THE REVOLUTION AND THE TERROR
The position in Europe at this time, that is to say, about 1790, was
singular and interesting. That continent, always since the
establishment of the power of Rome the stage on which the principal
world drama was played, was in the enjoyment of a peace which was
unexpected. A time of extreme tension, during which war on a great
scale had seemed most probable, had just been safely passed--war
provoked by the ambition of Russia still further to extend her vast
territories, and especially to acquire the port of Constantinople.
But first it seemed good to her to proceed to a second partition of
Poland, and Poland lay at her mercy, unless some foreign power
intervened. Annexation perhaps would be a better word than
partition, for she had little thought of letting in another to share
with her.
[Sidenote: Alliance against Rome]
Another power, however, namely Prussia, with Frederick as its king,
claimed a share, and drew the Emperor and King of Austria into
alliance with him. Austria, also, demanded her slice of Polish land,
and in consequence of these conflicting claims, the whole scheme was
allowed to drop for the time being.
The next act in the drama was that Prussia and Austria fell to
quarrelling over the latter's proposal to annex Bavaria, and of that
quarrel Russia took {153} advantage to seek the alliance of Austria
with the design of parcelling out between the Russian and the
Austrian powers, the territory of the Turks in Europe and
establishing herself as mistress of Constantinople.
Again it was Prussia that stepped in to foil the scheme, and this
time Prussia had once again on her side her old ally, Great Britain.
The American war and the formation of that Northern League, as it was
called, of the neutral powers who opposed Great Britain's claim to
search their ships, and so on, had made a breach of that friendship,
for Prussia had been a member of the League. But now that trouble
was healed. The two old allies had come together again over the
business of restoring the Stadholder, the constitutional ruler, of
Holland, who had been driven out by a revolutionary movement.
Holland also, therefore, came as a third into the alliance, now
reformed, between Great Britain and Prussia for the special purpose,
as was said, of preserving the Turkish Empire. The real motive of
the compact was probably to hold Russia in check; but no doubt the
other way of putting it sounded more unselfish. A very great
struggle appeared imminent. But the danger passed, yet again, as
soon as Austria realised the strength of the opposition. She
withdrew from the war with Turkey, and Russia, left alone, did not
press it. The war cloud passed. Men might again draw their breath
freely after a time of breathless suspense in which the worst had
been expected. They were free to sit in the audience and look on at
the great events that quickly followed upon each other in France.
In course of telling this greatest of all stories I have thought it
worth to turn aside now and again from the direct narrative in order
to attempt a brief sketch of the peoples that have played a leading
part in it. The tough tenacity of the Jews, the subtle intellectual
curiosity of the Greeks, the determination and {154} directness of
purpose of the Romans have been such important moving forces in the
history of the world that they claim to be considered. No less
consideration is due at this point to the national character of the
French. It is largely because of that character that the Revolution
took place at all. It was a Revolution not only in the government of
France, but in the thoughts of men all over the world. And it was
largely because of the French national character that Napoleon's
empire, rising out of the ruin wrought by the Revolution, had force
to extend itself even more widely than that of Charlemagne.
We are able to realise something of the qualities of the national
character which had such remarkable results; but I think we are
obliged to confess ourselves unable to give a very perfect account of
the causes which made it such as it was. For the French nation,
after all, as its very name implies, is the nation of the Franks; and
the Franks were but one of the many Gothic tribes which came breaking
through the weakened defences of the later Roman Empire. Then,
having so broken through, they found themselves in contact with the
settlers already in possession of the land; and no doubt this contact
modified more than a little the national character which they brought
with them. Probably most of the settlers whom they would find, and
by whose influence they would be affected, would be of the Latin
race; and therefore the blend would be in the main a Franco-Latin
blend.
But this Franco-Latin is really nothing more, as we have just said,
than a Gothic-Latin--or Germano-Latin, if you like--and the other
Gothic or German tribes coming in would be subject to just the same
blend, so far as we can see, and therefore we should naturally expect
to find the same characteristics in them all.
But certainly we do not. Certainly the Batavians, {155} who settled
to the northward of the Franks, and the Burgundians who settled to
their westward, did not show the same blend. We have seen how the
subtlety of Louis XI. proved too much at last for the audacity of his
great Burgundian vassal, Charles the Bold, and after Burgundy had
become part of the French kingdom its national characteristics do
seem gradually to have blended nearly into identity with those of the
French.
