Volume 1 / Part 3 — CHAPTER XV (continued 2)

In the spring of 1793 the National Convention intrusted the supreme executive authority of France to a special committee, composed of nine (later twelve) of its members, who were styled the Committee of Public Safety. This small body, which included such Jacobin leaders as Carnot, Robespierre, and St. Just, acting secretly, directed the ministers of state, appointed the local officials, and undertook the administration of the whole country. Manifold were the duties it was called upon to discharge. Among other problems, it must conduct the foreign relations, supervise the armies, and secure the active support of the French people. Diligently and effectively did it apply itself to its various activities.

[Sidenote: The "Terror" A Political Expedient]

Terrorism has been the word usually employed to describe the internal policy of the Committee of Public Safety, and the "Reign of Terror," the period of the Committee's chief work, from the summer of 1793 to that of 1794. So sensational and so sanguinary was the period that many writers have been prone to make it the very center of the Revolution and to picture "liberty, equality, and fraternity" as submerged in a veritable sea of blood. As a matter of fact, however, the Reign of Terror was but an incident, though obviously an inevitable incident, in a great Revolution. Nor may the French people be justly accused of a peculiarly bloodthirsty disposition. Given the same circumstances, it is doubtful whether similar scenes would not have been enacted at Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, or even London. It must be remembered that great principles and far-reaching reforms were endangered by a host of foreign and domestic enemies. It seemed to the republican leaders that the occasion demanded complete unanimity in France. A divided nation could not triumph over united Europe. The only way in which France could present a united front to the world was by striking terror into the hearts of the opponents of the new régime. And terror involved bloodshed.

The chief allies of the Committee of Public Safety in conducting terrorism were the Committee of General Security and the Revolutionary Tribunal. The former was given police power in order to maintain order throughout the country. The latter was charged with trying and condemning any person suspected of disloyalty to the republic. Both were responsible to the Committee of Public Safety. A decree of the Convention, called the Law of Suspects, proclaimed as liable to arbitrary arrest every person who was of noble birth, or had held office before the Revolution, or had any relation with an émigré, or could not produce a signed certificate of citizenship.

With such instruments of despotism France became revolutionary by strokes of the guillotine. [Footnote: The guillotine, which is still used in France, consists of two upright posts between which a heavy knife rises and falls. The criminal is stretched upon a board and then pushed between the posts. The knife falls and instantly beheads him. The device was invented by a certain philanthropic Dr. Guillotine, who wished to substitute in capital punishment an instrument sure to produce instant death in the place of the bungling process of beheading with an ax. (Mathews.)] It is estimated that about 2500 persons were executed at Paris during the Reign of Terror. Among others Marie Antoinette, Philippe Égalité, and Madame Roland suffered death.

The Terror spread to the provinces. Local tribunals were everywhere established to search out and condemn suspected persons. The city of Lyons, which ventured to resist the revolutionary government, was partially demolished and hundreds of its citizens were put to death. At Nantes, where echoes of the Vendée insurrection were long heard, the brutal Jacobin deputy Carrier loaded unhappy victims on old hulks which were towed out into the Loire and sunk. The total number of those who perished in the provinces is unknown, but it may have reached ten thousand.

When the total loss of life by means of revolutionary tribunals is calculated, it will certainly be found to bear slight comparison with the enormous sacrifice of life which any one of the numerous great wars of the nineteenth century has entailed. The chief wonder about the Reign of Terror is that its champions and supporters, who had so much at stake, did not do worse things.

[Sidenote: Factions among the Revolutionaries]

A more calamitous phase of the Terror than the slaughter of royalists and reactionaries was the wretched quarreling among various factions of the radicals and the destruction. of one for the benefit of another. Thus, the efforts of the Girondists to stay the execution of the king and to appeal to the provinces against the violence in Paris, coupled with the treason of Dumouriez, seemed to the Parisian proletariat to mark the alliance of the Girondists with the reactionaries. Accordingly, the workingmen of Paris, under the leadership of Marat, revolted on 31 May, 1793, and two days later obliged the Convention to expel twenty-nine Girondist members. Of these, the chief, including Brissot and Vergniaud, were brought to the guillotine in October, 1793. Next, the leaders of the commune of Paris, who had gone to such extreme lengths as to suppress the Christian churches in that city and to proclaim atheism, were dispatched in March, 1794, by a coalition of the followers of Danton and Robespierre. Then in April, when Danton at length wearied of the Terror and counseled moderation, that redoubtable genius, together with his friend, Camille Desmoulins, was guillotined. Finally, Robespierre himself, after enjoying a brief dictatorship, during which time he vainly endeavored to put in practice the theories of Rousseau, was sent, in company with St. Just, to the guillotine by direction of the National Convention in July, 1794. This meant the beginning of reaction.

