BY
HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A.
AUTHOR OF “DANTON,” “ROBESPIERRE,” “MARIE ANTOINETTE,” “THE OLD ROAD,”“THE PATH TO ROME,” “PARIS,” “THE HILLS AND THE SEA,” “THE HISTORICTHAMES,” ETC., ETC.
LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history ofthe Revolution: that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books.Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of itbefore the English reader; so that he may understand both what it wasand how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliarto Englishmen have risen out of it.
First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modernaccretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed,supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Codeas of the massacres; of the panics and capitulations as of thevictories; of the successful transformation of society as of theconspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of theRevolution.
This grasped, the way in which the main events followed each other, and[Pg vi]the reason of their interlocking and proceeding as they did must be putforward—not, I repeat, in the shape of a chronicle, but in the shape ofa thesis. Thus the reader must know not only that the failure of theroyal family’s flight was followed by war, but how and why it wasfollowed by war. He must not only appreciate the severity of thegovernment of the great Committee, but why that severity was present,and of the conditions of war upon which it reposed. But in so explainingthe development of the movement it is necessary to select forappreciation as the chief figures the characters of the time, since upontheir will and manner depended the fate of the whole. For instance, hadthe Queen been French either in blood or in sympathy, had the King beenalert, had any one character retained the old religious motives, allhistory would have been changed, and this human company must be seen ifits action and drama are to be comprehended.
The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (andbut too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; andthis difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, thathistorians, even when they recognise the importance of the military side[Pg vii]of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and thinkit sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. Themilitary aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in thecampaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts.In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armiesif he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly givenhim. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to theimportance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of ageneral position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, astory of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how thetwo combine.
Now, the Revolution, more than any other modern period, turns upon, andis explained by, its military history. On this account has soconsiderable a space been devoted to the explaining of that feature.
The reader will note, again, that the quarrel between the Revolution andthe Catholic Church