The French Revolution - Volume 1

This second part of "Les Origines de la France Contemporaine" will consist of two volumes.--Popular insurrections and the laws of the Constituent Assembly end in destroying all...

During the night of July 14-15, 1789, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt caused Louis XVI to be aroused to inform him of the taking of the Bastille. "It is a revolt, then?" e...

or four riots, which are put down with difficulty by the troops and constabulary,"[1115]--and throughout the whole extent of the kingdom a similar state of things is seen. The w...

INDEED it is in the center that the convulsive shocks are strongest. Nothing is lacking to aggravate the insurrection--neither the liveliest provocation to stimulate it, nor the...

However bad a particular government may be, there is something still worse, and that is the suppression of all government. For, it is owing to government that human wills form a...

The powerlessness, indeed, of the heads of the Government, and the lack of discipline among all its subordinates, are much greater in the capital than in the provinces.--Paris p...

Among the most difficult undertakings in this world is the formulation of a national constitution, especially if this is to be a complete and comprehensive work. To replace the...

In the first place, those who were privileged having ceased to render the services for which the advantages they enjoyed constituted their compensation and their privileges were...

That which is called a Government is a concert of powers, each with a distinct function, and all working towards a final and complete end. The merit of a Government consists in...

If there ever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realization, or, what is still more to the purpose, was really applied, converted into a fact, fully established, it is that...

Under these conditions when passions are freed; any determined and competent man who can gather a couple of hundred men may form a band and slip through the enlarged or weakened...

If popular passion ended in murder it was not because resistance was great or violent. On the contrary, never did an aristocracy undergo dispossession with so much patience, or...