The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of
the Revolution: that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books.
Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of it
before the English reader; so that he may understand both what it was
and how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliar
to Englishmen have risen out of it.
First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modern
accretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed,
supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Code
as of the massacres; of the panics and capitulations as of the
victories; of the successful transformation of society as of the
conspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of the
Revolution.
This grasped, the way in which the main events followed each other, and
the reason of their interlocking and proceeding as they did must be put
forward--not, I repeat, in the shape of a chronicle, but in the shape of
a thesis. Thus the reader must know not only that the failure of the
royal family’s flight was followed by war, but how and why it was
followed by war. He must not only appreciate the severity of the
government of the great Committee, but why that severity was present,
and of the conditions of war upon which it reposed. But in so explaining
the development of the movement it is necessary to select for
appreciation as the chief figures the characters of the time, since upon
their will and manner depended the fate of the whole. For instance, had
the Queen been French either in blood or in sympathy, had the King been
alert, had any one character retained the old religious motives, all
history would have been changed, and this human company must be seen if
its action and drama are to be comprehended.
The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (and
but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; and
this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, that
historians, even when they recognise the importance of the military side
of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and think
it sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. The
military aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in the
campaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts.
In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armies
if he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly given
him. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to the
importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of a
general position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, a
story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how the
two combine.
Now, the Revolution, more than any other modern period, turns upon, and
is explained by, its military history. On this account has so
considerable a space been devoted to the explaining of that feature.
The reader will note, again, that the quarrel between the Revolution and
the Catholic Church has also been dealt with at length.
To emphasise this aspect of the revolutionary struggle may seem unusual
and perhaps deserves a word of apology.
The reader is invited to consider the fact that the Revolution took
place in a country which had, in the first place, definitely determined
during the religious struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries to remain in communion with Rome; and had, in the second
place, admitted a very large and important body of converts to the
doctrines of the Reformation.
The determination of the French people, in the crisis of 1572-1610, to
remain Catholic under a strong central Government, was a capital point
in the future history of France. So was the presence of a wealthy, very
large, and highly cultivated body of dissentients in the midst of the
nation. The two phenomena hardly co-existed elsewhere in Europe. Between
them they lent to the political history of France a peculiar character
which the nineteenth century, even more than the Revolution itself, has
emphasised; and it is the opinion of the present writer that it is
impossible to understand the Revolution unless very high relief is given
to the religious problem.
If a personal point may be noted, the fact that the writer of these
pages is himself a Catholic and in political sympathy strongly attached
to the political theory of the Revolution, should not be hidden from the
reader. Such personal conditions have perhaps enabled him to treat the
matter more thoroughly than it might have been treated by one who
rejected either Republicanism upon the one hand, or Catholicism upon the
other; but he believes that no personal and therefore exaggerated note
has been allowed to intrude upon his description of what is a definite
piece of objective history lying in the field of record rather than in
that of opinion.
Some years ago the paramount importance of the quarrel between the
Church and the Revolution might still have been questioned by men who
had no personal experience of the struggle, and of its vast results.
To-day the increasing consequences and the contemporary violence of that
quarrel make its presentation an essential part of any study of the
period.
The scheme thus outlined will show why I have given this sketch the
divisions in which it lies.