[Sidenote: End of the Terror: Thermidorian Reaction, 1794]

The death of Robespierre ended the Reign of Terror. The purpose of the Terror, however, was already achieved. The Revolution was preserved in France, and France was preserved in Europe. The Thermidorian Reaction, as the end of the Terror is called, left the National Convention free to resume its task of devising a permanent republican constitution for the country. A few subsequent attempts were made, now by reactionaries, now by extreme radicals, to interfere with the work, but they were suppressed with comparative ease. The last uprising of the Parisian populace which threatened the Convention was effectually quelled (October, 1795) by a "whiff of grape-shot" discharged at the command of a young and obscure major of artillery, Napoleon Bonaparte by name.

[Sidenote: Reforms of the National Convention, 1792-1795]

In the midst of foreign war and internal dissension, even in the midst of the Terror, the National Convention found time to further the social reforms of the earlier stage of the Revolution. Just as the bourgeois Constituent Assembly destroyed the inequalities arising from the privileges of the "old régime," so the popular Convention sought to put an end to the inequalities arising from wealth. Under its new leaders, the Revolution assumed for a time a distinctly socialistic character. The property of the émigrés was confiscated for the benefit of the state. A maximum price for grain was set by law. Large estates were broken up and offered for sale to poorer citizens in lots of two or three acres, to be paid for in small annual installments. All ground rents were abolished without compensation to the owners. "The rich," said Marat, "have so long sucked out the marrow of the people that they are now visited with a crushing retribution."

Some of the reforms of the Convention went to absurd lengths. In the popular passion for equality, every one was to be called "Citizen" rather than "Monsieur." The official record of the expense of Marie Antoinette's funeral was the simple entry, "Five francs for a coffin for the widow of Citizen Capet." Ornate clothing disappeared with titles of nobility, and the silk stockings and knee breeches (culottes), which had distinguished the privileged classes and the gentlemen, were universally supplanted by the long trousers which had hitherto been worn only by the lowest class of workingmen (sans- culottes). To do away with the remembrance of historic Christianity, the year was divided anew into twelve months, each containing three weeks of ten days (décades), every tenth day (décadi) being for rest, and the five or six days left over at the end of the year, called sans-culottides, were national holidays; the names of the months were changed, and the revolutionary calendar made to date from the establishment of the republic, 22 September, 1792.

Many of the reforms had long been urgently needed and proved to be of permanent value. Such was the establishment of a convenient and uniform system of weights and measures, based on decimal reckoning, the so- called metric system, which has come to be accepted by almost all civilized nations save the English-speaking peoples. Such, too, was the elaborate system of state education which the philosopher Condorcet [Footnote: Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794).] prepared and which, though more pressing questions compelled its postponement, became the basis on which the modern scheme of free public instruction has been built up in France. Such, moreover, was the separation of Church and state, effected in September, 1794, the establishment in the following year of liberty of worship, and the restoration of the churches to Christian worship on condition that the clergymen submitted to the laws of the state. Such, finally, was the project of preparing a single comprehensive code of law for the whole country. Although the legal code was not completed until the dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte, nevertheless the Convention made a beginning and incorporated in it a fundamental principle of inheritance that has marked modern France—the principle that no person may will his property to one direct heir to the exclusion of others but that all children must inherit almost equally. Moreover, the practice of imprisoning men for debt was abolished, negro slavery was ended, and woman's claim on property was protected in common with man's. Finally the new republican constitution was permeated with ideas of political democracy.

[Sidenote: Eventual Bourgeois Control Of The National Convention]

After the downfall of Robespierre (Thermidorian Reaction), the National Convention ceased to press reforms in behalf of the proletariat and came more and more under the influence of the moderate well-to-do bourgeoisie. The law against suspects was repealed and the grain laws were amended. The Revolutionary Tribunal was suppressed and the name of the Place de la Révolution was changed to the Place de la Concorde. The death in prison of the young and only son of Louis XVI in 1795 was a severe blow to the hopes of the royalists. By 1795 France seemed definitively committed to a republican form of government, which, however, would not be extremely radical but only moderate, being now founded on the bourgeoisie rather than on the proletariat.

