FRENCH REVOLUTION 217 FRENCH REVOLUTION" sembly and put an end to the revolution. These rumors led to a fresh outbreak of the mob of Paris which brought about a march of several thousand women to Versailles, whose purpose was to bring the king and the Assembly to Paris where they might be under the watchful eye of the Paris Commune. The women invaded the royal palace at Versailles and had it not been for the timely arrival of Lafayette and the National Guard the queen would have probably been killed. The court and Assembly obeyed the commands of the mob to return with them to Paris where the monarch was lodged in the Tuile- ries, while the Assembly continued its sessions in a riding school nearby. This transfer to the capital placed the As- sembly under the domination of the Commune which more and more began to usurp the power of the French Gov- ernment. The unjust apportionment of the rev- enues of the Church, which gave the higher clergy extraordinary sums of money while the parish priests barely received a living wage, had been one of the most obvious abuses of the ancient regime. By its action of Aug. 4th the Assembly had abolished the tithes; it now confiscated to the state the im- mense properties of the Church, and made all the clergy dependent on the state for their revenue. The lands of the Church were sold and served as se- curity for paper money — the assignats which the government issued in great quantities. Owing to the amount is- sued and to the drop in the market price of the land this paper money greatly depreciated. Equally sweeping were the changes made by a bill passed by the Assembly entitled "The Civil Con- stitution of the Clergy." By it the 134 bishoprics were reduced to 83, the num- ber of the departments, and the bishops were to be elected by the people. Al- though the salaries of the parish priests were greatly increased by these meas- ures, thousands of them and nearly all of the bishops refused to take the oath required of them by the state, and the harsh treatment of these "non- juring clergy" aroused the enmity of many who had hitherto wished the revo- lution well. The year 1790 saw many of the French nobles leave the country and col- lect upon the border of France a small army, with which, with the assistance of Leopold II., the Emperor and brother of Marie Antoinette, they hoped to regain their former privileges. The result of the action of the emigres was to further excite hostility to their fellows who re- mained in France, Suspicion was al- ready general in France that the king and queen were secretly opposed to the "patriot" party, nor was this suspicion lessened by the attempted flight of the royal family from France on June 21, 1791. The National Assembly finished its work on the new Constitution the following month and gave way to the Legislative Assembly which was to operate under its provisions. Meanwhile, on Aug. 27, 1791, the king of Prussia and the Emperor Leopold united in issuing the Declaration of Pillnitz in which they asserted their readiness to join with other powers to place the king of France in a position to form a government which "shall once more be in harmony with the rights of sovereigns and shall promote the wel- fare of the French nation." This idle threat, issued on the eve of the assem- bling of the new lawmaking body, served to throw power into the hands of the Jacobins — as the extremists of the Paris Commune were called. Radical news- papers, such as "The Friend of the People," called for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a re- public. The Legislative Assembly declared the property of the emigres confiscated to the state and passed severe laws against the non-juring clergy. The dep- uties from the Gironde district, sus- pecting the patriotism of the king, urged upon the Assembly a declaration of war against Austria in which event the king would be forced to show his colors. Ac- cordingly, France, on April 24, 1792, de- clared war upon Austria, thus opening a struggle which was destined to con- tinue almost uninterrupedly for nearly twenty years. The half-hearted measures of the king, the ill-success of the French arms, and a threatening manifesto of the commander of the Austrian-Prus- sian army invading France, brought about a rising of the Paris mob on Aug. 10, 1792. The king was forced to take refuge in the Assembly, while the mob placed its leaders in control of the munic- ipal government of Paris. The use- lessness of the monarchy was now ap- parent to all the leaders and a call was issued for a Constitutional ConveJition to form a new government for France. The Convention met on Sept. 21, 1792, and its first act was to declare France a republic, and to declare the twenty- second day of September as the first day of the Year One of French Liberty. The Convention was a much more radi- cal body than either of its predecessors and more under the influence of the Paris Commune. Three weeks before
