7. From 1791, the history of the Revolution is a recital of factious quarrels, and of wars with the rest of Europe. These latter did not cease until the battle of Waterloo, in 1815.
8. European sovereigns watched the progress of the Revolution with anxiety. No people would have the same respect for monarchy and kingly authority, if the French were successful in overthrowing their government. Kings made common cause against the common danger and resolved to crush this uprising in France. Frederick William II, King of Prussia, Emperor Leopold II of Austria and his successor Francis II were the first to make war on the French. The French armies were so badly beaten at first that the mob in Paris believed that those around the king were giving information to the enemy. They accordingly made the king an actual prisoner to prevent further betrayals. Thereupon the Duke of Brunswick, in command of the Prussian army on the borders of France, issued a proclamation threatening destruction to Paris if harm should be done to the French king. Straightway the mob attacked the palace in which the king was prisoner and massacred the Swiss guards. This was on the tenth of August, 1792, a memorable day in the history of France.
9. On the twentieth of September the battle of Valmy was fought, in which the French defeated their enemies decisively. The next day the Republic was formally established, and on the twenty-second began Year One of the French Republic. In the January following, the king was executed. Prussia, Austria, England, Holland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Holy See, and Russia now combined to crush the young republic and restore monarchy. La Vendée, one of the western districts of France, rose against the radical changes introduced by the Revolution.
10. The National Assembly was succeeded by the Convention, among whose members dissensions arose and produced the Reign of Terror, from June to October, 1793. Among the excesses of this period was the abolition of the Christian religion in France and the substitution therefor of the worship of the Goddess of Reason.
11. The causes which led the French people to rise and overthrow its oppressors are fivefold:
(a). A despotic government. Over a century before the Revolution, Louis XIV had said, "L'état, c'est moi." In his opinion the people existed merely for him to tax, and despise in exact proportion to the burdens which they bore. His successors held the same doctrine. For nearly two centuries no king had summoned the national legislative body to make laws and lay taxes. Successive kings had, by royal decree, enacted such laws as they had seen fit, and had enforced them as they pleased. They arrested, imprisoned, and executed citizens, almost as they wished. Their taxation was extravagant, for the most part unnecessary, unreasonable, and brutal. They lived scandalous lives utterly regardless of their responsibility to their people. Their courts were notorious for extravagance, frivolity and vice.
(b). Another cause was a contemptible nobility. In profligacy the nobles imitated the kings. They despised their people, and robbed them of the little left by the king's tax collectors. They had many ancient feudal privileges but were unwilling to relinquish any of them to help the people. The nobility, like the clergy, on the pretext of saving their dignity exempted themselves from the necessity of paying taxes.
(c). The clergy. It has sometimes happened that oppression of the people by religious organizations has been commensurate with the tyranny of the ruling classes. On this account the oppressors representing religion have been despised by the people, quite as much as lay tyrants. The higher clergy, who were lords over nearly one fifth of the land of France, did not treat their vassals appreciably better than did the nobility. During the violence at the outbreak of the Revolution the people in some parts of France burned castles, churches, and monasteries alike. As Erckmann and Chatrian say in another work, "The peasants were weary of monasteries and châteaux; they wished to till the fields for themselves."
(d). The condition of the people. The life, liberty, and property of the peasant were at the mercy of the king and the upper classes. Yet the condition of the peasant was not utterly bad. He seems to have been oppressed because he was not intelligent enough to better himself.
(e). Taxation. It was a recognized principle of the French government, that the people might be forced to pay taxes and to build roads at pleasure. If the peasant did not pay taxes by the time appointed, collectors went to his home and seized whatever would satisfy the claim, even taking clothes laid on bushes to dry, and sometimes going so far as to remove doors from their hinges, or to take beams and boards from the buildings and carry them away in place of taxes.