THE DIRECTORY (1795-1799) AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE REPUBLIC INTO A MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

[Sidenote: Constitution of the Year III, the Constitution of the First French Republic] [Sidenote: The Directory]

The constitution of the first French Republic was drawn up by the National Convention during the last year of its session and after it had passed under bourgeois influence. This constitution which went into effect in 1795 and is known, therefore, as the Constitution of the Year III (of the Republic), intrusted the legislative power to two chambers, chosen by indirect election,—a lower house of five hundred members, to propose laws, and a Council of Ancients, of two hundred and fifty members, to examine and enact the laws. The bourgeois distrust of the lower classes showed itself again in restricting the electorate to taxpayers who had lived at least a year in one place. The executive authority of the republic was vested in a board of five members, styled Directors, and elected by the legislature, one retiring every year. The Board of Directors, or "Directory," was to supervise the enforcement of laws and to appoint the ministers of state, or cabinet, who should be responsible to it.

[Sidenote: Brief Duration of the Directory, 1795-1799]

Thus, as the National Constituent Assembly had framed the constitution for the liberal monarchy, so the National Convention drafted that for the republic. But in strength and durability the republic was hardly more fortunate than the limited monarchy. Louis XVI reigned as constitutional king under the document of 1791 less than a year. The Directory governed in accordance with the constitution of the Year III less than four years (1795-1799).

[Sidenote: Weaknesses in the Directory]

The failure of the Directory was due to two chief causes: first, the prevalence of domestic difficulties; and second, the rise of military power and the appearance of a victorious, ambitious general. To both of these causes reference must be made. The former proved that another kind of government was needed to cope with the situation; the latter suggested what the nature of the new government would be.

To consolidate the French people after six years of radical revolutionary upheavals required hard and honest labor on the part of men of distinct genius. Yet the Directors were, almost without exception, men of mediocre talents, [Footnote: Carnot, upright and sincere, and the only member of first-rate ability, was forced out of the Directory in 1797.] who practiced bribery and corruption with unblushing effrontery. They preferred their personal gain to the welfare of the state.

[Sidenote: Political and Social Dissensions]

The period of the Directory was a time of plots and intrigues. The royalists who were elected in large numbers to the Assemblies were restrained from subverting the constitution only by illegal force and violence on the part of the Directors. On the other hand, the extremists in Paris found a warm-hearted leader in a certain Babeuf (1760-1797), who declared that the Revolution had been directed primarily to the advantage of the bourgeoisie, that the proletarians, despite their toil and suffering and bloodshed, were still just as poorly off as ever, and that their only salvation lay in a compulsory equalization of wealth and the abolition of poverty. An insurrection of these radicals—the forerunners of modern Socialism—was suppressed and Babeuf was put to death in 1797.

[Sidenote: Financial Difficulties]

While sincere radicals and convinced reactionaries were uniting in common opposition to the unhappy Directory, the finances of the state were again becoming hopelessly involved. "Graft" flourished unbridled in the levying and collecting of the taxes and in all public expenditures. To the extravagance of the Directors in internal administration were added the financial necessities of armies aggregating a million men. Paris, still in poverty and want, had to be fed at the expense of the nation. And the issue of assignats by the National Constituent Assembly, intended at first only as a temporary expedient, had been continued until by the year 1797 the total face value of the assignats amounted to about forty-five billion livres. So far had the value of paper money depreciated, however, that in March, 1796, three hundred livres in assignats were required to secure one livre in cash. In 1797 a partial bankruptcy was declared, interest payments being suspended on two-thirds of the public debt, and the assignats were demonetized. The republic faced much the same financial crisis as had confronted the absolute monarchy in 1789.

[Sidenote: Continued Success in Foreign War]

From but one direction did light stream in upon the Directory—and that was the foreign war. When the Directory assumed office, France was still at war with Austria, Sardinia, and Great Britain. The general plan of campaign was to advance one French army across the Rhine, through southern Germany, and thence into the Austrian dominions, and to dispatch another army across the Alps, through northern Italy, and thence on to Vienna. Of the army of the Rhine such veteran generals as Pichegru, Jourdan, and Moreau were put in charge. To the command of the army operating in Italy, the young and inexperienced Bonaparte was appointed.

