CHARLES F. HORNE
"After us, the deluge!" said Louis XV of France. He died in 1774, and the remaining quarter of the eighteenth century witnessed social changes the most radical, the most widespread which had convulsed civilization since the fall of Rome. "As soon as our peasants seek education," said Catharine II of Russia to one of her ministers, "neither you nor I will retain our places." Catharine, one of the shrewdest women of her day, judged her own people by the more advanced civilization of Western Europe. She saw that it was the growth of ideas, the intellectual advance, which had made Revolution, world-wide Revolution, inevitable.
If we look back to the beginnings of Teutonic Europe, we see that the social system existing among the wild tribes that overthrew Rome, was purely republican. Each man was equal to every other; and they merely conferred upon their sturdiest warrior a temporary authority to lead them in battle. When these Franks (the word itself means freemen) found themselves masters of the imperial, slave-holding world of Rome, the two opposing systems coalesced in vague confusing whirl, from which emerged naturally enough the "feudal system," the rule of a warrior aristocracy. Gradually a few members of this nobility rose above the rest, became centres of authority, kings, ruling over the States of modern Europe. The lesser nobles lost their importance. The kings became absolute in power and began to regard themselves as special beings, divinely appointed to rule over their own country, and to snatch as much of their neighbors' as they could.
Secure in their undisputed rank, the monarchs tolerated or even encouraged the intellectual advance of their subjects, until those subjects saw the selfishness of their masters, saw the folly of submission and the ease of revolt, saw the world-old truth of man's equality, to which tyranny and misery had so long blinded them.
Of course these ideas still hung nebulous in the air in the year 1775, and Europe at first scarce noted that Britain was having trouble with her distant colonies. Yet to America belongs the honor of having first maintained against force the new or rather the old and now re-arisen principles. England, it is true, had repudiated her Stuart kings still earlier; but she had replaced their rule by that of a narrow aristocracy, and now George III, the German king of the third generation whom she had placed as a figure-head upon her throne, was beginning, apparently with much success, to reassert the royal power. George III was quite as much a tyrant to England as he was to America, and Britons have long since recognized that America was fighting their battle for independence as well as her own.
The English Parliament was not in those days a truly representative body. The appointment of a large proportion of its members rested with a few great lords; other members were elected by boards of aldermen and similar small bodies. The large majority of Englishmen had no votes at all, though the plea was advanced that they were "virtually represented," that is, they were able to argue with and influence their more fortunate brethren, and all would probably be actuated by similar sentiments. This plea of "virtual representation" was now extended to America, where its absurdity as applied to a people three thousand miles away and engaged in constant protest against the course of the English Government, became at once manifest, and the cry against "Taxation without representation" became the motto of the Revolution.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Parliament, finding the Americans most unexpectedly resolute against submitting to taxation, would have drawn back from the dispute; but King George insisted on its continuance. He could not realize the difference between free-born Americans long trained in habits of self-government, and the unfortunate peasantry of Continental Europe, bowed by centuries of suffering and submission. He thought it only necessary to bully the feeble colonists, as Louis XIV had bullied the Huguenots by dragonnades. Soldiers were sent to America to live on the inhabitants; and in Boston, General Gage to complete the terror sent out a force to seize the patriot leaders and destroy their supplies.
Then came "the shot heard round the world." Instead of cringing humbly, the Americans resisted. Several were shot down at Lexington, and in return the remainder attacked the soldiers with a resolution and skill which the peasantry of an open country had never before displayed against trained troops. These farmers had learned fighting from the Indians, they had learned self-reliance, and each man acting for himself, seeking what shelter he could find from tree or fence, fired upon the Britons, until the most famous soldiery of Europe fled back to Boston "their tongues hanging out of their mouths like dogs."[1]
The astonished Britons clamored that their opponents did not "fight fair," meaning that the peasants did not stand still like sheep to be slaughtered, or rush in bodies to be massacred by the superior weapons and trained manœuvres of the professional troops. Therein the objection touched the very point of the world's advance: the common people, the country folk of one land at least, had ceased to be mere unthinking cattle; they acted from intellect, not from sheer brute despair.
