As for France, she had played a rather pitiful rôle during the long reign of Louis XIV's great grandson, Louis XV (1715–1774). She had, however, been able to increase her territory by the addition of Lorraine (1766) and, in 1768, of the island of Corsica. A year later a child was born in the Corsican town of Ajaccio, who one day, by his genius, was to make France the center for a time of an empire rivaling that of Charlemagne in extent. When the nineteenth century opened France was no longer a monarchy, but a republic; and her armies were to occupy in turn every European capital, from Madrid to Moscow. In order to understand the marvelous transformations produced by the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, we must consider somewhat carefully the conditions in France which led to a great reform of her institutions in 1789, and to the founding of a republic four years later.
General Reading.—For the French in America, Parkman, The Pioneers of France in the New World (Little, Brown & Co., $2.00), also A Half Century of Conflict (same publisher, 2 vols., $6.00). For India, Malleson, Clive (Oxford, University Press, 60 cents), and Macaulay's Essay on Clive. For the growth of the British Empire, H. de B. Gibbins, History of Commerce in Europe (The Macmillan Company, 90 cents), and Seeley, The Expansion of England (Little, Brown & Co., $1.75).
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
209. When we meet the words "French Revolution," they are pretty sure to call up before our mind's eye the guillotine and its hundreds of victims, the storming of the Bastile, the Paris mob shouting the Marseillaise hymn as they parade the streets with heads of unfortunate "aristocrats" on their pikes. Every one knows something of this terrible episode in French history. Indeed, it has made so deep an impression on posterity that we sometimes forget that the Reign of Terror was not the French Revolution. Mere disorder and bloodshed never helped mankind along; and the Revolution must assuredly have produced some great and lasting alteration in France and in Europe to deserve to be ranked—as it properly is—with the Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt, as one of the three most momentous changes of the last six hundred years. The Reign of Terror was, in fact, only a sequel to the real Revolution.
The Ancien Régime.
The French Revolution, in the truest sense of the term, was a great and permanent reform, which did away with many absurd and vexatious laws and customs, and with abuses of which the whole nation was heartily tired, from the king down to the humblest peasant. Whenever a Frenchman, in the eighteenth century, seriously considered the condition of his country, most of the institutions in the midst of which he lived appeared to him to be abuses, contrary to reason and humanity. These vicious institutions,—relics of bygone times and outlived conditions,—which the Revolution destroyed forever, are known by the general name Ancien Régime, that is, "the old system." Whole volumes have been written about the causes of the French Revolution. The real cause is, however, easily stated; the old system was bad, and almost every one, both high and low, had come to realize that it was bad, and consequently the French did away with it and substituted a modern and more rational order for the long-standing disorder.
France not a well-organized state in the eighteenth century.