assembly in favour of accepting the union of Avignon with or without the Pope’s assent. Mirabeau skilfully averted the danger of a flagrant breach of international law by securing the appointment of an Avignon Committee, and when it became necessary to send regular troops to maintain order in the city, he secured their despatch thither without the assumption of any rights of sovereignty.

Far more serious was the question which arose in May 1790, and which gave rise to the debate in the Constituent Assembly on the right of declaring peace and war, for it brought into prominence a doubt whether the Assembly should recognise the treaties made by the French monarchy. Of these treaties, the most popular in France, and the first to be brought into evidence, was the Pacte de Famille, which had been concluded in 1761 by Choiseul between France and Spain. Charles IV. had succeeded his able and accomplished father, Charles III., on 12th December 1788. The new monarch was completely under the influence of his wife, Marie Louise, a princess of Parma, who in her turn was governed by a young guardsman, her lover, Godoy. Charles IV. made a friend of Godoy, a fact which of itself shows the essential weakness of his character. He, as well as his Queen, was, outwardly at least, deeply religious, and it was pretty certain that before long a reaction would take place at the Spanish Court against the liberal rÉgime, which, in the previous reign, under the administration of Aranda and Florida Blanca, Campomanes and Jovellanos, had done so much for Spain. But for the first three years of his reign, Charles IV. maintained his father’s experienced ministers, with the assent of the Queen, who did not dare at once to introduce her lover into the ministry, or invest him openly with power. Florida Blanca, the Spanish minister, with Spanish pride, refused to recognise the actual weakness of Spain, and was particularly active in maintaining her supremacy in America. When, therefore, Vancouver Island was demonstrated to be an island and not a peninsula, he claimed its possession for Spain, and also alleged pre-colonisation. But he went further. Spanish officers had seized an English ship in Nootka Sound, now St. George’s Sound, in Vancouver Island, had destroyed an English settlement there, and had even insulted an English naval captain. When Pitt demanded reparation, Florida Blanca replied haughtily, and claimed the possession of the island on the grounds stated. Pitt at once sent one of the ablest English diplomatists, Alleyne Fitzherbert, afterwards Lord St. Helens, to threaten to declare war, and prepared a great fleet, known in English naval history as the Spanish Armament.

Both Pitt and Florida Blanca knew that a war between England and Spain would only be seriously undertaken if France decided to intervene. Florida Blanca claimed the assistance of France under the terms of the Pacte de Famille, and Pitt, who understood that power had passed from Louis XVI. to the Constituent Assembly, sent two secret emissaries to Paris to see if the Assembly was inclined to maintain the policy of the ancien rÉgime. One of these emissaries was Hugh Elliot, brother of Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards Lord Minto, an old schoolfellow of Mirabeau, who was expected to influence the orator, and the other, William Augustus Miles, who was to ally himself with the leading democratic deputies. The question came before the Constituent Assembly on a letter from the Comte de Montmorin, Minister for Foreign Affairs. The enthusiasm in the Assembly for the maintenance of the Spanish Alliance was extreme, defiance was hurled at England, Spain’s faithful adherence to the Pacte de Famille in the Seven Years’ War and the War of American Independence was remembered, and a fleet for active service was ordered to be got ready at Brest, and sixteen new ships of war built. But the first burst of enthusiasm soon cooled. Some deputies feared war would strengthen the monarchy, others did not like to be bound by the treaties, especially the dynastic treaties of the ancien rÉgime, and others again, headed by Robespierre and PÉtion, inveighed against the idea of any offensive war. The whole question was referred to the Diplomatic Committee. Mirabeau, who knew perfectly well that Spain would not fight without the aid of France, read an able report, recommending that the Pacte de Famille should be changed to a simple defensive treaty, which was adopted. The Court of Spain, seeing that no help was to be got from France under these circumstances, resigned its pretensions to Vancouver Island, and consented to pay the compensation demanded by England. This diplomatic victory of England exasperated the Spaniards; Charles IV. was surprised and disgusted at the concessions made by Louis XVI., and declared them a breach of the Pacte de Famille; and by her conduct France lost the friendship of her closest ally of the eighteenth century.

The third question in which the new state of things in France touched the diplomatic system of old Europe and threatened to cause international complications, which might lead to a foreign war, was concerned with the fiefs of the Empire in Alsace. By the Treaty of Westphalia that province had been ceded to France in full and entire sovereignty, but reserving the rights of the Empire. The complications caused by this ambiguous arrangement had raised perpetual difficulties throughout the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and many separate treaties had been concluded with individual princes, by which they recognised the sovereignty of France in Alsace, in return for the acknowledgment of all their ancient rights. A further problem was added by the fact that the more important princely landowners in Alsace were also ruling and independent sovereigns across the French border. They were thus supreme, save for the loose over-lordship of the Emperor in Germany, and subject to the French monarchy for their domains in Alsace. Among the principal of these rulers were the three ecclesiastical electors, the Archbishops of Mayence, TrÈves, and Cologne, the Bishops of Strasbourg, Spires, Worms, and Basle, the Abbot of Murbach, the Dukes of WÜrtemburg and of Deux-Ponts or ZweibrÜcken, the Elector Palatine, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the Princes of Nassau, Leiningen, Salm-Salm, and Hohenlohe-Bartenstein. These princes were naturally profoundly affected by the abolition of feudalism decreed by the Constituent Assembly, which further complicated their position. They felt as German princes, and appealed against the measures of the Assembly as contrary to international law, and violating the Treaty of Westphalia and the many separate treaties. The protests of certain of these princes were laid before the Assembly on 11th February 1790, and referred by it to the Feudal Committee on 28th April. The reporter of the Committee on this matter was Merlin of Douai, one of the greatest French jurists and statesmen of the whole revolutionary period. On 28th October he read his report, in which he insisted on the new principle of the sovereignty of the people. He asserted that the unity of Alsace with France rested not on ancient treaties, but on the unanimous resolution of the Alsatian people to be Frenchmen. But at the same time he argued that in practice old rights ought to be maintained. Mirabeau, with his usual sagacity, saw that international complications might, on this ground, be adjourned, if not altogether avoided; and it was on his motion that the Constituent Assembly resolved to uphold the sovereignty of France in Alsace, and the application of all its decrees to that province, but at the same time requested the King to arrange the amount of indemnity to be paid to the Princes of the Empire as compensation for the rights of which they were thus deprived. These princes, however, with but very few exceptions, refused absolutely to accept any monetary compensation, and appealed to the Diet of the Empire. It was on this question, therefore, that foreign intervention most seriously threatened France at the end of 1790, in spite of the diplomatic knowledge and skill of two of her leading statesmen, Mirabeau and Merlin of Douai.

While Mirabeau was doing his best to keep France from the disturbance, and even disasters, which a foreign war would cause in the midst of her new development, the Queen cast all her hopes for the restoration of the power of the French monarchy on the armed help of foreign states. Louis XVI. in a half-hearted fashion was opposed to foreign interference, but his younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, and the French ÉmigrÉs, who had established themselves on the borders of France, declared that the King was not in his right senses, and that he was forced to yield to the measures of the Constituent Assembly against his will. They felt no patriotic misgivings, and loudly invoked the assistance of all monarchs in the cause of monarchy and the feudal system. The ruler on whom the Queen chiefly relied, and to whom she appealed most fervently, the monarch to whom the ÉmigrÉs looked with most confidence, was Leopold, the brother and successor of Joseph II. He held the key of the position; he was the sovereign especially feared by the leaders of the Constituent Assembly, and as Emperor and as brother of Marie Antoinette he was expected by the royalists to intervene in the affairs of France.