Within a week of Lexington an army of the Americans were gathered round Boston to defend their homes from further invasions by these foreigners. The English tried the issue again, and attacked the Americans at Bunker Hill.[2] The steady valor of the regular troops, engaged on a regular battle-ground, enabled them to drive the poorly armed peasants from their intrenchments. But the victory was won at such frightful expense of life to the British that it was not until forty years had brought forgetfulness, that they tried a similar assault in military form against the Americans at New Orleans. The farmers could shoot as well as think. After Bunker Hill the Revolution was recognized as a serious war, not a mere mad uprising of hopelessness. Washington took control of the destinies of America. Congress proclaimed its Independence.[3]
At this period Northern America became unfortunately and apparently permanently divided against itself. Canada, largely from its French origin and language, had always stood apart from the more southern English-speaking colonies. There had been repeated wars between them. But now when England had seized possession of Canada and within fifteen years of that event the southern colonists were fighting England, it did seem probable or at least hopeful that all America might unite against the common foe.
So thought the American Congress, and despatched a force, not against the inhabitants of Canada, but against the British troops there, to enable the Canadians to join in the revolt. The Canadians refused; the British forces were brilliantly handled, and the tiny American army, totally unequal to coping single-handed against the enemy and against the gigantic natural difficulties of the expedition, failed—failed gloriously but totally—and only roused anew against the southland the antagonism of the Canadians, mingled now with contempt and a growing admiration and even loyalty toward the Britons.[4]
Canada became a depot into which British troops were poured, and when Lord Howe and his army had captured New York, the English Government planned a powerful expedition to descend the Hudson valley, unite with Howe and so isolate New England from the less violently rebellious colonies farther south. On the success or failure of this undertaking hung the fate not only of the new continent, but one seeing the consequences now is almost tempted to say, the fate of the world.
The command was intrusted to Burgoyne, an experienced and capable general. Troops were given to him, it was thought, amply sufficient to overbear all opposition. There was no regular army to resist him. But the American farmers of the region rallied in their own defence, they hung like a cloud around Burgoyne's advance, they cut off his supplies, they became ever more numerous in his front, until at last he fought desperate battles against them, could not advance, and was compelled to surrender his entire army.[5]
Instantly the war assumed a new aspect. Europe awoke to the fact that England was engaged against a worthy foe. France, humbled in India, driven from America, defeated on her own borders, saw her opportunity for revenge, revenge against her hated rival. Moreover, the spirit of freedom which had been proclaimed by Voltaire, by Rousseau, by a thousand other voices, was awake in France; it saw its own cause, hopeless at home, being triumphantly defended in America; and it cried enthusiastically that the heroes should have aid. Spain, too, had sore causes of complaint against England. So France first and then Spain made alliance with the Americans. George III by his obstinacy had plunged his realm into sore difficulties, had given the final blow to any possible reëstablishment of kingly power in England.
