As a last resort, the States-General, which had not met for one hundred and seventy-five years, assembled May 5, 1789, and that day marked the opening of the Revolution.
The National Assembly, proving to be the most powerful body of the States-General, invited the nobles and clergy to join it, and declared itself the National Assembly. Louis closed the hall. The members repaired to a tennis-court near by, and swore not to separate until they had given France a constitution. The weak king soon yielded, and, at his request, the coronets and mitres met with the commons. The court decided to overawe the refractory Assembly, and collected 30,000 soldiers about Versailles.
Four members of that assembly were Lafayette, Count Mirabeau, Robespierre, and Guillotine, inventor of the fearful instrument of punishment bearing his name.
The Paris populace were infuriated by the menace from the soldiers. They stormed the old Bastile and razed its dungeons to the ground. The insurrection spread like a prairie-fire. Chateaux were burned, and tax-payers tortured to death. Soon a maddened mob surged toward Versailles, screeching “Bread! bread!” The palace was sacked and the royal family brought to Paris.
Political clubs sprang up like mushrooms, chief among which were the Jacobins and the Cordelies, whose leaders, Robespierre, Marat, and Danton, advocated sedition and organized the revolution.
The Assembly, in its burst of patriotism, extinguished feudal privileges, abolished serfdom, and equalized taxes. The estates of the clergy were confiscated, and upon this security notes were issued to meet the expenses of the government.
Austria and Prussia took up arms in behalf of Louis, and invaded France (1791). This step doomed the monarch and the monarchy. The approach of the “foreigners” kindled to unrestrainable fury the wrath of the masses. The “Marseillaise” was heard for the first time on the streets of Paris; the palace of the Tuileries was sacked; the faithful Swiss guards were slain, and Louis sent to prison. The Jacobins were triumphant. They arrested all who spoke against their revolutionary projects; assassins were hired to go through the crowded prisons and murder the inmates. For four days during September the terrible carnival of blood raged.
The Prussian army was checked at Valmy, and soon recrossed the frontier. Then the Austrians were defeated at Jemmapes, and Belgium was proclaimed a republic. The leaders of the French revolution were electrified, and the next Assembly established a republic in France. The king was arraigned and guillotined. As the bleeding head tumbled into the basket the furious crowds shouted “Vive la Republique!” Europe was horrified, and a league, with England as its moving spirit, was formed to avenge the death of Louis. The royalists held Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyons and Toulon.
The Convention appointed a Committee of Safety, which knew neither mercy nor pity. Revolutionary tribunals were set up, and the work of slaughter began and raged with a ferocity beyond the power of imagination to conceive. To charge a person with being in sympathy with the aristocrats was his death warrant. Men saved themselves by denouncing their neighbors before their neighbors could denounce them. Intimate friends suspected each other, and members of the same family became mortal enemies.
Marie Antoinette, her head silvered by the awful woe and desolation and horror, perished on the same scaffold where her husband had died. At Lyons, the guillotine was too slow, and the victims were mowed down with grape-shot; at Nantes, boat-loads were rowed out and sunk in the Loire. The people were made frantic by their thirst for blood.