PROGRESS OF LIBERTY IN EUROPE.
INFLUENCE OF LA FAYETTE--DESPOTISM IN FRANCE--THE BASTILE--CORRUPTIONS
OF THE CHURCH--COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION--THE MARSEILLAISE--ITS
WONDERFUL INFLUENCE--REIGN OF TERROR--NAPOLEON BONAPARTE--HIS WONDERFUL
CAREER--JEWISH SANHEDRIM--FALL OF NAPOLEON--HIS DEATH--PROGRESS OF
LIBERTY.
When the war of independence was over La Fayette returned to France.
He was the lightning-rod by which the current of republican sentiments
flashed from America to Europe. He was the hero of the hour. A man
{188} who had helped to set up a republic in America, was a dangerous
element for old despotic France to receive into her bosom. With the
charm of a great name, immense wealth and boundless popularity to aid
him, he everywhere urged that men should be free and self-governing.
The influence of La Fayette was soon apparent.
The people of France were living under a government which had come
down from the feudal ages. They wished to follow the example of the
United States, but how could this be accomplished? The king could do
as he pleased--make war, build fleets, tax the people, even send men
to prison when charged with no crime, keeping them in prison till they
became old and gray-haired, or until death set them free. Of all the
gloomy prisons of France, the Bastile was the most horrible. Its dark,
deep dungeons were ever dripping with water and alive with vermin. No
straggling ray of light ever entered them The floor was covered with
mud and slime and the bones of victims who had died of starvation.
Louis XV., king of France was accustomed to sign his name to blank
letters and give them to his friends to fill in as they pleased the
names of those they wished to punish. One day, the king wanted money,
and demanded $120,000 of M. Massot. "I cannot pay it," he replied.
"Into the Bastile with him," cried the king, and ordered his goods to
be seized. M. Catalan was very rich. The king cast him into the Bastile
and he did not get out till he handed over $1,200,000! Madame de
Pompadour, the mistress of the king, ruled France, and woe to him who
provoked her displeasure! M. Latude, twenty years old, offended her,
and the great door of the Bastile closed upon him. The years rolled on,
Madame de Pompadour and the king went down to the grave, yet M. Latude
was still a prisoner in the Bastile. Thus for sixty years did Louis
XV., plunder and imprison the people of France.
The nobility, the priests and the officers of the government paid no
taxes, but, on the other hand, received great revenues from the people.
They had nothing to do except to eat, drink, attend balls or hunting
parties and play cards. They lived in fine castles, and had beautiful
parks, gardens and hunting-grounds. The tax collectors came several
times a year to {189} the poor man's home, but never to the castle.
Of every sixteen dollars produced from the land by the hard-working
peasants, the king took four, the priests took four, and the nobleman
who owned the land took five, leaving only three for the poor man and
his family. Meanwhile Louis XVI. succeeded to the throne.
The church was as corrupt as the king. The priests lived luxuriously
on the revenue wrung from the toiling people. They charged the people
enormous fees for every service, for baptism, marriage, burial, and
masses for the dead. From the cradle to the grave it was one continual
extortion.
Such was the condition of the people when La Fayette presented to the
National Assembly a Declaration of Rights. It resembled the Declaration
of Independence in many particulars, and declared that all men are
free and equal. It was on Saturday, July 11th, 1789, that La Fayette
presented the Declaration of Rights. Sunday came, and the troops were
marching. The king had resolved to disperse the National Assembly, and
if the people resisted to mow them down with cannon balls. A great
crowd assembled in the Palais Royal Garden. They eagerly asked "What is
to be done?" A young man named Camille Desmoulins, sprang upon a table,
with a pistol in each hand to defend himself. "To arms! to arms!" he
cried, "we must defend ourselves!" He plucked a green leaf and put it
in his hat-band, for a plume. The people followed his example. They had
no arms, but there were muskets in the great arsenal, called the Hotel
des Invalides. They broke it open and armed themselves. The cry rung
through the streets, "Down with the Bastile!" They rushed to the gloomy
prison and planted their cannon to batter down the gates. The guards in
the Bastile were heart and soul with the people. They hung out a white
flag, and the prison was surrendered. Then came forth to the light of
day the emaciated victims who had been so long immured in its filthy
dungeons.
A duke rode to the king's palace at Versailles to tell the news. "It is
a revolt," exclaimed the king. The duke replied, "Nay, sire, it is a
revolution." The deluge of blood had come. Revengeful men were roaming
the streets of Paris murdering the nobles and the clergy. The National
Assembly ordered {190} the Bastile to be torn down, and the people
leveled it to the ground.
In Strasburg, was a young man named Rouget de l'Isle. One day he
was dining with his friend Dietrich, and they talked of liberty and
equal rights. After dinner, he went to his chamber, sat down to the
clavichord and began to play and sing. His soul was on fire for liberty
for France. He seemed to be wrought upon by a higher power. Words came,
and with them a strange, wild melody. He did not know which came first.
He sang and played, and played and sang, and felt a strange delight. At
length his head fell upon his breast: he was asleep. The morning sun
was shining in his face when he awoke and the song was still stirring
in his heart. He called in his friend Dietrich to hear it, he liked it
well, and other friends were called in to hear it. A young lady sat
down to the clavichord and played while Rouget de l'Isle sang:
"Ye sons of freedom, wake to glory!
Hark! hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives and grand-sires hoary,
Behold their tears and hear their cries!
"Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,
With hireling host, a ruffian band,
While peace and liberty lie bleeding,
Affright and desolate the land?
"Do you not hear the prisoners moaning?
Arise ye brave, the sword unsheath,
'Neath tyrants yoke no longer groaning,
Resolved on liberty or death."
