The Eve of the French Revolution

The Eve of the French
Revolution

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Title: The Eve of the French Revolution
Author: Edward J. Lowell
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THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
BY
EDWARD J. LOWELL

TO MY WIFE

PREFACE
There are two ways in which the French Revolution may be considered.
We may look at the great events which astonished and horrified Europe
and America: the storming of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the
massacres of September, the Terror, and the restoration of order by
Napoleon. The study of these events must always be both interesting
and profitable, and we cannot wonder that historians, scenting the
approaching battle, have sometimes hurried over the comparatively
peaceful country that separated them from it. They have accepted easy
and ready-made solutions for the cause of the trouble. Old France has
been lurid in their eyes, in the light of her burning country-houses. The
Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, they think, must have been
wretches, or they could not so have suffered. The social fabric, they are
sure, was rotten indeed, or it would never have gone to pieces so
suddenly.
There is, however, another way of looking at that great revolution of
which we habitually set the beginning in 1789. That date is, indeed,
momentous; more so than any other in modern history. It marks the

outbreak in legislation and politics of ideas which had already been
working for a century, and which have changed the face of the civilized
world. These ideas are not all true nor all noble. They have in them a
large admixture of speculative error and of spiritual baseness. They
require to-day to be modified and readjusted. But they represent sides
of truth which in 1789, and still more in 1689, were too much
overlooked and neglected. They suited the stage of civilization which
the world had reached, and men needed to emphasize them. Their very
exaggeration was perhaps necessary to enable them to fight, and in a
measure to supplant, the older doctrines which were in possession of
the human mind. Induction, as the sole method of reasoning, sensation
as the sole origin of ideas, may not be the final and only truth; but they
were very much needed in the world in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and they found philosophers to elaborate them, and
enthusiasts to preach them. They made their way chiefly on French soil
in the decades preceding 1789.
The history of French society at that time has of late years attracted
much attention in France. Diligent scholars have studied it from many
sides. I have used their work freely, and acknowledgment will be found
in the foot-notes; but I cannot resist the pleasure of mentioning in this
preface a few of those to whom I am most indebted; and first M. Albert
Babeau, without whose careful researches several chapters of this book
could hardly have been written. His studies in archives, as well as in
printed memoirs and travels, have brought much of the daily life of old
France into the clearest light. He has in an eminent degree the great and
thoroughly French quality of telling us what we want to know. His
impartiality rivals his lucidity, while his thoroughness is such that it is
hard gleaning the old fields after him.
Hardly less is my indebtedness to the late M. Aimé Chérest, whose
unfinished work, "La Chute de l'ancien régime," gives the most
interesting and philosophical narrative of the later political events
preceding the meeting of the Estates General.