The most immediate shock caused the Britons by the changed aspect of the world, was given them by Paul Jones, an American naval officer. He took advantage of the French alliance to secure a little fleet, part American but mostly French; and with it he cruised boldly around Great Britain, bidding defiance to her navy and plundering her shores, in some faint imitation of the depredations her troops had committed in America. The fight of Jones in his flagship against the English frigate Serapis has become world-famous, and the grim resolution with which the American won his way to victory in face of apparent impossibilities, taught the Britons that on sea as well as on land they had met their match.[6]
For a time the island kingdom bore up against all her foes. The most famous of the many sieges of Gibraltar occurred; and for three years the French and Spanish fleets sought unavailingly to batter the stubborn rock into surrender.[7] But at last asecond British army was trapped and captured at Yorktown by the French and Americans.[8] Then England yielded. It was impossible for her longer to undertake the enormous task of transporting troops across three thousand miles of ocean. She needed them at home; and many of the English people had always protested against the fratricidal war with their brethren in America. American independence was acknowledged, and England was left free to demand a peace of her European foes.[9]
The antagonisms roused by this bitter war, in which British troops had repeatedly and cruelly ravaged the American lands and homes, were long in fading. Canada had stood loyally by Great Britain, and the break between the northern land and the other colonies was sharp and final. Even throughout the States which had become independent, a portion of the people had loyally upheld British rule; and on these unfortunates the liberated Americans threatened to wreak vengeance for all that had been endured. Thus came about a vast emigration of the "Tories" or Loyalists from the new States to Canada. They brought with them the bitterness of the expatriated, and Canada became yet more firmly British, more "anti-American" than before.[10]
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Of even greater influence were the consequences of the American Revolution as affecting Continental Europe. Estimates have differed widely as to just how much the French Revolution was caused by that across the ocean. Certain it is that Frenchmen had been enthusiastic in America's cause, that many of their officers fought under Washington, and returned home deeply infused with devotion to liberty. It has long been a popular error, encouraged by historians of a former generation, that the French Revolution arose from a starving peasantry driven to madness by intolerable oppression. We know better now. It was in Paris, not in the provinces, that the revolt began. Judged by modern standards, of course, the French peasantry were oppressed; but if we measure their condition by that of surrounding nations at the time, by the Austrians under kind-hearted Maria Theresa, or even by the Prussians under Frederick the Great, most advanced of the upholders of "benevolent despotism," in whose lands serfs were still "sold with the soil" compared with these, Frenchmen were free, prosperous, and happy. It is even true that the lower classes were unready for change. In Hungary, Joseph II, son of Maria Theresa, attempted a complete and radical reform of all abuses, and the mob rose in fury against his innovations, compelled him to restore their "ancient customs." They had grown familiar with their chains.[11]
The French Revolution was an uprising of the middle classes. Its great leaders in the earlier stages were Mirabeau, son of a baron, and America's own friend the Marquis Lafayette. Even the King, Louis XVI, at least partly approved the movement. The States-General was summoned in 1789 after an interval of nearly two centuries, to decide on the best way of relieving the country from its financial embarrassments. This gathering was soon resolved into a National Assembly which insisted on giving France a constitution, making it a limited instead of an absolute monarchy.[12]
On the 14th of July the mob of Paris rose in sudden fury and stormed the ancient state prison, the Bastille. The King sent no troops to resist them; and from that time his power was but a shadow. His overthrow, however, was not yet contemplated. The Revolution was still to be one of dignity and intellect. An entire year after the fall of the Bastille, the president of the National Assembly could still say in addressing a deputation of Americans headed by Paul Jones: "It was by helping you to conquer liberty that the French learned to understand and love it. The hands which went to burst your fetters were not made to wear them themselves; but, more fortunate than you, it is our King himself, it is a patriot and citizen king, who has called us to the happiness which we are enjoying that happiness which has cost us merely sacrifices, but which you paid for with torrents of blood Courage broke your chains; reason has made ours fall off."
But alas! reason was soon to lose control. The lower classes had wakened to a sense of their power, they began to use it savagely. Hatred of the haughty aristocracy, long smoldering, burst everywhere into flame. Mobs of country peasants plundered isolated chateaux and slew their inmates. Meanwhile the National Assembly had been abolishing all titles of nobility; the vast estates of the clergy were confiscated. The aristocrats began fleeing from France, and the possessions of all who fled were declared forfeited to the new government.
Imagine the tumult that this upheaval caused to the rest of Europe. News travelled slowly in those days; but these "émigrés," these banished nobles, were palpable evidences of what had occurred. The common folk everywhere, especially along the French borders in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, celebrated the French triumph as their own. Liberty was at hand! For them, too, it would come presently! Murmurings of revolt grew loud. The monarchs of Europe, terrified, took up the cause of the Émigrés as their own. France was threatened with invasion. King Louis threw in his lot with his royal friends and attempted flight from Paris. He was caught and brought back a prisoner. A foreign army marched against France.
