While France was thus disturbed, the progress of reform in other states was unimpeded; the rulers of Spain and Portugal improved their kingdoms by institutions for the protection of trade, and by placing checks on the exorbitant powers of the clergy. They joined in an effort to chastise the piratical powers in the Mediterranean, but the strength of the Algerine capital frustrated the attempt. The emperor Joseph and his brother Leopold, grand duke of Tuscany, distinguished themselves by enacting new and salutary codes of law; they abolished the use of torture to extort confessions, and they greatly limited the number of offences to which the penalty was affixed. Their example was followed by the emperess Catherine, whose code was the greatest blessing that her glorious reign conferred on Russia; and even the sultan evinced a desire to improve the institutions of Turkey.

But the course of events in France soon inspired all the sovereigns of Europe with a horror of innovation. After the dismissal of the notables, M. de Brienne, archbishop of Toulouse, had become minister of finance, and he soon involved himself in a dispute with the parliaments, by refusing to produce the accounts, which they insisted on examining before registering any new edicts of taxation. The great object of the parliament was to maintain the immunities of the privileged orders; the minister justly recommended a less partial system, when his opponents, yielding to temporary irritation, demanded the convocation of the states-general. The nobles and the clergy joined in the demand, without any expectation of its being granted, but merely to annoy the court; the people, however, took up the matter in earnest, and determined to enforce compliance. Various schemes were tried by the archbishop to overcome this powerful opposition, but all his plans were disconcerted by the obstinacy of the parliaments, and the king, finding every expedient fail, consented to recall Necker (A. D. 1788). At the same time, a solemn promise was given for the speedy assembly of the states-general, a body that had not been convened since the year 1614.

Before the assembling of this legislative body, it was necessary to determine the number of representatives that should be sent by each of the three orders, the nobles, the clergy, and the people; the majority of the notables voted that an equal number of deputies should be sent by the respective classes, but it was subsequently determined that the representatives of the third estate should equal in number those of the nobles and clergy conjoined. The king declared that the three estates should form separate chambers, but this very important matter was not so definitely fixed as to prevent future discussion. On the 5th of May, 1780, the states-general met at Versailles, and the democratic party, confident in its strength, demanded that the three orders should sit and vote together. After a short struggle, the court was compelled to concede this vital point, and the united bodies took the name of the National Assembly.

A spirit of insubordination began to appear in Paris, caused in some degree by the pressure of famine; artful and ambitious men fanned the rising flame, and directed the popular indignation against the king and his family. The arms in the Hospital of Invalids were seized by the mob, and the insurgents immediately proceeded to attack the Bastile, or

state-prison of Paris. After a brief resistance, the governor, having an insufficient garrison, capitulated, but the conditions of the surrender were not observed by the infuriate multitude; the governor was torn to pieces, and many of the soldiers inhumanly massacred. Louis, greatly alarmed, tried by every means to conciliate his subjects; he removed the regular troops from Paris and Versailles, intrusting the defence of the capital to a body of civic militia, called the National Guards. The command of this new force was intrusted to the marquis de la Fayette, who had acquired great popularity by his liberal sentiments and his services to the cause of freedom in the American war. But all the king's concessions failed to conciliate the democratic, or rather, as we may henceforth call it, the republican party; relying on the support of the Parisian populace, the leaders of this band resolved that the legislature should be removed to the capital, and a mob was secretly instigated to make the demand. A crowd of the lowest rabble, accompanied by some of the national guards, proceeded to Versailles, the palace was violently entered, several of its defenders slain, and the king compelled instantly to set out for Paris, a prisoner in the hands of a licentious crowd, whose insults and indecencies were revolting to human

nature.

This atrocious outrage may fairly be regarded as the commencement of the French Revolution; thenceforth the royal authority was an empty name, and all the ancient forms of government set aside; visionaries indulged in speculations on a new order of things, ardent patriots hoped to establish a constitution more perfect than the world ever yet had witnessed, but the base and the depraved sought to gain their own selfish ends by stimulating popular violence; and the last class was the only one whose expectations were realized.

SECTION VI.-The French Revolution.

