Chapter VIII.

The Fall of the Two Kingdoms

The Poles, a divided nation.—The three partitions.—Wars and revolts as a result.—The disappearance of Lithuania.—The growing power of the king of France.—An extravagant and corrupt court.—Peasants cruelly taxed and oppressed.—Bankruptcy at last.—The meeting of the three estates.—The third estate defies the king.—The fall of the Bastille.—The flight and capture of the king.—The king beheaded.—Other kings alarmed.—Valmy saves the revolution.—The reign of terror.

In the flat country to the northeast of Austria-Hungary and east of Prussia lay the kingdom of Poland, the largest country in Europe with the exception of Russia. The Poles, as has been said before, were a Slavic people, distant cousins of the Russians and Bohemians. They had a strong nobility or upper class, but these nobles were jealous of each other, and as a result, the country was torn apart by many warring factions. The condition of the working class was very miserable. The nobles did not allow them any privileges. They were serfs, that is to say, practically slaves, who had to give up to their masters the greater part of the crops that they raised. In the council of the Polish nobles, no law could be passed if a single nobleman opposed it. As a result of this jealousy between factions, the Poles could not be induced to obey any one leader, and thus, divided, were easy to conquer.

Frederick the Great, regretting the fact that he was separated from his land in East Prussia by the county of West Prussia, which was part of Poland, proposed to his old enemy, Maria Theresa of Austria, and to the Empress Catharine II of Russia that they each take a slice of Poland. This was accordingly done, in the year 1772. Poor Poland was unable to resist the three great powers around her, and the other kings of Europe, who had been greedily annexing land wherever they could get it, stood by without a protest. Some twenty years later, Prussia and Russia each again annexed a large part of the remainder of Poland, and two years after this, the three powers divided up among them all that was left of the unhappy kingdom. The Poles fought violently against this last partition, but they were not united and were greatly outnumbered by the troops of the three powers.

This great crime against a nation was the result of the military system; and this in turn was the result of the feudal system, which made the king, as commander-in-chief of the army, the supreme ruler of his country. The men in the Prussian and Austrian armies had no desire to fight and conquer the poor Poles. Victory meant nothing to them. They gained no advantage from it. To the kings who divided up the countries it simply meant an enlargement of their kingdoms, more people to pay taxes to them, and more men to draw on for their armies.

Instead of crushing out the love of the Poles for their country, this wrongful tearing apart has made their national spirit all the stronger. There have been revolts and bloody wars, caused by Polish uprisings, time and time again, and the Poles will never be satisfied until their unhappy country is once more united.

To the northeast of the Poles live the Lithuanians, whose country had been annexed to the Polish kingdom when their duke, who had married the daughter of the king of Poland, followed his father-in-law on the Polish throne. Lithuania fell to Russia’s share in the division, so that its people only changed masters. They are a distinct nation, however, possessing a language and literature of their own, and having no desire to be ruled by either Poles or Russians. If they were to receive justice, they would form a country by themselves, lying between Poland and Russia proper.

The Downfall of the French Monarchy

In the meantime, a great change had come about in France. There, for hundreds of years, the power of the king had been growing greater, until by the eighteenth century, there was no one in the country who could oppose him. He had great fortresses and prisons where he sent those who had offended him, shutting them up without a trial and not even letting their families know where they had been taken. The peasants and working classes had been ground down under taxes which grew heavier and heavier. The king spent millions of dollars on his palaces, on his armies, on his courts. Money was stolen by court officials. Paris was the gayest capital in the world, the home of fashion, art, and frivolity and the poor peasants paid the bills.

For years, there had been mutterings. The people were ripe for a revolt, but they had no weapons, and there was no one to lead them. At last, came a time when there was no money in the royal treasury. After all the waste and corruption, nothing was left to pay the army and keep up the expenses of the government. One minister of finance after another tried to devise some scheme whereby the country might meet its debts, but without success. The costly wars and wasteful extravagances of the past hundred years were at last to bring a reckoning. In desperation, the king summoned a meeting of representative men from all over the kingdom. There were three classes represented, the nobles, the clergy, and what was called “the third estate,” which meant merchants, shopkeepers, and the poor gentlemen. A great statesman appeared, a man named Mirabeau. Under his leadership, the third estate defied the king, and the temper of the people was such that the king dared not force them to do his will. In the midst of these exciting times, a mob attacked the great Paris prison, the Bastille. They took it by storm, and tore it to the ground. This happened on the fourteenth of July, 1789, a day which the French still celebrate as the birthday of their nation’s liberty. All over France the common people rose in revolt. The soldiers in the army would no longer obey their officers. The king was closely watched, and when he attempted to flee to Germany was brought back and thrown into prison. Many of the nobles, in terror, fled from the country. Thus began what is known as the French Revolution.

As soon as the king was thrown into prison and the people of France took charge of their government, a panic arose throughout the courts of Europe. Other kings, alarmed over the fate of the king of France, began to fear for themselves. They, too, had taxed and oppressed their subjects. They felt that this revolt of the French people must be put down, and the king of France set back upon his throne, otherwise the same kind of revolt might take place in their countries as well. Accordingly, the king of Prussia, the king of England, and the emperor of Austria all made war on the new French Republic. They proposed to overwhelm the French by force of arms and compel them to put back their king upon his throne.

Of course, if the soldiers in the armies of these kings had known what the object of this war was, they would have had very little sympathy with it, but for years they had been trained to obey their officers, who in turn obeyed their generals, who in turn obeyed the orders of the kings. The common soldiers were like sheep, in that they did not think for themselves, but followed their leaders. They were not allowed to know the truth concerning this attack on France. They did not know the French language, and had no way of finding out the real situation, for there were no public schools in these countries, and very few people knew how to read the newspapers. The newspapers, moreover, were controlled by the governments, and were allowed to print only what favored the cause of the kings.

The French, however, knew the meaning of the war. A young French poet from Strasbourg on the Rhine wrote a wonderful war song which was first sung in Paris by the men of Marseilles, and thus has come to be called “La Marseillaise.” It is the cry of a crushed and oppressed people against foreign tyrants who would again enslave them. It fired the French army with a wonderful enthusiasm, and untrained as they were, they beat back the invaders at the hard-fought field of Valmy and saved the French Republic.

The period known as “the reign of terror” now began in earnest. A faction of the extreme republican party got control of the government, and kept it by terrorizing the more peaceable citizens. The brutal wrongs which nobles had put upon the lower classes for so many hundred years were brutally avenged. The king was executed, as were most of the nobles who had not fled from the country. For three or four years, the gutters of the principal French cities ran blood. Then the better sense of the nation came to the front and the people settled down. A fairly good government was organized, and the executions ceased. Still the kings of Europe would not recognize the new republic. There was war against France for the next twenty years on the part of England, and generally two or three other countries as well.

Questions for Review

Why was Poland an easy prey for her neighbors?

Why did not Spain, France, or England interfere to prevent the partition of Poland?

How did Lithuania come to be joined to Poland?

What things could the king of France do which would not be tolerated in the United States today?

Why did the people of France submit to the rule of the king?

Why did the king call together the three “estates”?

Why do the French celebrate the 14th of July?

Why did the other kings take up the cause of the king of France?

What was the cause of the reign of terror?