This invasion was met and repelled in the Battle of Valmy (1792), not an extensive or bloody contest in itself, but one of incalculable importance in human history, because like Bunker Hill it showed that a new force had arisen to upset all the military calculations of the past. Raw troops could now be found to meet on equal terms with veterans. Liberty, hitherto an impalpable idea, a mere phantom in the brains of a few philosophers, proved able to call up armies at a word, able physically to hold its own against embattled despotism. Even the German Goethe wrote of Valmy, "In this place and on this day a new era of the world begins."[13]
France however had already gone mad with its success. Even before Valmy wholesale murder had begun in Paris. The prisons were broken open and a thousand "aristocrats" hideously butchered without trial. The day after Valmy, the land was proclaimed a republic. King Louis was put on trial for his life, and in January, 1793, was executed.[14] Frenchmen began fighting among themselves. The reign of "terror" began as that of kings was abolished. Chiefs of each faction accused all others as traitors, and executions by the guillotine rose to fifty a day. "We must have a hundred!" cried Robespierre, the lunatic leader of the moment.
The excesses in Paris roused civil war, and through all France men slew one another in the name of liberty. In Brittany the peasants even rose in support of royalty, and refused allegiance to the republic. Never has the most hideous brutality of man been more openly displayed than in those days of vengeance. The intellectual classes of Europe everywhere shrank back, terrified at the spectre they had evoked.
The Reign of Terror ended in 1794 with the downfall and execution of its leader, Robespierre.[15] The civil war was trampled out in blood. And with Titanic energy the French Republic defended itself against its foreign foes.
All Europe had joined in a coalition against France—all the kings, that is. Their subjects still doubted, still hoped, still looked anxiously to France to see if freedom were in truth a possibility. Then from the ranks of the liberated French arose great generals, aristocrats no longer, but men of the people, fitted to lead the new-born armies of the people. Greatest of these and grimmest of them was Napoleon Bonaparte. He taught the timorous legislative authorities of Paris how to reassert their dominion over "King Mob," who had ruled them and the country for four hideous years. He checked a new uprising by a discharge of well-stationed cannon, aimed to kill.
Order being thus established at home, the French began to pour over the border in attack upon those kings who had threatened them. In many places they were still received as the apostles of liberty. Holland, Switzerland, the Rhine lands, became allies or dependents of France. Kings were helpless against them. To the spirit of Republicanism, to the impassioned courage of Frenchmen, was added the genius of Bonaparte. He conquered Italy. He plundered her and sent home priceless treasures to delight his countrymen and fill their exhausted treasury. He became the man of the hour.[16]
Far beyond France spread the influence of her example. In Eastern Europe, Poland was roused against the despoilers who had already seized a portion of her territory. She began a rebellion under Kosciuszko, who, like Lafayette, had imbibed the love of freedom in America. But Poland was crushed by the overpowering forces of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Her remaining provinces were divided among the plunderers and the last fragment of her independence was extinguished.[17]
In Haiti also there was a rebellion. The negroes of the island rose against their Spanish masters and drove them into exile. Toussaint Louverture, often regarded as the greatest hero of his race, led the insurgents victoriously against both Spanish and English forces, and finally with French help established the independence of Haiti as a negro republic. He became administrator as well as warrior. After a few successful years he was treacherously seized and held prisoner by Napoleon; but the monument he had erected for himself, the "Black Republic," continued and still continues to exist.[18]
In a period so tumultuous as was this quarter-century, one could scarce expect that the world would make much progress in science. Men were too intent on sterner things. There was, however, just before the beginning of the French Revolution, one event which to a future generation may seem more important even than to us. Aërial navigation began. The first successful balloon ascension was made by the Montgolfier brothers, and the sport became for a while a Parisian fad.[19] Still more noteworthy was the employment of vaccination as a preventive against smallpox. The system was introduced in England by Jenner in 1798, and its use spread rapidly over Europe. More recently it has been employed against other diseases as well, and the resultant increase in the general health of mankind is beyond computation.[20]
FORMATION OF THE UNITED STATES
Meanwhile America, the source or at least the partial source of all this republican tumult, was having difficulties of her own. The peace after Yorktown left her exhausted. The Articles of Confederation which had sufficed to hold the colonies together under the stress of their great necessity, had proven insufficient to give any real unity. Each little colony was jealous of its own power as an independent State: and for a time it seemed as if they must disband, that America must become like Europe, divided into a collection of separate ever-jarring States, devastated by constant wars.
