the majority of Frenchmen endured so long the fearful sacrifices
which his policy exacted.
That a revolution largely inspired by generous and humane feeling should have issued in such havoc and such crimes is a paradox which astounded spectators and still perplexes the historian. Something in the cruelty of the French Revolution may be ascribed to national character. From the time when Burgundians and Armagnacs strove for dominion down to the last insurrection of Paris, civil discord in France has always been cruel. More, however, was due to the total dissolution of society which followed the meeting of the states-general. In the course of the Revolution we can discover no well-organized party, no governing mind. Mirabeau had the stuff of a great statesman, and Danton was capable of statesmanship. But these men were not followed or obeyed save by accident or for a moment. Those who seemed to govern were usually the sport of chance, often the victims of their colleagues. Neither Royalists nor Feuillants nor Girondins had the instinct of government. In the chaotic state of France all ferocious and destructive passions found ample scope. The same conditions explain the triumph of the Jacobins. Devoid of wisdom and virtue in the highest sense, they at least understood how power might be seized and kept. The Reign of Terror was the expedient of a party which knew its weakness and unpopularity. It was not necessary either to secure the lasting benefits of the Revolution or to save France from dismemberment; for nine Frenchmen out of ten were agreed on both of these points and were ready to lay down their lives for the national cause.
In the history of the French Revolution the influence which it exerted upon the surrounding countries demands peculiar attention. The French professed to act upon principles of universal authority, and from an early date they began to seek converts outside their own limits. The effect was slight upon England, which had already secured most of the reforms desired by the French, and upon Spain, where the bulk of the people were entirely submissive to church and king. But in the Netherlands, in western Germany and in northern Italy, countries which had attained a degree of civilization resembling that of France, where the middle and lower classes had grievances and aspirations not very different from those of the French, the effect was profound. Fear of revolution at home was one of the motives which led continental sovereigns to attack revolution in France. Their incoherent efforts only confirmed the Jacobin supremacy. Wherever the victorious French extended their dominion, they remodelled institutions in the French manner. Their sway proved so oppressive that the very classes which had welcomed them with most fervour soon came to long for their expulsion. But revolutionary ideas kept their charm. Under Napoleon the essential part of the changes made by the Republic was preserved in these countries also. Moreover the effacement of old boundaries, the overthrow of ancestral governments, and the invocation, however hollow, of the sovereignty of the people, awoke national feeling which had slumbered long and prepared the struggle for national union and independence in the 19th century.
See also France, sections History and Law and Institutions. For the leading figures in the Revolution see their biographies under separate headings. Particular phases, facts, and institutions of the period are also separately dealt with, e.g. Assignats, Convention, The National, Jacobins.
Bibliography.—The MS. authorities for the history of the French Revolution are exceedingly copious. The largest collection is in the Archives Nationales in Paris, but an immense number of documents are to be found in other collections in Paris and the provinces. The printed materials are so abundant and varied that any brief notice of them must be imperfect.
The condition of France and the state of public opinion at the beginning of the Revolution may be studied in the printed collections of Cahiers. The Cahiers were the statements of grievances drawn up for the guidance of deputies to the States-General by those who had elected them. In every bailliage and sénéchaussée each estate drew up its own cahier and the cahiers of the Third Estate were condensed from separate cahiers drawn up by each parish in the district. Thus the cahiers of the Third Estate number many thousands, the greater part of which have not yet been printed. Among the collections printed we may mention Les Élections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789, by C. L. Chassin (4 vols., Paris, 1888); Cahiers de plaintes et doléances des paroisses de la province de Maine, by A. Bellée and V. Duchemin (4 vols., Le Mans, 1881–1893); Cahiers de doléances de 1789 dans le département du Pas-de-Calais, by H. Loriquet (2 vols., Arras, 1891); Cahiers des paroisses et communautés du bailliage d’Autun, by A. Charmasse (Autun, 1895). New collections are printed from time to time. A more general collection of cahiers than any above named is given in vols. i.-vi. of the Archives parlementaires. The cahiers must not be read in a spirit of absolute faith, as they were influenced by certain models circulated at the time of the elections and by popular excitement, but they remain an authority of the utmost value and a mine of information as to old France. Reference should also be made to the works of travellers who visited France at the outbreak of the Revolution. Among these Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789 (2 vols., Bury St Edmunds, 1792–1794) are peculiarly instructive.