The peculiar genius of the French language, as well as the strange
versification of the song, will not permit of an exact translation.
For the benefit of those of our readers who understand the French
language we give one of the stanzas as originally written:
"_Quoi! des cohortes etrangeres,
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers,
Quoi! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers gueriers. {191}
Grand Dieu! par des mains enchainees,
Nos fronts sous le joug se plieraient,
De vils despotes deviendraient,
Les maitres de nos destinees_.
In a few hours all Strasburg was singing it. It went from village to
village, from city to city, from province to province, and became
known as the _Marseillaise_, or national song of France, which above
all other songs ever written has stirred the hearts of men. Great
events took place. The king of France and his beautiful queen, Maria
Antoinette, were beheaded. A republic was started, but was soon
overthrown, and the government seized by blood-thirsty villains. More
than a million people perished by the guillotine, war, famine and
starvation.
The nation waded through a sea of blood. Old things passed away never
to return. The internal history of France during a period of two years
from the fall of the monarchy, is perhaps the most appalling record,
which the annals of the human family present.
Why did not France succeed in establishing a free government? Because
all such must be founded on intelligence, virtue, and faith in God and
immortality. Out of the revolution came the one man who could restore
order to France--Napoleon Bonaparte.
It does not come within the limits of this work to relate the
various wars of Napoleon. The French revolution--abortive as it
seemed--rendered forever impossible the continuance of the despotism
which had heretofore governed Europe. Napoleon, though one of the worst
despots, sowed revolutionary principles broad-cast over Europe. His
judicial code taught the equality of man before the law. His overthrow
of so many princes taught the people to place a lower estimate on
the sanctity of crowned heads. His consolidation of the petty German
states, awakened the desire for a united Germany and paved the way for
its accomplishment. He introduced constitutional government to Italy,
Westphalia and Spain. He weakened the temporal power of the pope, and
dealt fatal blows at the feudal nobility. His rude assaults shook to
its foundations the whole fabric of European despotism, and led the
lower orders of the people to entertain new ideas regarding their own
rights. {192} Never before had influences so powerful been brought so
widely into operation over vast multitudes of men.
[Image: Napoleon Bonaparte.]
Napoleon, with the exception of Oliver Cromwell, was the first great
statesman in Europe to engage in designs for the advantage of the Jews.
In 1806, the world heard with amazement that Napoleon had summoned a
grand Sanhedrim of the Jews to assemble at Paris. The twelve great
questions which Napoleon submitted to the Jewish Rabbis thus assembled
and the answers which they gave to him, did much to dispel popular
prejudice against that people, and prepare the way for their social
and material advancement. Some of these questions and answers were of
peculiar importance in a religious point of view. From these we learn,
that in 1806, among the Jewish people, and among some of the advanced
thinkers of that age, marriage was considered null and void unless the
ceremony was {193} performed by a person possessing divine authority.
Further, that polygamy is taught in the Jewish scriptures, but had been
discontinued by the Jews by virtue of a decree of the Synod of Worms,
in A. D. 1030. (_For further particulars see "Journal des Debats" pour
1807. Milman's History of the Jews, page 592_.)
The influence which Napoleon exerted upon the course of human affairs
is without parallel in history. In comparison with these, the conquest
of Caesar and Alexander dwindle into insignificance. Never before had
any man inflicted upon his fellows, miseries so appalling; yet did
never one man's hand scatter seeds destined to produce a harvest of
political change, so vast and so beneficent. To the despots of Europe
he was the dreaded apostle of democracy. The amazing events which
followed each other in so swift succession in France were watched with
profound interest in other lands. The results were quickly apparent.
When Napoleon fell, the desire for self-government had silently spread
over Europe. The anxiety, which the dethroned monarchs evinced to
please their subjects, began to disclose to the people the secret of
their own strength.
A congress of delegates from the great powers met in Vienna, in 1814,
to restore the thrones to the kings who had been exiled during the
wars of Napoleon. They were blind to the lesson which the revolution
had taught. They dreamed not of the new forces which had been silently
growing strong underneath the tumult and confusion of universal war.
Napoleon was at length banished to St. Helena, a rocky island in the
South Atlantic, far from any other inhabited land, where he died, May
5th, 1821. Thus darkly closed a career the most brilliant, the most
influential, and the most remarkable of modern times.
The power of the people now began to be everywhere felt. In 1820, the
American possessions of Spain rose against the despotism under which
they had long suffered, and successfully asserted their independence.
Insurrections broke out in Spain, Portugal, Naples and Piedmont, and
only ended when they obtained constitutional government.
{194} Across the Adriatic, Greece took encouragement from the energy
of her neighbors to assert the liberty of which Turkish oppression
defrauded her. Helped by Europe, she succeeded.
[Image: The City of Athens.]
Athens, once the seat of learning and philosophy, the home of
poets, painters and sculptors, the city that once led the world in
civilization and art, became the capital of the modern kingdom of
Greece.
{195} The influence continued to spread until it effected all the
states of western Europe. It turned men's minds everywhere to political
thought and discussion. It quickened the hardy mountaineers of
Switzerland to reorganize their republican institutions, on the basis
of equal rights. The little republic of the mountains founded so long
ago, in the days of William Tell, started on a new era of prosperity.
France, in 1830, once more attempted to throw off the yoke of her
ancient kings.
[Image: Scene in Switzerland.]
These events may be said to mark the complete political awakening of
Europe. Western Europe was now free and {196} self-governing. The long
and painful transition from despotism to responsible government was at
length accomplished. One hundred and eighty millions of Europeans had
risen from a degraded vassalage to the rank and condition of freemen.