A history of England

by Charles Oman

The obvious weakness of the king encouraged the friends of revolution all over France to assert themselves. On July 14, 1789, the mob of Paris stormed the Bastille—the old state prison of the capital—and massacred the garrison. The king made no attempt to resent this riot and murder. Then followed a rapid series of constitutional decrees, by which the Assembly, backed by the pikes of the Parisian mob, abolished all the ancient despotic and feudal customs of the realm. It seemed for a moment as if a solid constitutional monarchy might be established. But the king was too feeble, and the reformers too rash and wild. The taint of riot and murder hung about all their doings, and they were constantly calling in the mob to their aid. Foreseeing a catastrophe, the greater part of the French royal family and noblesse fled the realm. Ere long the king became little better than a prisoner in his own palace.

English sympathy with the Revolution.

These doings across the Channel keenly interested England. At first they met with general approval. It looked as if France was about to become a limited monarchy; and as the personal and dynastic ambition of the Bourbons had always been the cause of our wars with them, English public opinion looked with favour on the substitution of the power of the National Assembly for that of the king. It was thought that France, under a constitutional government founded on English models, could not fail to become the friend of England. Pitt expressed in a guarded way his approbation of the earlier stages of the Revolution. Fox became its vehement admirer and panegyrist; he exclaimed that the storming of the Bastille was the greatest and best event in modern history, conveniently ignoring the cold-blooded massacre of its garrison which had followed. The greater part of the Whig party followed their chief, and expressed unqualified praise for the doings of the French. Some of the more enthusiastic members of the party visited France and corresponded with the leaders of the Revolution; others formed political clubs to encourage and support the reformers across the Channel.

The reaction.—Criticisms of Burke.

But the mood of generous admiration and universal approval could not last for long. As the Revolution went on developing, while the outbursts of mob violence in France grew more frequent, and the National Assembly plunged into all manner of violence and arbitrary legislation, there began to be a schism in English public opinion. Fox and the more vehement Whigs still persisted in finding nothing to blame across the Channel, explaining the violent deeds of the Parisians as mere effervescence of the mercurial French temperament. But, curiously enough, it was a Whig, and one who never tired of singing the praises of our own Revolution of 1688, who was the first prophet of evil for the French movement. Edmund Burke, Fox's old colleague and ally, was an exponent of that view of constitutional liberty which looked on mob-law as even worse than the despotism of kings. He fixed his eyes on the murderous riots in Paris and the spectacle of the humiliation of Lewis XVI., not on the fair promises of a golden age made by the milder French reformers. The prospect of anarchy shocked him, and he used his unrivalled eloquence to warn the English nation to have nothing to do with a people of assassins and atheists. "When a separation once appears between liberty and law, neither is safe" was his cry. And, unlikely as it appeared at first, Burke was entirely in the right. Nothing which he predicted of the French Revolution could exceed the realities which ere long came to pass.

Attempted flight of Lewis XVI.

The consciousness of their own uncontrolled power was turning the brain of the French Assembly, and maddening the Parisian populace. They were irritated, but not checked, by the weak resistance and futile evasions of Lewis XVI. At last they persuaded themselves that the king and the nobility were conspiring to take away their newly won liberties, while in reality Lewis and his nobles alike were paralyzed with dread, and only thinking of saving themselves. In the summer of 1791 the unfortunate king took the fatal step of trying to escape by stealth from Paris. He stole away in disguise with his wife and children, and had got half-way to the eastern frontier before his absence was discovered. A chance caused his stoppage and discovery at Varennes; he was seized and sent back to Paris, where he was for the future treated as a prisoner, not as a king.

Intervention of Austria and Prussia.

From this moment it was the fixed belief in France that Lewis had been about to fly to Germany, in order to incite the despotic monarchs of Austria and Prussia against his country. In the Assembly the wilder party began to come to the front, preaching republicanism, and crying that France could not be saved by constitutional reforms, but required blood-letting. Ere long the symptoms of violence and anarchy, which had frightened Burke in England, exercised a still stronger effect on the rulers of the continent. Francis of Austria and Frederic William II. of Prussia, alarmed as to the republican propaganda in France, and warned by the fate of their fellow-king, began to concentrate their armies on the Rhine, and to concert measures for putting down the Revolution. On learning their plans, the French Assembly declared war on them in April, 1792. But at first their raw levies fared ill against the Germans; defeat—as always in France—was followed by the cry of treason, and on the 10th of August the Parisian mob stormed the Tuileries, slew the king's guards, and called for his deposition.

A Republic proclaimed.—The September massacres.