The Visigoths passing on into Spain became subject to other
influences. They do not come into the comparison.
But the Batavians and the peoples of the Netherlands generally, where
the Batavians settled, were very different from the French.
Doubtless there was an increasing blend of Latin as the invaders went
south, but an adequate reason for their difference is hard to find.
[Sidenote: The French character]
At all events what we can say confidently is that the French
developed, and still express, a national character of their own which
is distinct from that of the others that broke through the bounds.
It is also different from that of those German peoples who did not
break through, who remained east of the Roman Empire's palisades.
One distinguishing characteristic of the French is that they are very
"quick at the uptake," as we say: their minds respond quickly to
suggestion, and they act quickly on the ideas thus quickly grasped.
Thinking and acting more quickly than, say, Britons or Germans, they
also set a much higher value on presenting to themselves a clear
reason for any action that they undertake. The Briton, and in less
degree the German, is tolerably well content to do the act which
appears likely to give the best result, without troubling himself
much as to what account he would give of the action if he were
required to explain just {156} why, in accordance with what law of
right reason, he so acted. The French mind is not at ease unless it
can refer an act back to some such reason as its motive. And one of
the tendencies of that disposition of mind is that, if the French
once perceive a reason of this kind clearly, they act according to it
and are very readily obedient to its prompting.
So it was that when the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote about
Egalité, Fraternité, and Liberté, with the idea that all men were
created equal (and therefore ought to be equal always), that all men
ought to live in brotherly love, and that all men should be free,
these ideas won an immediate influence over the minds of Frenchmen
that they would not have exercised over the minds of Britons or
Germans. No doubt they are pleasant ideas, and would be very
welcome, if they could be practically realised, to all reasonable men
of any country; but on the French their effect was such that the
nation at once had an eager desire to act on them. Frenchmen deemed
that they might bring about the millennium, or a heaven on earth, by
striving for their realisation.
Rousseau, then, and other writers inspired with his sentiments,
prepared the minds of men in France for revolution. Many, with an
ardour for freedom from the hard conditions which bound them, went as
volunteers to help the Americans fighting against England. Those who
returned came back with their ardour further kindled.
Now most of the historians write as if the immediate occasion of the
Revolution was the misery, the oppression, the poverty, and the
hunger of the lowest classes in the towns and in the country. Yet
other historians, perhaps more judicious, tell us that, evil as their
condition was, it was certainly no worse than that of the lowest
classes elsewhere on the Continent. Let us admit, at any rate, that
it was a cruelly evil {157} condition and left much to be desired.
What was different in France was the very rigid division between the
classes of society and the fact, noticed before, that the king had
all the real power in his own hands. The nobles and large landowners
had none, except over their own dependants.
Thus there was no link, no connexion, between the Government and the
great mass of the governed: the governed were dumb; they could not
make their voices heard.
[Sidenote: The "States General"]
The reckless extravagance of three successive French kings had
exhausted the treasury. Money was needed for the bare necessities of
Government, for the pay of soldiers and officials. His ministers
having failed to devise a means of raising the sums required, the
king, Louis XVI., called together the "States General," a measure to
which the Government had not resorted since the early years of the
seventeenth century.
This States General was an assembly of the whole nation of France
represented by deputies elected by the three great classes, the
nobles, the Church, and the commoners. Each class elected its own
deputies and sent them up to Paris to take counsel together and
assist the Government in its distress.
The deputies of the three estates came to Paris in 1789, and though
they did not succeed in finding money for the Government, they did
succeed in finding a voice for the people. And it was by this voice
that the Revolution was declared.
Trouble began over the manner in which votes were to be recorded.
The clergy and the nobles demanded that each estate should give a
single vote on any measure under discussion, and since clergy and
nobles were likely to cast similar votes, the result would then be
that the commoners would be outvoted. The commoners demanded that
the votes of all three {158} estates should be given in mass, a vote
by each deputy. And since the deputies of the commoners outnumbered
the other two combined, this would give them a majority. The clergy
and nobles thereupon began their deliberations and excluded the
deputies of the third estates from the assembly hall.
The deputies of the people, thus isolated, went in a body to the
neighbouring tennis court, and there began their deliberations apart
from the deputies of the other classes. They assumed the name of the
National Assembly and took an oath not to dissolve until they had
given France a constitution under which men might live in the desired
condition of equality, brotherhood, and liberty. They commenced
their sitting on June 20th, 1789.
