The French Revolution

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The French Revolution, by R. M. Johnston

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Title: The French Revolution A Short History
Author: R. M. Johnston
Release Date: October 1, 2006 [EBook #19421]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Frontispiece: 1. Voltaire. 2. Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine. 3. Fouquier-Tinville. 4. Carrier. 5. Danton before the Tribunal Revolutionnaire.]

The French Revolution
A SHORT HISTORY
By
R. M. Johnston
M.A., CANTAB.
Assistant Professor of History in Harvard University

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1910.

COPYRIGHT, 1909
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
Published, May, 1909
Second Printing, January, 1910

TO
Rayner Neate
IN MEMORY OF OLD PEMBROKE DAYS

{v}
PREFACE
The object of this book is similar to that with which, a few years ago, I wrote a short biography of Napoleon. The main outlines of the Revolution, the proportion and relation of things, tend to become obscured under the accumulation of historical detail that is now proceeding. This is an attempt, therefore, to disentangle from the mass of details the shape, the movement, the significance of this great historical cataclysm. To keep the outline clear I have deliberately avoided mentioning the names of many subordinate actors; thinking that if nothing essential was connected with them the mention of their names would only tend to confuse matters. Similarly with incidents, I have omitted a few, such as the troubles at Avignon, and changed the emphasis on others, judging freely their importance and not following the footsteps of my predecessors, as in the case of the capture of the Bastille, the importance of which was vastly exaggerated by early writers on the subject.
The end of the Revolution I place at Brumaire,--as good a date as any, though like all others, open to criticism. The present narrative, however, will be found to merge into that of my Napoleon, which forms its natural continuation after that date.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., Feb., 1909.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . . . . 1 II. VERSAILLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 III. ECONOMIC CRISIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 IV. CONVOCATION OF THE STATES GENERAL . . . . . . . 35 V. FRANCE COMES TO VERSAILLES . . . . . . . . . . . 52 VI. FROM VERSAILLES TO PARIS . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 VII. THE ASSEMBLY DEMOLISHES PRIVILEGE . . . . . . . 89 VIII. THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 IX. WAR BREAKS OUT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 X. THE MASSACRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 XI. ENDING THE MONARCHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 XII. THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE . . . . . . . . . . . . 170 XIII. THE REIGN OF TERROR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 XIV. THERMIDOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202 XV. THE LAST DAYS OF THE CONVENTION . . . . . . . . 222 XVI. THE DIRECTOIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239 XVII. ART AND LITERATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

{1}
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
CHAPTER I
THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The magnitude of an event is too apt to lie with its reporter, and the reporter often fails in his sense of historical proportion. The nearer he is to the event the more authority he