[Sidenote: Appearance of Napoleon Bonaparte]

Napoleon Bonaparte hitherto had not been particularly conspicuous in politics or in war. He was believed to be in full sympathy with the Revolution, although he had taken pains after the downfall of Robespierre to disavow any attachment to the extreme radicals. He had acquired some popularity by his skillful expulsion of the British from Toulon in 1793, and his protection of the National Convention against the uprising of the Parisian radicals in 1795 gave him credit as a friend of law and order. Finally, his marriage in 1796 with Josephine Beauharnais, the widow of a revolutionary general and an intimate friend of one of the Directors, bettered his chances of indulging his fondness for politics and his genius in war.

[Sidenote: Bonaparte's First Italian Campaign, 1796-1797] [Sidenote: Treaty of Campo Formio, 1797]

That very year (1796), while the older and more experienced French generals were repeatedly baffled in their efforts to carry the war into the Germanies, the young commander—but twenty-seven years of age— swept the Austrians from Italy. With lightning rapidity, with infectious enthusiasm, with brilliant tactics, with great personal bravery, he crossed the Alps, humbled the Sardinians, and within a year had disposed of five Austrian armies and had occupied every fort in northern Italy. Sardinia was compelled to cede Savoy and Nice to the French Republic, and, when Bonaparte's army approached Vienna, Austria stooped to make terms with this amazing republican general. By the treaty of Campo Formio (1797), France secured the Austrian Netherlands and the Ionian Islands; Austria obtained, as partial compensation for her sacrifices, the ancient Venetian Republic, but agreed not to interfere in other parts of Italy; and a congress was to assemble at Rastatt to rearrange the map of the Holy Roman Empire with a view to compensating those German princes whose lands on the left bank of the Rhine had been appropriated by France.

[Sidenote: Great Britain Left Alone in Arms Against the French Republic]

The campaign of 1796-1797, known in history as the First Italian campaign, was the beginning of a long series of sensational military exploits which were to rank Napoleon Bonaparte as the foremost soldier of modern times. Its immediate effect was to complete the dissolution of the First Coalition by forcing Austria and Sardinia to follow the example of Spain, Prussia, and Holland and to make a peace highly favorable to the French Republic. Great Britain alone continued the struggle against the Directory.

[Sidenote: Bonaparte's Rising Fame]

Another effect of the first Italian campaign, almost as immediate and certainly more portentous, was the sudden personal fame of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was the most talked-of man in France. The people applauded him. The government feared but flattered him. Schemers and plotters of every political faith sought his support. Alongside of decreasing respect for the existing government was increasing trust in Bonaparte's strength and ability.

[Sidenote: Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign Against Great Britain, 1798]

It was undoubtedly with a sense of relief that the despised Directors in 1798 assented to a project proposed by the popular hero to transport to Egypt a French expedition with the object of interrupting communications between Great Britain and India. The ensuing Egyptian campaign of 1798 was spectacular rather than decisive. Bonaparte made stirring speeches to his soldiers. He called the Pyramids to witness the valor of the French. He harangued the Mohammedans upon the beautiful and truthful character of their religion and upon the advantages which they would derive from free trade with France. He encouraged the close study of Egyptian antiquities. [Footnote: It was an army officer on this Egyptian expedition who discovered the famous Rosetta Stone, by the aid of which hieroglyphics could be deciphered.] But his actual victories did not measure up to the excessively colored reports that he sent home. He was checked in Syria, and a great naval victory won by the celebrated English admiral, Lord Nelson, near the mouth of the Nile, effectually prevented the arrival of reinforcements.

[Sidenote: Embarrassments of the Directory during Bonaparte's Absence from France]

Thereupon, General Bonaparte, luckily eluding the British warships, returned to France. It was believed by Frenchmen that his last expedition had been eminently successful: but that in the meantime the work of the Directory had been disastrous, no one doubted. While Bonaparte was away, affairs in France had gone from bad to worse. There were new plots, increased financial and social disorders, and finally the renewal on a large scale of foreign war.

