4.31 Europe: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 14/28)

In the reign of Louis XVI, in 1789, the king's treasury was empty, however, in spite of high taxes, which were born by the middle class and peasants and the king found it necessary to call a National Assembly in an effort to find new sources of money. The Assembly traditionally was composed of nobles, clergy and the "third estate" (middle class), each group to have, in effect, one vote. Since it was apparent that the non-tax paying nobles and clergy could thus dominate the assembly, the third estate withdrew, held their own meeting and vowed to give France a constitution and a reform administration. Mobs in Paris took up the new cause and storming the Bastille to obtain arms, originally just to protect themselves, they more or less inadvertently started the French Revolution - a revolution of the "common man" against the monarchy, the nobles and the clergy. From 1789 to 1791 the revolution held its own and France was a limited monarchy with the king kept virtually a prisoner in a diminished state in the Tuileries, while the National Assembly, now reorganized as to voting privileges, ruled the country with relative peace. The Assembly instituted reforms in the penal code, stopped heresy persecutions, opened the army ranks to all, while arranging a state administration for the church. The heads of the church were prohibited from being members of the Assembly, however, and this actually weakened the central government. One of the great, farsighted statesmen of that period was Mirabeau, but unfortunately he died in 1791 and extremists then began to take control.

In that same year of 1791 the royal family escaped and tried to join a loyal army on the east border, but they were identified and returned to Paris under guard. The extremist Jacobins - Robespierre, Danton and Marat - now began to dominate French affairs, with their advanced ideas. Robespierre was a disciple of Rousseau and himself a lawyer; Danton was a lawyer; and Marat was a scientist and medical man of sorts. The mobs of the streets absorbed their radical ideas. At the same time, France declared war on Austria for a strange mixture of reasons and then Prussia declared war on France "to restore the monarchy". The Jacobin "commune" imprisoned King Louis XVI and reconvened the Assembly to frame a constitution. With the Prussians advancing, however, the mobs took over, emptied the prisons and a general slaughter began. A French army stopped the Prussians at Valmy, but the bloody fighting on the streets of Paris continued. The National Convention proclaimed France a republic and in a few months Louis was beheaded. Wild with success the mobs formed armies dedicated to "republicanizing" all Europe and while singing the Marseillaise they spread out to Brussels, Holland, Savoy, Switzerland and south Germany and they declared war on England. Under their new general, Napoleon Bonaparte, a brilliant young artillery officer, the republican armies fought forces of Savoy and Austria in 1796 and won most of northern Italy. In addition, however, war continued at home between the republicans and the loyalists and the double war provided the fear and panic that made it easy for the Jacobins