French History from Caesar to Waterloo by Agnes Robinson

Author:Agnes Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endymion Press

CHAPTER VI. THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY

And now begin ten years which loom so large in History, we scarcely can believe they merely were ten years. The Revolution, like a fiery plough, cut through France a fertilizing furrow, deep and unspeakably cruel, yet on the whole salutary. It buried out of sight all that hitherto had caught the eye and glittered, while it lifted out of the depths, in a supreme upheaval, fresh beds of virgin soil full of growth and unsuspected vigour of production.

In those ten years what an eddying dance of the whirligig of Time! The Revolution did not at once define its aim, which was the combination of liberty and unity: when a new idea comes into being it seldom springs full-fledged from the nest! The first conception of the men of ‘89 was a federation of provinces, each retaining its own essential life and character. They saw the State as a community of communities. It was the mediaeval pre-Renaissance view; but all the modern democracies still were federal: Switzerland with her concert of cantons, the United Provinces of the Netherlands; and those United States of America which France had helped to liberate and which, naturally enough, appeared especially a model to copy. And there were others in the State who admired the supple strength of the British Constitution and recommended it for imitation.

The French Republic was to be like none of these, but forged in tyranny and terror to such a degree of unity and patriotic energy as the world had not yet witnessed. Those men of ‘89 will, for the most part, die on the scaffold, accused of federalism as though it were a crime, the blackest form of treason - as perhaps indeed it was, at that moment.

The history of France is full of coups d’état - brusque transformations of the Government by means of an extraordinary stroke of policy. But the great Revolution did not spring like a bolt from the blue; the cloud had hung on the horizon, threatening, for more than fifty years. When it broke at last, it was with no sudden thunder-clap, but in heavy spots, falling one by one, and in approaching rumblings, leading up to the unimaginable and shattering crash of the tempest unchained. And threat followed threat with intervals so promising that even now we wonder whether a firmer conduct on the part of the Crown might not have averted, or at least diminished, the full catastrophe.

On the 5th of October, 1789, some eight thousand women of Paris marched on Versailles. They were angry at the continued shortage of bread, half-starved, and persuaded that the King meant to starve Paris into submission; convinced, too, that the Queen meditated some traitorous coup d’état. Louis had unwisely summoned the regiment of Royal-Flanders to Versailles: like so many of his actions, it was at once too much and not enough; a whole army might have inspired terror and respect for the Crown; one foreign regiment was a senseless provocation.

And

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