[Sidenote: The Second Coalition and the Renewal of War in Europe]

After the treaty of Campo Formio, the Directors had prosecuted zealously the policy of surrounding France with a circle of dependent republics. Even before that peace, Holland had been transformed into the Batavian Republic, and now pretexts of various sorts were utilized to convert the duchy of Milan, or Lombardy, into the Cisalpine Republic; the oligarchy of Genoa into the Ligurian Republic; the Papal States into the Roman Republic; the kingdom of the Two Sicilies into the Parthenopaean Republic; the Swiss Confederation into the Helvetic Republic.

In view of the fact that the governments of all these republics were modeled after that of France and were allied with France, the monarchs of Europe bestirred themselves once more to get rid of the danger that threatened them. A Second Coalition was formed by Great Britain, Austria, and Russia, and, thanks to liberal sums of money supplied by William Pitt, the British minister, they were able to put large armies in the field.

[Sidenote: French Reverses]

During 1799 the Second Coalition won repeated victories; the French were driven from Italy; and most of the dependent republics collapsed. It seemed as though Bonaparte's first Italian campaign had been for naught. Possibly the military hero of France had himself foreseen this very situation and had intended to exploit it to his own advantage.

[Sidenote: Return of Bonaparte from Egypt: the "Man of the Hour"]

At any rate, when Bonaparte had sailed for Egypt, he had left his country apparently prosperous, victorious, and honored. Now, when he landed at Fréjus on 9 October, 1799, he found France bankrupt, defeated, and disgraced. It is small wonder that his journey from Fréjus to Paris was a triumphal procession. The majority of Frenchmen were convinced that he was the man of the hour.

[Sidenote: The Coup d'État of the Eighteenth Brumaire: Overthrow of the Directory, 1799] Within a month of his return from Egypt, public opinion enabled the young conqueror to overthrow the government of the Directory. Skillfully intriguing with the Abbé Sieyès, who was now one of the Directors, he surrounded the Assemblies with a cordon of troops loyal to himself and on 18-19 Brumaire (9-10 November, 1799) secured by show of force the downfall of the government and the appointment of himself to supreme military command. This blow at the state (coup d'état) was soon followed by the promulgation of a new constitution, by which General Bonaparte became First Consul of the French Republic.

[Sidenote: Militarism and the Close of the Revolution]

The coup d'état of 18 Brumaire virtually ended the Revolution in France. Within the space of ten and a half years from the assembling of the Estates-General at Versailles, parliamentary and popular government fell beneath the sword. The predictions of Marat and Robespierre were realized: militarism had supplanted democracy.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1789-1799)

It may now be possible for us to have some idea as to the real meaning of these ten years of Assemblies, constitutions, insurrections, and wars, which have marked the period of the French Revolution. A present- day visitor in Paris will be struck by the bold letters which stand out on the public buildings and churches: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. These were the words which the revolutionaries spelled out on their homes, which they thought embodied the true meaning of the Revolution.

As to the meaning of these words, there were certainly quite contradictory views. To the royalists and rigid Catholics—to the privileged nobility and clergy—to many a surprised peasant—to all the reactionaries, they meant everything that was hateful, blasphemous, sordid, inhuman, and unpatriotic. To the enlightened altruistic bourgeois—to the poverty-stricken workingman of the city—to many a dreamer and philanthropist—to all the extreme radicals, they were but a shadowy will-of-the-wisp that glimmered briefly and perhaps indicated faintly the gorgeousness of the great day that much later might break upon them. Between these extremes of reaction and radicalism fell the bulk of the bourgeoisie and of the peasantry—the bulk of the nation— and it is in their sense that we shall try to make clear the meaning of the three symbolical words.

[Sidenote: "Liberty"]

"Liberty" implied certain political ideals. Government was henceforth to be exercised not autocratically by divine right, but constitutionally by the sovereign will of the governed. The individual citizen was no longer to be subject in all things to a king, but was to be guaranteed in possession of personal liberties which no state or society might abridge. Such were liberty of conscience, liberty of worship, liberty of speech, liberty of publication. The liberty of owning private property was proclaimed by the French Revolution as an inherent right of man.

[Sidenote: "Equality"]

"Equality" embraced the social activities of the Revolution. It meant the abolition of privilege, the end of serfdom, the destruction of the feudal system. It pronounced all men equal before the law. It aspired, though with little success, to afford every man an equal chance with every other man in the pursuit of life and happiness.