FROM the moment that Louis XVI. was brought a prisoner to his capital, the ancient constitution of France was overthrown; the monarchy continued to exist only in name, and the abolition of feudal rights, the extinction of hereditary titles, and the secularization of ecclesiastical property, established popular sovereignty on the ruins of the ancient structure. Several German princes, who had possessions in Alsace, protested against these violent changes, but the popular rulers would not listen to any proposal of a compromise, and thus the leaders of the revolution were embroiled with the empire in the very outset of their career. A club, called from its place of meeting, the Jacobin Association, was formed by the leading democrats, and from this body denunciations were issued against all who were believed favorable to the ancient institutions of the country. Through the machinations of the Jacobins, popular hatred was directed against the court, and violent tumults excited in various parts of France. Infinitely more dangerous to the repose of Europe were the emigrations of the nobles, who were dissatisfied with the revolution; instead of remaining at home and organizing a constitutional resistance, they resolved to seek the restoration of the old government, with all its abuses, by the intervention of foreign powers. A meeting and conference took place at Pilnitz, be

tween the emperor of Germany, the king of Prussia, and the elector of Saxony; the Count d'Artois, brother to the French monarch, and head of the emigrants, came uninvited, and he engaged the sovereigns to issue a vague declaration in favor of the rights of kings. Louis, wearied by the violence of the Jacobins, the licentiousness of the Parisian mob, and the disappointments he was daily forced to meet, resolved to escape from the captivity in which he was detained, and seek refuge on the frontiers. He fled from Paris, accompanied by his queen and children, but was unfortunately discovered at Varennes, seized, and brought back a prisoner to his capital. This failure exposed the royal family to suspicions of which the Jacobins took advantage; but the more moderate of the patriots were for a time sufficiently powerful to restrain their violence; and after a long deliberation, hey prepared a constitutional code, which was tendered to the king for acceptance. The readiness with which Louis assented to this instrument of government, and his frank communication of his satisfaction with the arrangement to his ambassadors at the different European courts, for a time restored his popularity. The emperor Leopold notified to the other powers that all danger of war was averted, and the external and internal tranquillity of France seemed to be assured.

But the constitution, thus established, could not be permanent; it was itself defective; and the minds of the French people, once animated by the desire of change, could not rest satisfied with any fixed form of government. The assembly by which it had been framed was dissolved, and a new legislative body chosen, according to the system recently established, and in this assembly the more violent partisans of democracy had more influence than in the preceding. It was the great object of the revolutionary party to involve the kingdom in foreign war; and the suspicious proceedings of the emigrants, their intrigues in the German courts, and the avowed determination of the emperor to maintain the feudal rights of the German princes in Alsace, furnished plausible pretexts for the commencement of hostilities. The death of the emperor Leopold accelerated a rupture; his successor, Francis II., continued to make alarming military preparations, and on his refusal to give any satisfactory explanation, Louis was compelled to declare war against him (A. D. 1792). But the strife of parties in the royal cabinet and the national assembly, led to such confusion in the councils of the French, that their armies, though superior in number, were defeated with loss and disgrace; while the Jacobins, whose intrigues were the real cause of these misfortunes, ascribed them to royalist treachery, and to the influence that Austrian councils possessed over the court from its connexion with the queen. These malignant slanders, industriously circulated, and generally believed, stimulated the Parisian mob to disgraceful acts of violence and disorder, against which La Fayette and the friends of rational liberty protested in vain.

A new incident gave fresh strength to the Jacobin party; Frederic William, king of Prussia, engaged to co-operate with the emperor Francis to restore the royal authority in France; their united forces were placed under the command of the duke of Brunswick; and this prince issued a sanguinary and insulting manifesto, which had the effect of uniting all the French factions in the defence of their common

country. A declaration issued soon after by the emigrant brothers and relatives of Louis, in which the revolution was bitterly condemned. proved still more injurious to the unfortunate king; scarcely did intelligence of the publication reach Paris, when the palace was attacked by an infuriate mob, the Swiss guards ruthlessly massacred, and Louis with his family, forced to seek shelter in the hall of the national assem bly. The deputies protected his person, but they suspended his regal functions, and committed him a prisoner to a building called the Temple, from having been once a monastery of the knights of that order.

