From an old print
Louis XVI in the Hands of the Mob
Great events followed in swift succession. On July 14, 1789, the Bastille, an old royal prison, symbol of the king's absolutism, was stormed by a Paris crowd and destroyed. On the night of August 4, the feudal privileges of the nobility were abolished by the national assembly amid great excitement. A few days later came the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, proclaiming the sovereignty of the people and the privileges of citizens. In the autumn of 1791, Louis XVI was forced to accept a new constitution for France vesting the legislative power in a popular assembly. Little disorder accompanied these startling changes. To all appearances a peaceful revolution had stripped the French king of his royal prerogatives and based the government of his country on the consent of the governed.
American Influence in France.—In undertaking their great political revolt the French had been encouraged by the outcome of the American Revolution. Officers and soldiers, who had served in the American war, reported to their French countrymen marvelous tales. At the frugal table of General Washington, in council with the unpretentious Franklin, or at conferences over the strategy of war, French noblemen of ancient lineage learned to respect both the talents and the simple character of the leaders in the great republican commonwealth beyond the seas. Travelers, who had gone to see the experiment in republicanism with their own eyes, carried home to the king and ruling class stories of an astounding system of popular government.
On the other hand the dalliance with American democracy was regarded by French conservatives as playing with fire. "When we think of the false ideas of government and philanthropy," wrote one of Lafayette's aides, "which these youths acquired in America and propagated in France with so much enthusiasm and such deplorable success—for this mania of imitation powerfully aided the Revolution, though it was not the sole cause of it—we are bound to confess that it would have been better, both for themselves and for us, if these young philosophers in red-heeled shoes had stayed at home in attendance on the court."
Early American Opinion of the French Revolution.—So close were the ties between the two nations that it is not surprising to find every step in the first stages of the French Revolution greeted with applause in the United States. "Liberty will have another feather in her cap," exultantly wrote a Boston editor. "In no part of the globe," soberly wrote John Marshall, "was this revolution hailed with more joy than in America.... But one sentiment existed." The main key to the Bastille, sent to Washington as a memento, was accepted as "a token of the victory gained by liberty." Thomas Paine saw in the great event "the first ripe fruits of American principles transplanted into Europe." Federalists and Anti-Federalists regarded the new constitution of France as another vindication of American ideals.
The Reign of Terror.—While profuse congratulations were being exchanged, rumors began to come that all was not well in France. Many noblemen, enraged at the loss of their special privileges, fled into Germany and plotted an invasion of France to overthrow the new system of government. Louis XVI entered into negotiations with his brother monarchs on the continent to secure their help in the same enterprise, and he finally betrayed to the French people his true sentiments by attempting to escape from his kingdom, only to be captured and taken back to Paris in disgrace.
A new phase of the revolution now opened. The working people, excluded from all share in the government by the first French constitution, became restless, especially in Paris. Assembling on the Champs de Mars, a great open field, they signed a petition calling for another constitution giving them the suffrage. When told to disperse, they refused and were fired upon by the national guard. This "massacre," as it was called, enraged the populace. A radical party, known as "Jacobins," then sprang up, taking its name from a Jacobin monastery in which it held its sessions. In a little while it became the master of the popular convention convoked in September, 1792. The monarchy was immediately abolished and a republic established. On January 21, 1793, Louis was sent to the scaffold. To the war on Austria, already raging, was added a war on England. Then came the Reign of Terror, during which radicals in possession of the convention executed in large numbers counter-revolutionists and those suspected of sympathy with the monarchy. They shot down peasants who rose in insurrection against their rule and established a relentless dictatorship. Civil war followed. Terrible atrocities were committed on both sides in the name of liberty, and in the name of monarchy. To Americans of conservative temper it now seemed that the Revolution, so auspiciously begun, had degenerated into anarchy and mere bloodthirsty strife.
Burke Summons the World to War on France.—In England, Edmund Burke led the fight against the new French principles which he feared might spread to all Europe. In his Reflections on the French Revolution, written in 1790, he attacked with terrible wrath the whole program of popular government; he called for war, relentless war, upon the French as monsters and outlaws; he demanded that they be reduced to order by the restoration of the king to full power under the protection of the arms of European nations.
Paine's Defense of the French Revolution.—To counteract the campaign of hate against the French, Thomas Paine replied to Burke in another of his famous tracts, The Rights of Man, which was given to the American public in an edition containing a letter of approval from Jefferson. Burke, said Paine, had been mourning about the glories of the French monarchy and aristocracy but had forgotten the starving peasants and the oppressed people; had wept over the plumage and neglected the dying bird. Burke had denied the right of the French people to choose their own governors, blandly forgetting that the English government in which he saw final perfection itself rested on two revolutions. He had boasted that the king of England held his crown in contempt of the democratic societies. Paine answered: "If I ask a man in America if he wants a king, he retorts and asks me if I take him for an idiot." To the charge that the doctrines of the rights of man were "new fangled," Paine replied that the question was not whether they were new or old but whether they were right or wrong. As to the French disorders and difficulties, he bade the world wait to see what would be brought forth in due time.
The Effect of the French Revolution on American Politics.—The course of the French Revolution and the controversies accompanying it, exercised a profound influence on the formation of the first political parties in America. The followers of Hamilton, now proud of the name "Federalists," drew back in fright as they heard of the cruel deeds committed during the Reign of Terror. They turned savagely upon the revolutionists and their friends in America, denouncing as "Jacobin" everybody who did not condemn loudly enough the proceedings of the French Republic. A Massachusetts preacher roundly assailed "the atheistical, anarchical, and in other respects immoral principles of the French Republicans"; he then proceeded with equal passion to attack Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists, whom he charged with spreading false French propaganda and betraying America. "The editors, patrons, and abettors of these vehicles of slander," he exclaimed, "ought to be considered and treated as enemies to their country.... Of all traitors they are the most aggravatedly criminal; of all villains, they are the most infamous and detestable."