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[Illustration: THE MODERN PALACE OF VERSAILLES, FRANCE.]
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On July 14th the mob of Paris rose, and broke the walls of the
Bastille, the great State prison, loosing the captives. The whole
city was in their hands. The troops within the city were of the same
mind as the mob.
Similar risings, with like effects, occurred nearly all over France.
In October the mob marched on Versailles and the king's palace; they
sacked the palace and compelled the king and Royal family to come to
live in Paris, where they were practically prisoners.
The Assembly effected something towards getting money to carry on
with, by printing paper money and paying the debts of the Government
with the notes. And continually the most violent of the extreme
party gained more and more power in it, most notably the Jacobins, so
called from a club whose members gathered in what had once been a
house of the Jacobin friars.
In the spring of 1791 the king and Royal family attempted to escape,
secretly, out of France, but were recognised before they reached the
frontier and {160} forcibly brought back. The aristocrats all over
the country had fled from the persecution, or had been caught in the
attempt, and forced to return. Large numbers were imprisoned, given
a form of trial and decapitated by the guillotine. A mob stormed the
Tuileries, where the Royal family were living, and the king barely
escaped with his life. He implored the help and mercy of the
Assembly, and for the time being the whole of the Royal family were
kept closely imprisoned.
Amidst all these horrors, in the autumn of 1792 a French army showed
the first sign of what the soldiers of revolutionary France could do
by the defeat of a force of Prussians and Austrians marching on Paris
to restore Louis to the throne. One of the immediate results was
that, early in the following year, the king was tried for treason and
conspiracy against the nation, was sentenced to death and beheaded.
He was soon followed to the guillotine by the queen, his wife. Their
son, styled Louis XVII., though he never reigned, died in prison.
That was an act which at once bound the enemies of France into some
sort of unity against her. Hitherto there had been much division of
opinion, in England especially, about the events of the Revolution.
There had been sympathy with a people fighting to be free.
The act of king-killing and of queen-killing alienated all sympathy
among the nations ruled by kings. They made a solid ring around
republican France, and France herself fell more and more into the
hands of the extremists, governing by terror and by executions. All
suspected of sympathy with the aristocrats fell by the guillotine.
Even the deposed revolutionary leaders themselves, who had not gone
far enough to please the yet more murderous leaders that followed
them, were arraigned and executed.
{161}
The Reign of Terror, as it was well named, reached its terrible
height when Robespierre was chief man in the Government, and after he
too, failing in an attempt to commit suicide, had suffered the death
to which he had consigned a thousand others, the murders committed in
the name of justice and patriotism abated. The worst of the Terror
passed.
[Sidenote: France and her foes]
So here was this poor vexed country, thus cruelly misgoverned, ringed
round by the kings under arms. What chance had she? Perhaps her
best chance lay in the fact that in spite of the misery there was
much enthusiasm in the people. After Robespierre's death in 1794
they might draw breath and consider what all the bloodshed had meant,
and they might conclude that it meant that they had won France for
themselves, for the French people, out of the hands of the king.
Therefore it was their own France, their own country, that they saw
now menaced by the ring of monarchs. England, Prussia, Austria
Spain--in whichever direction France looked she saw an enemy.
She had, as before in the days of the Habsburg menace, the advantage
of her central position. Moreover, she had the advantage of one
single purpose, namely, her very existence, over those enemies who,
although they might coalesce against her, yet had their own rivalries
and jealousies. On the northern frontier, where the troops of
Austria, Prussia, England, and Holland were gathered, the fortunes of
war went badly, for a time, for France. There was a moment when the
Allies, if they had shown unity of purpose and determination, might
have marched on Paris with but little opposition. Besides the enemy
on the frontier, the republic had her own enemies, who were still in
favour of the monarchy, within, especially in the district of La
Vendée in the west and in some of the large towns of the south.
The indecision of the Allies allowed France a {162} breathing space,
and she made wonderful use of her opportunity.
We have to realise two points in particular, first the singular and
tragic condition of the French armies at the moment--short of pay,
short of equipment, short of seasoned soldiers, and especially short
of experienced leaders, because most of those who should have led
them had been executed or were in prison expecting execution--and
secondly the fact that the methods of making war and of fighting
battles were in a transition state, from the old fashion to the new.