[Sidenote: "Fraternity"]

"Fraternity" was the symbol of the brotherhood of those who sought to make the world better and happier and more just. In France it found expression in an outburst of patriotism and national sentiment. No longer did mercenaries fight at the behest of despots for dynastic aggrandizement; henceforth a nation in arms was prepared to do battle under the glorious banner of "fraternity" in defense of whatever it believed to be for the nation's interests.

Political liberty, social equality, patriotism in the nation,—these three have been the enduring watchwords of all those who down to our own day have looked for inspiration to the French Revolution.

ADDITIONAL READING

GENERAL. Textbook narratives: J. H. Robinson and C. A. Beard, The Development of Modern Europe, Vol. I (1907), ch. xii, xiii; J. A. R. Marriott, The Remaking of Modern Europe, 1789-1878 (1910), ch. i-vi; H. E. Bourne, The Revolutionary Period in Europe, 1763- 1815 (1914), ch. Vi-xvi; H. M. Stephens, Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815 (1893), ch. ii-vi; J. H. Rose, Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, 1789-1815 (1895), ch. Ii-vi; C. A. Fyffe, A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 (1896), ch. i-iv; H. T. Dyer, A History of Modern Europe from the Fall of Constantinople, 3d ed. rev. by Arthur Hassall (1901), ch. lii-lxi; Charles Seignobos, History of Contemporary Civilization, Eng. trans. by J. A. James (1909), pp. 92-149. See also H. A. L. Fisher, The Republican Tradition in Europe (1911), ch. i-vii; and Emile Bourgeois, Manuel historique de politique étrangère, 4th ed., Vol. II (1906), ch. i-v, vii.

ONE-VOLUME SURVEYS: Shailer Mathews, The French Revolution (reprint 1912), a clear, well-balanced introduction, ending with the year 1795; Hilaire Belloc, The French Revolution (1911), in the "Home University Library," interestingly written and inclined to be philosophical; R. M. Johnston, The French Revolution (1909), emphasizes the spectacular and military rather than the social and economic; Louis Madelin, La Révolution (1911), written for the general French reader and probably the very best of its kind, now in process of translation into English.

STANDARD HISTORIES OF THE REVOLUTION: Alphonse Aulard, Histoire politique de la révolution française, 1789-1804, 3d ed. (1905), Eng. trans. by Bernard Miall, 4 vols. (1910), a painstaking study of the growth of the spirit of democracy and of the rise of the republican movement, by an eminent authority who has devoted many years to a sympathetic study of the Revolution; H. M. Stephens, A History of the French Revolution, 2 vols. (1886-1891), mainly political, generally reliable, but stops short with the Reign of Terror; H. A. Taine, The French Revolution, Eng. trans. by John Durand, 3 vols. (1878-1885), brilliantly written and bitterly hostile to many of the leaders of the Revolution, a work still famous though many of its findings have been vehemently assailed by Aulard, the apologist of the Revolution; Jean Jaurès (editor), Histoire socialiste, 1789- 1900, 12 vols. (1901-1909), a well-known and highly useful history of France by a group of prominent French Socialists with a penchant for stressing economic matters—Vols. I-IV, by Jaurès himself, treat of the years 1789-1794, and Vol. V, by Gabrielle Deville, of 1794-1799; P. A. (Prince) Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793, Eng. trans. by N. F. Dryhurst (1909), emphasizes the role played by the uneducated classes, eulogizes Marat, and suggests the conflict of interests between the bourgeoisie and the lower classes; Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, originally published in 1837, lively literary gossip and commentary rather than narrative history, amusing though often fuliginous, should be read only by those already familiar with the actual events of the Revolution; Albert Sorel, L'Europe et la révolution française, 8 vols. (1885-1904), of which Vols. I-V deal with the years 1789-1799 and mainly with the effects of the Revolution throughout Europe, a monumental work of the highest merit; Gustave Le Bon, La révolution française et la psychologie des révolutions (1912), trans. by Bernard Miall under the title of The Psychology of Revolution (1913), a noteworthy contribution to the study of "mob psychology" as exemplified by the French Revolution; Ernest Lavisse and Alfred Rambaud (editors), Histoire générale, Vol. VIII, a collection of scholarly monographs on various phases of the Revolution; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VIII (1904), a similar work in English; Heinrich von Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionzeit von 1789, 3d ed., 5 vols. (1865-1879), the best and most famous German work on the subject; Wilhelm Oncken, Das Zeitalter der Revolution, 2 vols. (1884- 1886); Adalbert Wahl, Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems im Zeitalter der französischen Revolution und der Freiheits-Kriege, 1789- 1815 (1912), useful epitome of foreign relations; Émile Levasseur, Histoire des classes ouvrières et de l'industrie en France de 1789 à 1870, Vol. I (1903), Livre I, La Révolution, valuable for the history of the working classes; Philippe Sagnac, La législation civile de la révolution française,1789-1804 (1898), very important survey of permanent social and civil gains; E. F. Henderson, Symbol and Satire in the French Revolution (1912), interesting side- lights.

