Lectures on the French Revolution

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Turgot was too discreet for such an excess, and he looked to history for the demonstration of his law. He had come upon it in his theological studies. He renounced them soon aft...

In spite of their democratic spirit, these communities consented to have their trade regulated and restricted, to their own detriment and the advantage of English merchants. The...

And there was another political doctrine which the Americans transmitted to the French. In old colonial days the executive and the judicial powers were derived from a foreign so...

The tributary elements of a free constitution which were granted by Lewis XVI., not in consultation with deputies, not even always with public support, included religious tolera...

Barentin, the minister who had opposed Necker's plans and viewed the States-General with apprehension and disgust, spoke after the king. He was a French judge, with no heart for...

Sieyes was not solicitous that his invitation should be obeyed, for the accession of the other orders might displace the majority. Those who possessed the plenitude of power wer...

Sieyes, who expected no good from the co-operation of the orders which he condemned, and who thought a nobleman or prelate who did not vote better than one who voted wrong, urge...

Long before Barnave expiated his sin upon the scaffold he felt and acknowledged its enormity. But it is by him and men like him, and not by the scourings of the galleys, that we...

Those who imagined that France possessed a submerged Constitution that might be extracted from her annals had a difficult task. Lanjuinais desired to sail by a beacon and to dir...

In September 1789, the liberty of the press was only four months old, and the reign of opinion was beginning on the Continent. They fancied that it was an invincible force, and...

Instead of flight they resolved upon defence, and brought up the Flanders regiment, whose Colonel was a deputy of the Left. In the morning the Count d'Estaing, who held command...

By the time that Lafayette appeared, roused from untimely slumber, his men were masters of the Palace, and stood between the royal family and the raging mob of baffled murderers...

Mirabeau, unlike many others, regarded a European war as a danger to the throne. But he was preparing for civil war, and meant to secure the army and navy on the royal side. He...

At Novi, in the first action, Joubert fell, and Moreau commanded the retreat. Sieyes now applied to him. Moreau was not yet the victor of Hohenlinden. His ascendancy was doubtfu...

The direct consequence of the ecclesiastical laws was the flight of the king. From the time of his removal to Paris, in October 1789, men began to study the means by which he mi...

At Pont de Somme-Vesle, 8 or 9 miles beyond Chalons, Choiseul was in command. His men had been badly received at St. Menehould, and their presence perturbed the country people....

Lewis, after his degradation, was an impossible king. And the republicans had a future majority in reserve, whenever the excluded class was restored to the right of voting which...

Each step forward taken by Austria aggravated the warlike feeling in the French legislature. But Delessart, through whom the government communicated with foreign powers, mitigat...

The invasion of 1792 roused a crouching lion; and the French, after their easy and victorious defence, went over to the attack. Whilst the invaders were standing still, too weak...

The king himself had called in the invaders. His envoy, concealed in the uniform of a Prussian major, rode by the side of Brunswick. His brothers were entering France with the h...

Danton, who knew English, and read English books, seems to have remembered a passage in Spenser, when he declared that France must be saved at Paris, and told his terrified hear...

The Constitution of 1791 had failed because it carried the division of powers and the reaction against monarchical centralisation so far as to paralyse the executive. Until the...

After the failure in Normandy, of which this is the surviving episode, Buzot and his companions escaped by sea to the Gironde. Having been outlawed, on July 28, they were liable...

Two men unexpectedly united against Chaumette and appeared as champions of Christendom. They were Danton and Robespierre. Robespierre had been quite willing that there should be...

The Committee of Public Safety resented the law of Prairial; and when asked to authorise the proscription of deputies refused. Robespierre did nothing to conciliate the members,...

La Rouerie, who was a prodigy of inventiveness, and drew his lines with so firm a hand that the Chouannerie, which broke out after his death, lasted ten years and only went to p...

In the middle of October Kleber, largely reinforced, advanced with 25,000 men, and Bonchamps made up his mind that the time had come to retreat into Brittany. He posted a detach...

All these armaments had scarcely begun when the victory of Neerwinden and the flight of Dumouriez brought the Austrians up to the Belgian frontier. Carnot was not discovered, th...

Meantime the Republic had improved its position in the world. Its conquests included the Alps and the Rhine, Belgium, and Holland, and surpassed the successes of the Monarchy ev...

In his own defence he showed that he had consulted the widow of Danton, and had found a witness of the last banquet of the Girondins. In his book he dramatised the scene, and di...

After much partial and contentious writing, sagacious men attained a reasonable judgment on the good and evil, the truth and error, of the Revolution. The view established by co...

Taine is not a historian, but a pathologist, and his work, the most scientific we possess, and in part the most exhaustive, is not history. By his energy in extracting formulas...

_TIMES._--"The treatment is personal, fresh, and original throughout. Lucidity is unfailing. Learning is marshalled behind _every_ paragraph, and almost behind every sentence, a...