The old fashion of fighting had been, roughly speaking, for the
armies to advance in a mass, firing as they went, until one yielded
and fell back or until they clashed together with the bayonet. Now
the new method was introduced of keeping a big body of troops in
reserve, to throw in, and so gain a decision in the battle, after the
first encounter of the others. And gradually that disposition of the
troops developed into the throwing forward of a single line of
shooters in advance of the main body--skirmishers as they came to be
called, when the thinning of the line was brought to its extreme.
Together with that new way of fighting battles, there came in a new
idea of war. For the old idea had been chiefly to capture some
important city or fortress of the enemy, and so to gain a decision in
the campaign. The new idea was that a decision might be most quickly
and convincingly reached by destroying the enemy's army. And, with
that new idea, the value of time seems to have been appreciated more
fully--the importance, that is to say, of arriving in numbers at a
certain place before the enemy could have time to mass his forces
there, and so of beating his armies piecemeal, before they could be
concentrated.
As a very rough sketch, that may perhaps serve {163} to give a notion
of the way in which war and battles were changing.
It was out of the great danger menacing her very life as a nation
that France was now able to draw new strength. The Government passed
a decree that all men of suitable age were liable to conscription to
the army. They were called on to fight for their own hearths and
homes. It was not unlike the idea which had inspired the earliest
Roman legions.
[Sidenote: Republican victories]
The Allies had lost their opportunity. They did not drive their
stroke home. France, with much reinforced armies, took the offensive
again. She poured into the Netherlands and into Holland. It was
indeed only due to the inexperience of her own commanders, and to the
interference of her Government with the generals, that the defeats of
the Allies were no heavier than they were. A conclusion, for the
time being, of the fighting on that front was reached in 1795, when
the Austrians retired from the Netherlands--which were then annexed
to the French Republic--when Prussia made a separate peace with her,
when the English armies were withdrawn, and when Holland was allowed
to retain her nominal independence with the style of the Batavian
Republic.
And so, ingloriously for the Allies, ended the first coalition
against Revolutionary France. The young Republic was for the moment
saved; yet it must have been hard to think that the salvation could
be more than temporary, so many and so strong were her foes. Her
crisis brought forth, for her rescue, the extraordinary being whom
most historians agree in deeming the greatest military genius in the
whole course of man's story--Napoleon Bonaparte, born, as we have
seen, in that little island of Corsica only lately ceded to France by
Genoa. It is ever difficult to say to what degree this or that
remarkable man has influenced the story of mankind, but we can hardly
{164} have a doubt of the immense effect due to the genius of
Napoleon.
He came into notice first in course of the attack by the Republican
troops on Toulon, which was held by Royalists aided by some English
and Spanish ships. He was a Colonel of Artillery then, and conducted
certain artillery operations with a masterly success.
After the death of Robespierre the chief power in the Government was
put into the hands of a Council of five Directors. Together, they
were called the Directory. It was their special business to see that
the laws were carried out. The Paris mob did not appreciate the
carrying out of the laws, and rose in protest, with the militia,
called the National Guard, supporting them. They marched on the
Tuileries, where the Government offices were established. The
President, warned in time, summoned that young officer of artillery,
Napoleon Bonaparte, who was then in Paris, with his batteries, for
their defence. Napoleon placed his guns to command the streets
approaching the Tuileries, and when the columns of the mob appeared
he opened fire on them with grapeshot. Grapeshot: consider the
effect of it on those dense columns of humanity advancing through a
street! Even the Paris mob, frantic with enthusiasm, could not stand
such butchery. They wavered, halted, then streamed back, mangled and
beaten. The Directory, the Government of the country, was saved.
The reputation of that artillery officer, first heard of at Toulon,
was made. He was appointed to the command of what was known as the
Army of the Interior.
[Sidenote: France and the kings]
It was in 1795 that Prussia had made peace, that Austria had yielded
the Netherlands, and that all immediate danger to France from the
north had passed. And it was in the same year that the "whiff of
grapeshot" ploughed its furrows through these living masses, {165}
and may be said to have ended the French Revolution, properly
so-called. From that time forward the story is not of revolution in
the heart of France but of France struggling with, and strangling,
the kings of Europe. And the struggle and the strangling are all
dominated by one man and his amazing personality--Napoleon.
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