SOURCE MATERIALS. Of the vast masses of source material available for special study of the French Revolution, the following selections may be found useful and suggestive: F. M. Anderson, Constitutions and Other Select Documents Illustrative of the History of France, 1789-1901, 2d rev. ed. (1909); L. G. Wickham Legg, Select Documents Illustrative of the French Revolution, the Constituent Assembly, 2 vols. (1905); Léon Duguit and Henry Monnier, Les constitutions et les principales lois politiques de la France depuis 1789 (1898); H. M. Stephens, The Principal Speeches of the Statesmen and Orators of the French Revolution, 1789-1795, 2 vols. (1892); Léon Cahen and Raymond Guyot, L'oeuvre législative de la révolution (1913); Alphonse Aulard, Les grands orateurs de la révolution—Vergniaud, Danton, Robespierre (1914); Merrick Whitcomb, Typical Cahiers of 1789, in "Translations and Reprints" of the University of Pennsylvania (1898). In the Collection de documents inédits sur l'histoire économique de la révolution française, now in course of publication under the auspices of the French Ministry of Public Instruction, have appeared (1906-1915) several volumes of the local cahiers of 1788-1789. See also Armand Brette, Recueil des documents relatifs à la convocation des états généraux de 1789, 3 vols. (1894-1904); P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. Roux- Lavergne, Histoire parlementaire de la révolution française, 1789- 1815, 40 vols. (1834-1838), embracing extracts from the debates, quotations from contemporary newspapers and pamphlets, and the text of some of the most important statutes and decrees; Archives parlementaires de 1787 à 1860, 1st series 1787-1799, 82 vols., the official, but not always trustworthy, reports of the debates in the successive French legislative bodies; Réimpression de l'ancien Moniteur, 32 vols., a reprint, in several different editions, of one of the most famous Parisian newspapers of the revolutionary period; Alphonse Aulard, La société des jacobins, 6 vols. (1889-1897), a collection of documents concerning the most influential political club of revolutionary France. Of the numerous memoirs of the time, perhaps the most valuable are those of Mallet du Pan, Comte de Fersen, Bailly, Ferrières, and Malouet; see also the History of My Time by the Duc d'Audiffret-Pasquier (1767-1862), Eng. trans. by C. E. Roche, 3 vols. (1893-1894), especially Part I; and for additional memoirs and other source-material consult the bibliographies in the Cambridge Modern History or in the Histoire générale. There are several detailed bibliographies on the French Revolution; and since 1881 the veteran scholar Aulard has edited La révolution française, devoted exclusively to the subject. For interesting personal impressions of the Revolution by an American eye-witness, see Gouverneur Morris, Diary and Letters, 2 vols. (1888). F. M. and H. D. Fling, Source Problems on the French Revolution (1913), is a useful compilation for intensive critical study of various phases of the Revolution.

SPECIAL WORKS ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. W. M. Sloane, The French Revolution and Religious Reform (1901), a résumé of legislation affecting the Church, 1789-1804; Antonin Debidour, Histoire des rapports de l'église et de l'état en France de 1789 à 1870 (1898); Pierre de La Gorce, Histoire religieuse de la révolution française, Vol. I, 1789-1791 (1909), Vol. II, 1791-1793 (1912), comprehensive and exhaustive, sympathetic with the Church but scrupulously fair; Paul Pisani, L'église de Paris et la révolution, 4 vols. (1908-1911), covering the years 1789-1802, a work of high rank by a canon of Notre Dame; J. F. E. Robinet, Le mouvement religieux à Paris pendant la révolution, 1789- 1801, 2 vols. (1896-1898), primarily a collection of documents; The Abbé Bridier (editor), A Papal Envoy during the Reign of Terror, being the Memoirs of Mgr. de Salamon the Internuncio at Paris during the Revolution, 1790-1801, Eng. trans. by Frances Jackson (1911); Ludovic Sciout, Histoire de la constitution civile du clergé, 1790- 1801, 4 vols. (1872-1881); Alphonse Aulard, La révolution et les congrégations: exposé historique et documents (1903); Edmé Champion, La séparation de l'église et de l'état en 1794 (1903).

