These considerations help to show why the Revolution, which was after twenty-six years to inaugurate modern Europe, broke out in France. It was because the French peasant was more independent, more wealthy, and better educated than the German serf, that he resented the political and social privileges of his landlord and the payment of rent, more than the serf objected to his bondage. It was because France possessed an enlightened middle class that the peasants and workmen found leaders. It was because Frenchmen had been in the possession of a great measure of personal freedom that they were ready to strike a blow for political liberty, and eventually promulgated the idea of social equality. The ideas of the sovereignty of the people, of nationality and of personal liberty, did not originate in France. They are as old as civilisation. But they had been clouded in the Middle Ages by feudalism, and, after the Reformation, had been succeeded by different political conceptions, which had crystallised in the eighteenth century into the doctrines of the supremacy of the State, of the arbitrary rule of benevolent or enlightened despots. England and Holland had developed separately from the rest of the Western World. For reasons lying deep in their internal history and their geographical position, they had rid themselves alike of feudalism and absolute monarchy; they had developed a sense of their independent nationality, and had recognised the importance of personal freedom. In England especially, the abolition of the relics of feudalism in the seventeenth century had placed the English farmers and peasants in a different economical position from their fellows on the Continent. There existed in England none of the invidious distinctions between nobleman and roturier in the matter of bearing national burdens, which had survived in France, and, though owing to the curiosities of the franchise the larger proportion of Englishmen had but a very small share in electing the representatives of the people, the government carried on as it was by a small oligarchy of great families possessed an appearance of political liberty, and of a wisely-balanced machine for administrative purposes.
Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century.
Nor must the influence of intellectual ideas, as bearing on problems which the French Revolution was to force on the attention of the more backward and more oppressed nations of Europe, be underrated. The great French writers of the eighteenth century—Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, and Rousseau—had been deeply impregnated with the ideas of Locke and the English political thinkers of his school. In their different lines they insisted that government existed for the good of the governed, and investigated the origins of government and the relations of man in the social state. It was their speculations which altered the character of absolute monarchy and based its retention on its benevolent purposes; they, too, insisted upon the rights of man to preserve his personal freedom, as long as it did not clash with the maintenance and security of civil society. The great French writers of the eighteenth century exercised by their works a smaller influence on the outbreak and actual course of the French Revolution than has been generally supposed. The causes of the movement were chiefly economical and political, not philosophical or social: its rapid development was due to historical circumstances, and mainly to the attitude of the rest of Europe. But the text-books of its leaders were the works of the French thinkers of the eighteenth century, and if their doctrines had little actual influence in bringing about the Revolution, they influenced its development and the extension of its principles throughout Europe. It is curious to contrast the opinions of the great French writers of the middle of the eighteenth century, whose arguments mainly affected the general conceptions of man living in society, that is, of government, with the views advocated by the great German writers of the end of the century, who concentrated their attention upon man in his individual capacity for culture and self-improvement. Schiller, Goethe, Kant, and Herder were, further, more cosmopolitan than German. The problems of man and his intellectual and artistic development proved more attractive to the great German thinkers than the difficulties presented by the economical, social, and political diversities of different classes of society. Goethe, for instance, understood the signification of the French Revolution, and was much interested in its effects on the human race, but he cared very little about its impression on Germany.
Morality and Religion in the eighteenth century.
Finally, the low state of morality in the eighteenth century had sapped the earnestness in the cause of humanity of men of all classes in all countries. Disbelief in the Christian religion was general in both the Protestant and Catholic countries of the Continent. The immorality of most of the prelates in Catholic countries was notorious, and was equalled by their avowed contempt for the doctrines of the religion they professed to teach. The Protestant pastors of Germany were quite as open in their infidelity. In the famous case of Schulz, the pastor of Gielsdorf, who openly denied Christianity, and taught simply that morality was necessary, the High Consistory of Berlin held that he was, nevertheless, still fitted to hold his office as the Lutheran pastor of his village. Christianity in both Catholic and Protestant countries was replaced by the vague sentiments of morality, which are best presented in Rousseau’s Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard. In reaction to this vague and dogmaless morality, there existed many secret societies and coteries of mystics, such as the Rosati and the Illuminati, who replaced religion by ornate and symbolical ceremonies.
Such was the political, economical, intellectual and moral state of Europe in 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution. The whole continent was to pass through twenty-six years of almost unceasing war, at the end of which it was to emerge with new conceptions and new ideals of both political and social life. The new ideas seemed indeed to be checked, if not destroyed, in 1815, but once inspired into men’s minds they could not be forgotten, and their subsequent development forms the history of modern Europe in the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER I
1789
The Treaty of 1756 between France and Austria—The Triple Alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland, 1788—The Minor Powers of Europe—Austria: Joseph ii.—His Internal Policy—His Foreign Policy—Russia: Catherine—Poland—France: Louis xvi.—Spain: Charles iv.—Portugal: Maria i.—Italy—The Two Sicilies: Ferdinand iv.—Naples—Sicily—Rome: Pope Pius vi.—Tuscany: Grand Duke Leopold—Parma: Duke Ferdinand—Modena: Duke Hercules iii.—Lombardy—Sardinia: Victor Amadeus iii.—Lucca—Genoa—Venice—England: George iii.—The Policy of Pitt—Prussia: Frederick William ii.—Policy of Prussia—Holland—Denmark: Christian vii.—Sweden: Gustavus iii.—The Holy Roman Empire—The Diet—The Electors—College of Princes—College of Free Cities—The Imperial Tribunal—The Aulic Council—The Circles—The Princes of Germany—Bavaria—Baden—Würtemburg—Saxony—Saxe-Weimar—The Ecclesiastical Princes—Mayence—Trêves—Cologne—The Petty Princes and Knights of the Empire—Switzerland—Geneva—Conclusion.
The Treaty of 1756.