CHAPTER I
THE OPINIONS OF HISTORIANS CONCERNING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
1. The Historians of the Revolution.
The most contradictory opinions have been expressed respecting the French Revolution, and although only a century separates us from the period in question it seems impossible as yet to judge it calmly. For de Maistre it was ``a satanic piece of work,'' and ``never was the action of the spirit of darkness so evidently manifested.'' For the modern Jacobins it has regenerated the human race.
Foreigners who live in France still regard it as a subject to be avoided in conversation.
``Everywhere,'' writes Barrett Wendell, ``this memory and these traditions are still endowed with such vitality that few persons are capable of considering them dispassionately. They still excite both enthusiasm and resentment; they are still regarded with a loyal and ardent spirit of partisanship. The better you come to understand France the more clearly you see that even to- day no study of the Revolution strikes any Frenchman as having been impartial.''
This observation is perfectly correct. To be interpretable with equity, the events of the past must no longer be productive of results and must not touch the religious or political beliefs whose inevitable intolerance I have denoted.
We must not therefore be surprised that historians express very different ideas respecting the Revolution. For a long time to come some will still see in it one of the most sinister events of history, while to others it will remain one of the most glorious.
All writers on the subject have believed that they have related its course with impartiality, but in general they have merely supported contradictory theories of peculiar simplicity. The documents being innumerable and contradictory, their conscious or unconscious choice has readily enabled them to justify their respective theories.
The older historians of the Revolution—Thiers, Quinet, and, despite his talent, Michelet himself, are somewhat eclipsed to- day. Their doctrines were by no means complicated; a historic fatalism prevails generally in their work. Thiers regarded the Revolution as the result of several centuries of absolute monarchy, and the Terror as the necessary consequence of foreign invasion. Quinet described the excesses of 1793 as the result of a long-continued despotism, but declared that the tyranny of the Convention was unnecessary, and hampered the work of the Revolution. Michelet saw in this last merely the work of the people, whom he blindly admired, and commenced the glorification continued by other historians.