SPECIAL WORKS ON CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH OPINION OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Edward Dowden, The French Revolution and English Literature (1897); H. N. Brailsford, Shelley, Godwin, and their Circle (1913); W. P. Hall, British Radicalism, 1791-1797 (1912); Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in many editions, a furious and prejudiced arraignment of the whole movement; John (Viscount) Morley, Edmund Burke (1879), an apology for Burke; John MacCunn, The Political Philosophy of Burke (1913), clear and concise though somewhat less laudatory of Burke; The Life and Writings of Thomas Paine, edited by D. E. Wheeler, 10 vols. (1909), the most elaborate edition of the writings of the chief English friend of the Revolution; Paine's The Rights of Man has appeared in many other editions.

SECONDARY WORKS ON OTHER SPECIAL TOPICS. On the wars 1792-1795: Arthur Chuquet, Les guerres de la révolution, 11 vols. (1886-1896), very detailed, coming down only to September, 1793; A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793- 1812, Vol. I, 10th ed. (1898); Mrs. Maxwell-Scott, Life of the Marquise de la Rochejaquelein (1912), and Ida A. Taylor, The Tragedy of an Army: La Vendee in 1793 (1913), two sympathetic and popular accounts of the Vendean Revolt. On the Terror: H. A. Wallon, La Terreur, 2 vols. (1881), and, by the same author, Les représentants du peuple en mission, 5 vols. (1889-1890), and Le tribunal révolutionnaire, 2 vols. (1900); Louis Mortimer-Ternaux, Histoire de la Terreur, 1792-1794, 8 vols. (1862); Edmond Bire, La légende des girondins (1881); Charles de Ricault Héricault, La révolution de thermidor, 2d ed. (1878). On the Directory, 1795-1799: Ludovic Sciout, Le Directoire, 2 vols. (1895-1896).

BIOGRAPHIES. Of Mirabeau, the best biography in English undoubtedly will be that of F. M. Fling, projected in three volumes, of which Vol. I, The Youth of Mirabeau, was published in 1908; the most recent and convenient French treatment is by Louis Barthou (1913); a standard German work is Alfred Stern, Das Leben Mirabeaus, 2 vols. (1889); and for a real insight into Mirabeau's character and policies, reference should be made to his Correspondance avec le comte de la Marck, 3 vols. (1851). Hilaire Belloc has written very readable and suggestive English biographies of Danton (1899), Robespierre (1901), and Marie Antoinette (1909). Perhaps the best brief appreciation of Danton is that by Louis Madelin (1914); J. F. E. Robinet has written a valuable Danton (1889), and likewise a Condorcet (1893). The elaborate Histoire de Robespierre et du coup d'état du 9 thermidor by Ernest Hamel, 3 vols. (1865-1867), is marred by excessive hero-worship. Jules Claretie, Camille Desmoulins, Lucille Desmoulins: étude sur les dantonistes (1875), a charming biography, has been translated into English. Among other useful biographies of persons prominent during the Revolution, the following might be consulted with profit: J. H. Clapham, The Abbé Sieyès: an Essay in the Politics of the French Revolution (1912); E. D. Bradby, The Life of Barnave, 2 vols. (1915), containing vivid descriptions of the National Constituent Assembly; Francois Chèvremont, Jean-Paul Marat, 2 vols. (1880); Charles Vatel, Vergniaud, 2 vols. (1873), and, by the same author, Charlotte de Corday et les girondins: pièces classées et annotées, 3 vols. (1864-1872); Arthur Chuquet, Dumouriez (1914); Pouget de Saint- André, Le général Dumouriez, 1739-1823 (1914); C. A. Dauban, Étude sur Madame Roland et son temps (1864); Bernard Mallet, Mallet du Pan and the French Revolution(1902); E. B, Bax, Babeuf: the Last Episode of the French Revolution (1911).