THE CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY PLANNED BY LATE LORD ACTON LL.D. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY EDITED BY A. W. WARD LITT.D. G. W. PROTHERO LITT.D. STANLEY LEATHES M.A. VOLUME VIII THE FRENCH REVOLUTION New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. All rights reserved PREFACE HE main focus of activity for European forces shifts from age to age. Thus in preceding volumes, under the changing play of national collisions, and the stimulus of new ideas, we have seen its position move from Italy to the Rhineland and to Switzerland. Its limits are sometimes narrow, sometimes they embrace a wider field. But in no epoch is the centre of material and spiritual energy for Europe more de finitely located, in none is the action proceeding from that centre more novel in its kind, more destructive of the old, more ambitious of the new, than in the period of the French Revolution. For this whole decade the main attention of the student of European history must centre in Paris. The present Volume traces the intellectual genesis of the revolutionary movement among the audacious thinkers and the philanthropic listeners of the eighteenth century. It shows how the institutions and the administration of France were unfitted to resist a violent shock, while her vacillating rulers hesitated to use such resources as the constitution placed in their hands. Benevolent enthusiasm, peaceful agitation, irresolute control, are succeeded by anarchy and terrorism; society seems to be resolved into its elements, and the fortunes of the nation to depend on the caprice and idiosyncrasies of a few chanceselected men. The impulse spreads beyond the frontiers. Europe gathers her forces to resist the destructive flood. France reacts to hostile pressure; institutions are extemporised in the midst of foreign and civil war; the organic unity of the French nation reasserts itself; order succeeds to anarchy, fixed aims to vague aspirations; and wars of conquest follow wars of self-preservation. Separately is described the attempt of legislators to break loose from the bonds of custom, convention, and tradition, and to build up a new scheme of human relations from a purely rational basis. Finally, the effect of these destructive and reconstructive ideas is traced in action and reaction through the chief countries of Europe; and the foundations of our modern political and social scheme become visible. The new phase of |