THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
I have not attempted in this small volume to write a history of the French Revolution. The events of that dramatic narrative have been sketched by many hands and are to be found in a hundred histories. They hardly need retelling now. I have rather endeavoured, while taking for granted some knowledge of the story, to supply what handbooks generally have not space to give, and to collect in a convenient form some of the information, the suggestions and ideas which are to be found in larger books of comment and enquiry. Works like those of M. de Tocqueville, M. Taine, M. Michelet, M. Louis Blanc, and Professor Von Sybel are not always easily obtained. Their cost and their length alike render them inaccessible to those whom time and necessity compel to be superficial students. I have therefore tried to summarise to a certain extent what these and other writers tell us; to dwell on some economic and political aspects of French society before the Revolution; to explain the more obvious reasons why the Revolution came; to show why the men who made it, failed, in spite of all their fine enthusiasm, to attain the liberty which they so ardently desired, or to found the new order which they hoped to see in France; to describe how, by what arts and accidents, and owing to what deeper causes, an inconspicuous minority gradually grew into a victorious party, and assumed the direction of events; to point out in what way external circumstances kept the revolutionary fever up, and forced the Revolution forward, when the necessity for its advance seemed to many to be over, and its own authors wished it to pause; and to make clearer, if I could, to others, what has always been to me the mystery of the time, the real character and aims of the men who grasped the supreme power in 1793-4, who held it with such a combination of energy and folly, of heroism and crime, and who proceeded, through anarchy and terror, to experiment how social misery could be extinguished and universal felicity attained, by drastic philosophic remedies, applied by despots and enforced by death. History offers no problem of more surpassing interest, and none more perplexing or obscure.
I am not conscious of approaching the subject with a bias in favour of any party. I have no cause to plead for or against any individual or group of men. I have tried to read all sides, and to allow for those deep-rooted prejudices which seem to make most Frenchmen incapable of judging the event. But when, on the information before me, the facts seem clear, I have not hesitated to praise, or censure, or condemn. I will only add that I have considered very carefully the judgments which I have expressed, though I cannot hope that they will recommend themselves to all alike.
Books of this kind cannot well lay claim to much originality, and I do not pretend to have kept pace with the constantly accumulating literature, which the French press produces on this question every year. I have used freely the works of such modern writers as M. de Tocqueville, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Morse Stephens, and others, and my obligations to them are plain. On M. Taine's great work, too, I have drawn largely, and while allowing for bias in the author, and while fully admitting that M. Taine's method tends to destroy one's sense of proportion, and in some degree to give a blurred and exaggerated impression of the facts, still I cannot question the weight and value of the mass of information which he has collected, and no one can fairly overlook the lessons which it tells. Besides these books, I think I may say that I have read and consulted most of the materials in histories, memoirs, biographies, and elsewhere, which the many well-known French writers on the subject have supplied, and I have paid particular attention to the voluminous histories of M. Louis Blanc and of M. Mortimer-Ternaux, to the correspondence of Mirabeau and La Marck, to the memoirs and writings of Bailly, Ferrières, Mallet du Pan, Madame Roland, and M. de Pontécoulant, to the biographies of the great Jacobin leaders, especially those by M. Hamel and M. Robinet, and to the valuable and important works of M. Sorel, of Professor Schmidt, and of Professor Von Sybel. This list is not complete or comprehensive; but I hope it is enough to justify the opinions which I have formed.
At the end, I have given, in a short appendix, a list of well-known books upon the period, which may perhaps be of use to students, who wish to go more fully into the subject for themselves.