The most immediate shock caused the Britons by the changed aspect of the world, was given them by Paul Jones, an American naval officer. He took advantage of the French alliance to secure a little fleet, part American but mostly French; and with it he cruised boldly around Great Britain, bidding defiance to her navy and plundering her shores, in some faint imitation of the depredations her troops had committed in America. The fight of Jones in his flagship against the English frigate Serapis has become world-famous, and the grim resolution with which the American won his way to victory in face of apparent impossibilities, taught the Britons that on sea as well as on land they had met their match.[6]
For a time the island kingdom bore up against all her foes. The most famous of the many sieges of Gibraltar occurred; and for three years the French and Spanish fleets sought unavailingly to batter the stubborn rock into surrender.[7] But at last asecond British army was trapped and captured at Yorktown by the French and Americans.[8] Then England yielded. It was impossible for her longer to undertake the enormous task of transporting troops across three thousand miles of ocean. She needed them at home; and many of the English people had always protested against the fratricidal war with their brethren in America. American independence was acknowledged, and England was left free to demand a peace of her European foes.[9]
The antagonisms roused by this bitter war, in which British troops had repeatedly and cruelly ravaged the American lands and homes, were long in fading. Canada had stood loyally by Great Britain, and the break between the northern land and the other colonies was sharp and final. Even throughout the States which had become independent, a portion of the people had loyally upheld British rule; and on these unfortunates the liberated Americans threatened to wreak vengeance for all that had been endured. Thus came about a vast emigration of the "Tories" or Loyalists from the new States to Canada. They brought with them the bitterness of the expatriated, and Canada became yet more firmly British, more "anti-American" than before.[10]
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Of even greater influence were the consequences of the American Revolution as affecting Continental Europe. Estimates have differed widely as to just how much the French Revolution was caused by that across the ocean. Certain it is that Frenchmen had been enthusiastic in America's cause, that many of their officers fought under Washington, and returned home deeply infused with devotion to liberty. It has long been a popular error, encouraged by historians of a former generation, that the French Revolution arose from a starving peasantry driven to madness by intolerable oppression. We know better now. It was in Paris, not in the provinces, that the revolt began. Judged by modern standards, of course, the French peasantry were oppressed; but if we measure their condition by that of surrounding nations at the time, by the Austrians under kind-hearted Maria Theresa, or even by the Prussians under Frederick the Great, most advanced of the upholders of "benevolent despotism," in whose lands serfs were still "sold with the soil" compared with these, Frenchmen were free, prosperous, and happy. It is even true that the lower classes were unready for change. In Hungary, Joseph II, son of Maria Theresa, attempted a complete and radical reform of all abuses, and the mob rose in fury against his innovations, compelled him to restore their "ancient customs." They had grown familiar with their chains.[11]
The French Revolution was an uprising of the middle classes. Its great leaders in the earlier stages were Mirabeau, son of a baron, and America's own friend the Marquis Lafayette. Even the King, Louis XVI, at least partly approved the movement. The States-General was summoned in 1789 after an interval of nearly two centuries, to decide on the best way of relieving the country from its financial embarrassments. This gathering was soon resolved into a National Assembly which insisted on giving France a constitution, making it a limited instead of an absolute monarchy.[12]
On the 14th of July the mob of Paris rose in sudden fury and stormed the ancient state prison, the Bastille. The King sent no troops to resist them; and from that time his power was but a shadow. His overthrow, however, was not yet contemplated. The Revolution was still to be one of dignity and intellect. An entire year after the fall of the Bastille, the president of the National Assembly could still say in addressing a deputation of Americans headed by Paul Jones: "It was by helping you to conquer liberty that the French learned to understand and love it. The hands which went to burst your fetters were not made to wear them themselves; but, more fortunate than you, it is our King himself, it is a patriot and citizen king, who has called us to the happiness which we are enjoying that happiness which has cost us merely sacrifices, but which you paid for with torrents of blood Courage broke your chains; reason has made ours fall off."
But alas! reason was soon to lose control. The lower classes had wakened to a sense of their power, they began to use it savagely. Hatred of the haughty aristocracy, long smoldering, burst everywhere into flame. Mobs of country peasants plundered isolated chateaux and slew their inmates. Meanwhile the National Assembly had been abolishing all titles of nobility; the vast estates of the clergy were confiscated. The aristocrats began fleeing from France, and the possessions of all who fled were declared forfeited to the new government.
Imagine the tumult that this upheaval caused to the rest of Europe. News travelled slowly in those days; but these "émigrés," these banished nobles, were palpable evidences of what had occurred. The common folk everywhere, especially along the French borders in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, celebrated the French triumph as their own. Liberty was at hand! For them, too, it would come presently! Murmurings of revolt grew loud. The monarchs of Europe, terrified, took up the cause of the Émigrés as their own. France was threatened with invasion. King Louis threw in his lot with his royal friends and attempted flight from Paris. He was caught and brought back a prisoner. A foreign army marched against France.
This invasion was met and repelled in the Battle of Valmy (1792), not an extensive or bloody contest in itself, but one of incalculable importance in human history, because like Bunker Hill it showed that a new force had arisen to upset all the military calculations of the past. Raw troops could now be found to meet on equal terms with veterans. Liberty, hitherto an impalpable idea, a mere phantom in the brains of a few philosophers, proved able to call up armies at a word, able physically to hold its own against embattled despotism. Even the German Goethe wrote of Valmy, "In this place and on this day a new era of the world begins."[13]