For the history of the Assemblies during the Revolution a main authority is their Procès verbaux or Journals; those of the Constituent Assembly in 75 vols., those of the Legislative Assembly in 16 vols.; those of the Convention in 74 vols., and those of the Councils under the Directory in 99 vols. See also the Archives parlementaires edited by J. Mavidal and E. Laurent (Paris, 1867, and the following years); the Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution, by P. J. B. Buchez and P. C. Roux (Paris, 1838), and the Histoire de la Révolution par deux amis de la liberté (Paris, 1792–1803).
The newspapers, of which a few have been mentioned in the text, were numerous. They are useful chiefly as illustrating the ideas and passions of the time, for they give comparatively little information as to facts and that little is peculiarly inaccurate. The ablest of the Royalist journals was Mallet du Pan’s Mercure de France. Pamphlets of the Revolution period number many thousands. Such pamphlets as Mounier’s Nouvelles Observations sur les États-Généraux de France and Sieyès’s Qu’est-ce que le Tiers État had a notable influence on opinion. The richest collections of Revolution pamphlets are in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris and in the British Museum.
The contemporary memoirs, &c., already published are numerous and fresh ones are always coming forth. A few of the best known and most useful are, for the Constituent Assembly, the memoirs of Bailly, of Ferrières, of Malouet. The Correspondence of Mirabeau with the Count de la Marck, edited by Bacourt (3 vols., Paris, 1851), is especially valuable. Dumont’s Recollections of Mirabeau and the Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris give the impressions of foreigners with peculiar advantages for observing. For the Legislative Assembly and the Convention the memoirs of Madame Roland, of Bertrand de Molleville, of Barbaroux, of Buzot, of Louvet, of Dumouriez are instructive. For the Directory the memoirs of Barras, of La Révellière Lépeaux and of Thibaudeau deserve mention. The memoirs of Lafayette are useful. Those of Talleyrand are singularly barren, the result, no doubt, of deliberate suppression. The memoirs of the marquise de La Rochejacquelein are important for the war of La Vendée. The most notable Jacobins have seldom left memoirs, but the works of Robespierre and St Just enable us to form a clearer conception of the authors. The correspondence of the count of Mercy-Argenteau, the imperial ambassador, with Joseph II. and Kaunitz, and the correspondence of Mallet du Pan with the court of Vienna, are also instructive. But the contemporary literature of the French Revolution requires to be read in an unusually critical spirit. At no other historical crisis have passions been more fiercely excited; at none have shameless disregard of truth and blind credulity been more common.
Among later works based on these original materials the first place belongs to general histories. In French Louis Blanc’s Histoire de la Révolution (12 vols., Paris, 1847–1862), and Michelet’s Histoire de la Révolution Française (9 vols., Paris, 1847–1853), are the most elaborate of the older works. Michelet’s book is marked by great eloquence and power. In H. Taine’s Origines de la France contemporaine (Paris, 1876–1894) three volumes are devoted to the Revolution. They show exceptional talent and industry, but their value is impaired by the spirit of system and by strong prepossessions. F. A. M. Mignet’s Histoire de la Révolution Française (2 vols., Paris, 1861), short and devoid of literary charm, has the merits of learning and judgment and is still useful. F. A. Aulard’s Histoire politique de la Révolution Française (Paris, 1901) is a most valuable précis of political history, based on deep knowledge and lucidly set forth, although not free from bias. The volume on the Revolution in Lavisse and Rambaud’s Histoire générale de l’Europe (Paris, 1896) is the work of distinguished scholars using the latest information. In English, general histories of the Revolution are few. Carlyle’s famous work, published in 1837, is more of a prose epic than a history, omitting all detail which would not heighten the imaginative effect and tinged by all the favourite ideas of the author. Some fifty years later H. M. Stephens published the first (1886) and second (1892) volumes of a History of the French Revolution. They are marked by solid learning and contain much information. Volume viii. of the Cambridge Modern History, published in 1904, contains a general survey of the Revolution.
The most notable German work is H. von Sybel’s Geschichte der Revolutionszeit (5 vols., Stuttgart, 1853–1879). It is strongest in
