History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 | Page 8

to our times. It substituted law in the place of arbitrary will,
equality in that of privilege; delivered men from the distinctions of
classes, the land from the barriers of provinces, trade from the shackles
of corporations and fellowships, agriculture from feudal subjection and
the oppression of tithes, property from the impediment of entails, and
brought everything to the condition of one state, one system of law, one
people.
In order to effect such mighty reformation as this, the revolution had
many obstacles to overcome, involving transient excesses with durable
benefits. The privileged sought to prevent it; Europe to subject it; and
thus forced into a struggle, it could not set bounds to its efforts, or
moderate its victory. Resistance from within brought about the
sovereignty of the multitude, and aggression from without, military
domination. Yet the end was attained, in spite of anarchy and in spite of
despotism: the old society was destroyed during the revolution, and the
new one became established under the empire.
When a reform has become necessary, and the moment for
accomplishing it has arrived, nothing can prevent it, everything furthers
it. Happy were it for men, could they then come to an understanding;
would the rich resign their superfluity, and the poor content themselves
with achieving what they really needed, revolutions would then be

quietly effected, and the historian would have no excesses, no
calamities to record; he would merely have to display the transition of
humanity to a wiser, freer, and happier condition. But the annals of
nations have not as yet presented any instance of such prudent
sacrifices; those who should have made them have refused to do so;
those who required them have forcibly compelled them; and good has
been brought about, like evil, by the medium and with all the violence
of usurpation. As yet there has been no sovereign but force.
In reviewing the history of the important period extending from the
opening of the states-general to 1814, I propose to explain the various
crises of the revolution, while I describe their progress. It will thus be
seen through whose fault, after commencing under such happy auspices,
it so fearfully degenerated; in what way it changed France into a
republic, and how upon the ruins of the republic it raise the empire.
These various phases were almost inevitable, so irresistible was the
power of the events which produced them. It would perhaps be rash to
affirm that by no possibility could the face of things have been
otherwise; but it is certain that the revolution, taking its rise from such
causes, and employing and arousing such passions, naturally took that
course, and ended in that result. Before we enter upon its history, let us
see what led to the convocation of the states-general, which themselves
brought on all that followed. In retracing the preliminary causes of the
revolution, I hope to show that it was as impossible to avoid as to guide
it.
From its establishment the French monarchy had had no settled form,
no fixed and recognised public right. Under the first races the crown
was elective, the nation sovereign, and the king a mere military chief,
depending on the common voice for all decisions to be made, and all
the enterprises to be undertaken. The nation elected its chief, exercised
the legislative power in the Champs de Mars under the presidentship of
the king, and the judicial power in the courts under the direction of one
of his officers. Under the feudal regime, this royal democracy gave way
to a royal aristocracy. Absolute power ascended higher, the nobles
stripped the people of it, as the prince afterwards despoiled the nobles.
At this period the monarch had become hereditary; not as king, but as

individually possessor of a fief; the legislative authority belonged to the
seigneurs, in their vast territories or in the barons' parliaments; and the
judicial authority to the vassals in the manorial courts. In a word, power
had become more and more concentrated, and as it had passed from the
many to the few, it came at last from the few to be invested in one
alone. During centuries of continuous efforts, the kings of France were
battering down the feudal edifice, and at length they established
themselves on its ruins, having step by step usurped the fiefs, subdued
the vassals, suppressed the parliaments of barons, annulled or subjected
the manorial courts, assumed the legislative power, and effected that
judicial authority should be exercised in their name and on their behalf,
in parliaments of legists.
The states-general, which they convoked on pressing occasions, for the
purpose of obtaining subsidies, and which were composed of the three
orders of the nation, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate or
commons, had no regular existence. Originated while the