That this was not our own country's fate, we owe to Washington. Our saviour in war, he became also our saviour in peace. After watching through some years of this disorganization, he emerged from the peaceful retirement of his country home, to urge that some means be taken to form a more perfect union. It was largely through his instrumentality that the convention of 1787 was called; and he presided over its labors. Again and again it seemed as if the convention would disband in anarchy. The antagonisms between the various delegates appeared irreconcilable. But always there was Washington to control the flaming passions, to insist upon moderation, upon union. And in the end that convention drew up the Constitution of the United States.[21]
Even then there remained the task of persuading each State to accept the Constitution; and this also would have been impossible had not all men looked to Washington to act as president of the new republic, to do justice between its differing sections. Relying equally on his wisdom, his caution, and his incorruptibility, the States intrusted to him a power they would have conferred upon no other.
Two years were occupied in arranging matters, and then, in 1789, the date so memorable to France as well, the new government was organized, Washington was inaugurated as President, and the United States began its stupendous career as a single nation.[22]
There were difficulties, of course. American finances seemed as hopelessly involved as had been those of monarchical France. But this rock upon which the French projects of reform all split, our government escaped by the financial genius of Alexander Hamilton.[23] The natural summons of the French that the Americans should become their allies, should help them to win freedom in their turn, proved another source of danger. A thousand others were not lacking. But Washington's conservatism preserved his government through all. He proclaimed America's well-known policy toward the European States: "Friendship with all, entangling alliances with none." The material prosperity of the country increased rapidly. Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin, which made cotton cultivation so remunerative that the South grew rich, and also, alas, became wedded to the system of slavery under which it was supposed cotton could best be produced.[24]
For eight years Washington guided the destinies of the infant nation, and then resigned his authority to one of his lieutenants. So that really the great leader's influence continued predominant until he died in December, 1799. Already however the more radical of Americans were grown restive under his restraining hand. Federalism, conservatism, was losing its control upon the national counsels, a change toward wider and more radical democracy was at hand.
OVERTHROW OF DEMOCRACY IN FRANCE
The year of 1799 saw also a great change in France, but in the opposite direction, away from democracy and back toward absolutism. The French government, grown rash with its marvellous victories, had dared to despatch Bonaparte, its ablest general, on an ill-considered and somewhat fanciful expedition to distant Egypt. There his fleet was destroyed by the English admiral, Nelson, in the celebrated Battle of the Nile, and he and his army were left practically prisoners in Egypt.[25]
Deprived of his genius at home, French military affairs went badly. Monarchy rallied from its momentary depression. Russian troops drove the French from Switzerland; Germans defeated them along the Rhine. The Constitutional government in Paris was proving impracticable, its members incompetent. Bonaparte saw his opportunity. Leaving his army in Egypt, he escaped the British and returned alone to France. In Paris he summoned the soldiers around him, entered the hall of the assembly, and, much as Cromwell had once done in England, bade the wrangling members disperse. Then he constructed a new government, which he still called a republic. But as he himself was to be First Consul, with almost all power in his own hands, the Government proved in reality as complete an absolutism as that of Richelieu or Louis XIV. The first European attempt at democracy had perished. The new century was to learn what this suddenly risen dictator would establish in its stead.