Germany from the Earliest Period, vol 4 | Page 8

held sacred, found ample food in the policy pursued by the government, and ridicule became the weapon with which the tiers-etat revenged the tyranny of the higher classes. As learning spread, the deeds of other nations, who had happily and gloriously cast off the yoke of their oppressors, became known to the people. The names of the patriots of Greece and Rome passed from mouth to mouth, and their actions became the theme of the rising generation; but more powerful than all in effect, was the example of the North Americans, who, A.D. 1783, separated themselves from their mother-country, England, and founded a republic. France, intent upon weakening her ancient foe, lent her countenance to the new republic, and numbers of her sons fought beneath her standard and bore the novel ideas of liberty back to their native land, where they speedily produced a fermentation among their mercurial countrymen.
Louis XV., a voluptuous and extravagant monarch, was succeeded by Louis XVI., a man of refined habits, pious and benevolent in disposition, but unpossessed of the moral power requisite for the extermination of the evils deeply rooted in the government. His queen, Marie Antoinette, sister to Joseph II., little resembled her brother or her husband in her tastes, was devoted to gaiety, and, by her example, countenanced the most lavish extravagance. The evil increased to a fearful degree. The taxes no longer sufficed; the exchequer was robbed by privileged thieves; an enormous debt continued to increase; and the king, almost reduced to the necessity of declaring the state bankrupt, demanded aid from the nobility and clergy, who, hitherto free from taxation, had amassed the whole wealth of the empire.
The aristocracy, ever blind to their true interest, refused to comply, and, by so doing, compelled the king to have recourse to the tiers-etat. Accordingly, A.D. 1789, he convoked a general assembly, in which the deputies sent by the citizens and peasant classes were not only numerically equal to those of the aristocracy, but were greatly superior to them in talent and energy, and, on the refusal of the nobility and clergy to comply with the just demands of the tiers-etat, or even to hold a common sitting with their despised inferiors, these deputies declared the national assembly to consist of themselves alone, and proceeded, on their own responsibility, to scrutinize the evils of the administration and to discuss remedial measures. The whole nation applauded the manly and courageous conduct of its representatives. The Parisians, ever in extremes, revolted, and murdered the unpopular public officers; the soldiers, instead of quelling the rebellion, fraternized with the people. The national assembly, emboldened by these first successes, undertook a thorough transformation of the state, and, in order to attain the object for which they had been assembled, that of procuring supplies, declared the aristocracy subject to taxation, and sold the enormous property belonging to the church. They went still further. The people was declared the only true sovereign, and the king the first servant of the state. All distinctions and privileges were abolished, and all Frenchmen were declared equal.
The nobility and clergy, infuriated by this dreadful humiliation, embittered the people still more against them by their futile opposition, and, at length convinced of the hopelessness of their cause, emigrated in crowds and attempted to form another France on the borders of their country in the German Rhenish provinces. Worms and Coblentz were their chief places of resort. In the latter city, they continued their Parisian mode of life at the expense of the avaricious elector of Treves, Clement Wenzel, a Saxon prince, by whose powerful minister, Dominique, they were supported, and acted with unparalleled impudence. They were headed by the two brothers of the French king, who entered into negotiation with all the foreign powers, and they vowed to defend the cause of the sovereigns against the people. Louis, who for some time wavered between the national assembly and the emigrants, was at length persuaded by the queen to throw himself into the arms of the latter, and secretly fled, but was retaken and subjected to still more rigorous treatment. The emigrants, instead of saving, hurried him to destruction.
The other European powers at first gave signs of indecision. Blinded by a policy no longer suited to the times, they merely beheld in the French Revolution the ruin of a state hitherto inimical to them, and rejoiced at the event. The prospect of an easy conquest of the distracted country, however, ere long led to the resolution on their part of actively interfering with its affairs. Austria was insulted in the person of the French queen, and, as head of the empire, was bound to protect the rights of the petty Rhenish princes and nobility, who possessed property and ecclesiastical or feudal rights[1] on French territory, and had