True History and the Things which Make it
When, after a weary climb, we find ourselves on the summit of a lofty mountain, and look back from that commanding altitude over the ground we have traversed, what is it that we behold? The minor details of the scenery, many of which seemed large and important to us as we passed, are now lost to view, and we see only the great and imposing features of the landscape, the high elevations, the town-studded valleys, the deep and winding streams, the broad forests. It is the same when, from the summit of an age, we gaze backward over the plain of time. The myriad of petty happenings are lost to sight, and we see only the striking events, the critical epochs, the mighty crises through which the world has passed. These are the things that make true history, not the daily doings in the king’s palace or the peasant’s hut. What we should seek to observe and store up in our memories are the turning points in human events, the great thoughts which have ripened into noble deeds, the hands of might which have pushed the world forward in its career; not the trifling occurrences which signify nothing, the passing actions which have borne no fruit in human affairs. It is with such turning points, such critical periods in the history of the nineteenth century, that this work proposes to deal; not to picture the passing bubbles on the stream of time, but to point out the great ships which have sailed up that stream laden deep with a noble freight. This is history in its deepest and best aspect, and we have set our camera to photograph only the men who have made and the events which constitute this true history of the nineteenth century.
Two of the World’s Greatest Events
On the threshold of the century with which we have to deal two grand events stand forth; two of those masterpieces of political evolution which mold the world and fashion the destiny of mankind. These are, in the Eastern hemisphere, the French Revolution; in the Western hemisphere, the American Revolution and the founding of the republic of the United States. In the whole history of the world there are no events that surpass these in importance, and they may fitly be dwelt upon as main foundation stones in the structure we are seeking to build. The French Revolution shaped the history of Europe for nearly a quarter century after 1800. The American Revolution shaped the history of America for a still longer period, and is now beginning to shape the history of the world. It is important therefore that we dwell on those two events sufficiently to show the part they have played in the history of the age. Here, however, we shall confine our attention to the Revolution in France. That in America must be left to the American section of our work.
The Feudal System and Its Abuses
The Mediæval Age was the age of Feudalism, that remarkable system of government based on military organization which held western Europe captive for centuries. The State was an army, the nobility its captains and generals, the king its commander-in-chief, the people its rank and file. As for the horde of laborers, they were hardly considered at all. They were the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the armed and fighting class, a base, down-trodden, enslaved multitude, destitute of rights and privileges, their only mission in the world to provide food for and pay taxes to their masters, and often doomed to starve in the midst of the food which their labor produced.
France, the country in which the Feudal system had its birth, was the country in which it had the longest lease of life. It came down to the verge of the nineteenth century with little relief from its terrible exactions. We see before us in that country the spectacle of a people steeped in misery, crushed by tyranny, robbed of all political rights, and without a voice to make their sufferings known; and of an aristocracy lapped in luxury, proud, vain, insolent, lavish with the people’s money, ruthless with the people’s blood, and blind to the spectre of retribution which rose higher year by year before their eyes.
One or two statements must suffice to show the frightful injustice that prevailed. The nobility and the Church, those who held the bulk of the wealth of the community, were relieved of all taxation, the whole burden of which fell upon the mercantile and laboring classes—an unfair exaction that threatened to crush industry out of existence. And to picture the condition of the peasantry, the tyranny of the feudal customs, it will serve to repeat the oft-told tale of the peasants who, after their day’s hard labor in the fields, were forced to beat the ponds all night long in order to silence the croaking of the frogs that disturbed some noble lady’s slumbers. Nothing need be added to these two instances to show the oppression under which the people of France lay during the long era of Feudalism.
The Climax of Feudalism in France
This era of injustice and oppression reached its climax in the closing years of the eighteenth century, and went down at length in that hideous nightmare of blood and terror known as the French Revolution. Frightful as this was, it was unavoidable. The pride and privilege of the aristocracy had the people by the throat, and only the sword or the guillotine could loosen their hold. In this terrible instance the guillotine did the work.
It was the need of money for the spendthrift throne that precipitated the Revolution. For years the indignation of the people had been growing and spreading; for years the authors of the nation had been adding fuel to the flame. The voices of Voltaire, Rousseau and a dozen others had been heard in advocacy of the rights of man, and the people were growing daily more restive under their load. But still the lavish waste of money wrung from the hunger and sweat of the people went on, until the king and his advisers found their coffers empty and were without hope of filling them without a direct appeal to the nation at large.
The States General is Convened
It was in 1788 that the fatal step was taken. Louis XVI, King of France, called a session of the States General, the Parliament of the kingdom, which had not met for more than a hundred years. This body was composed of three classes, the representatives of the nobility, of the church, and of the people. In all earlier instances they had been docile to the mandate of the throne, and the monarch, blind to the signs of the times, had no thought but that this assembly would vote him the money he asked for, fix by law a system of taxation for his future supply, and dissolve at his command.
He was ignorant of the temper of the people. They had been given a voice at last, and were sure to take the opportunity to speak their mind. Their representatives, known as the Third Estate, were made up of bold, earnest, indignant men, who asked for bread and were not to be put off with a crust. They were twice as numerous as the representatives of the nobles and the clergy, and thus held control of the situation. They were ready to support the throne, but refused to vote a penny until the crying evils of the State were reformed. They broke loose from the other two Estates, established a separate parliament under the name of the National Assembly, and begun that career of revolution which did not cease until it had brought monarchy to an end in France and set all Europe aflame.
The Fall of the Bastille
The court sought to temporize with the engine of destruction which it had called into existence, prevaricated, played fast and loose, and with every false move riveted the fetters of revolution more tightly round its neck. In July, 1789, the people of Paris took a hand in the game. They rose and destroyed the Bastille, that grim and terrible State prison into which so many of the best and noblest of France had been cast at the pleasure of the monarch and his ministers, and which the people looked upon as the central fortress of their oppression and woe.
With the fall of the Bastille discord everywhere broke loose, the spirit of the Revolution spread from Paris through all France, and the popular Assembly, now the sole law-making body of the State, repealed the oppressive laws of which the people complained, and with a word overturned abuses many of which were a thousand years old. It took from the nobles their