La Fayette was equally surprised and indignant at these outrages of the Jacobins; he tried to keep the army firm in its allegiance; but all his exertions not being sufficient to accomplish this result, he fled into the Netherlands, when he was seized and imprisoned by the Austrians for his former opposition to the royal power. He was succeeded in the command of the army by Dumouriez, who made energetic preparations to resist the coming invasion. Confident in their strength, the allied armies entered France with the proudest anticipations, and their rapid progress in the beginning seemed to promise the most decisive results. To diminish the number of their internal enemies, Robespierre, Marat, and other chiefs of the Jacobins, planned the mas sacre of all the suspected persons confined in the prisons of Paris, and this diabolical plot was executed by the licentious populace. Similar horrors were perpetrated in other parts of France; a reign of terro was established, and no man dared to remonstrate against these shocking excesses. In the meantime the invaders had met with unexpected reverses; trusting to the representations of the emigrants, that the revolution had been the work of a few agitators, not of the nation, and that there was a general reaction in favor of royalty, the allies had advanced without providing adequate stores, and when they received a check at Valmy, their camp was attacked by famine and disease; they were soon compelled to retreat, and to purchase an inglorious security by resigning the fortresses they had occupied. Dumouriez pursued the Austrians into the Netherlands, and gained a decisive victory, which encouraged the Belgians to throw off the imperial yoke; Flanders and Brabant were soon in possession of the victors, and their arms had made considerable progress in the reduction of Luxemburg. The convention, as the national assembly began to be called, having made their own country a republic, resolved to extend the revolution into other states; they offered their alliance to every nation that desired to recover its liberties, and they ordered the ancient constitutions of all the countries occupied by the French troops to be subverted. As the republican arms had conquered Savoy, and were fast gaining ground in Germany, the adoption of such a decree was virtually a declaration of war against all the kings of Europe.

The Jacobins, aided by the Parisian mob, and still more by the cowardice and indecision of their opponents, were now masters of the convention, and the first use they made of their power was to bring the unfortunate king to trial, on the ridiculous charge of his having engaged in a conspiracy for the subversion of freedom. Louis defended himself with great spirit and energy, but his judges were predetermined on his conviction: six hundred and eighty-three deputies pronounced him

guilty of treason against the sovereignty of the nation, while there were only thirty-seven who took a more favorable view of his conduct. A motion for an appeal to the people was rejected; but the sentence of death was passed by a very inconsiderable majority, and this probably induced the Jacobins to hasten the execution. On the twenty-first of January, 1793, the unfortunate Louis was guillotined in his capital city; and the severity of his fate was aggravated by the insults of his cruel executioners.

This judicial murder excited general indignation throughout Europe; Chauvelin, the French ambassador, was dismissed from the British court, and many persons in England, who had hitherto applauded the efforts of the French people, became vehement opposers of revolutionary principles. A similar result was produced in Holland, where the government had been justly alarmed by the progress of the French in the Netherlands.

The convention did not wait to be attacked; a vote was passed that the republic was at war with the king of England and the stadtholder of Holland, by which artful phraseology it was intended to draw a marked distinction between the sovereign and the pers of both countries. Spain was soon after added to the enemies of France, and the new republic had to contend against a coalition of all the leading powers of Europe. None of the allies threatened more loudly than the emperess Catherine; she had just concluded a successful war against Turkey, in which her general, Suwaroff, had won a large addition of erritory for his mistress, and the power of Russia in the Black sea was secured; she had also triumphed over the king of Sweden, more, nowever, by the insubordination of her rival's officers, than by the valor of her own troops. Poland was in everything but name subjected to Russia, and the empress was secretly maturing a plan to blot that country from the list of nations. As the coalition against the French republic was regarded as a war in the defence of the rights of kings, it was intended that a king should be placed at the head of the allied armies; and Gustavus, who had subverted the free constitution of Sweden, offered his services; but while he was preparing for the expedition, a conspiracy was formed against him by his discontented nobles, and he was murdered at a masked ball by Ankarstrom, an officer who believed hin self personally injured by the king (A. D. 1792). After the death of Gustavus, the insincerity of Catherine became more manifest; she issued violent proclamations against the French, but carefully abstained from active hostility; indeed, it was manifestly her purpose to involve he continental powers in a war, which would prevent them from watching too jealously the aggrandizement of Russia.

The English and Prussians, deeming the defence of Holland a mat.er of primary importance, combined to check the progress of Dumouriez, who had overrun Dutch Brabant, with little opposition (A. D. 1793). But the progress of the Austrians, on the side of Germany, stopped the French in their career of conquest. Dumouriez quitted Holland to defend Louvain; he suffered a complete defeat at Neer-winden, by which his soldiers were so discouraged, that they deserted in great numbers. Dumouriez, finding himself suspected by the two great parties which divided the republic, and weary of the disorganized state of