The French Revolution. Hilaire Belloc

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       Hilaire Belloc

      The French Revolution

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664123671

Table of Contents

       PREFACE

       THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

       I THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION

       II ROUSSEAU

       III THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION

       KING LOUIS XVI

       THE QUEEN

       MIRABEAU

       LA FAYETTE

       DUMOURIEZ

       DANTON

       CARNOT

       MARAT

       ROBESPIERRE

       IV THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION

       I From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789.

       II From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of Oct. 1789.

       III From October 1789 to June 1791.

       IV From June 1791 to September 1792.

       V From the invasion of September 1792 to the establishment of the Committee of Public Safety, April 1793.

       VI From April 1793 to July 1794.

       V THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION

       ONE

       TWO

       THREE

       FOUR

       FIVE

       VI THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

       INDEX

PREFACE

       Table of Contents

      The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of the 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 it before the English reader; so that he may understand both what it was and how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliar to Englishmen have risen out of it.

      First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modern accretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed, supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Code as of the massacres; of the panics and capitulations as of the victories; of the successful transformation of society as of the conspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of the Revolution.

      This grasped, the way in which the main events followed each other, and the reason of their interlocking and proceeding as they did must be put forward—not, I repeat, in the shape of a chronicle, but in the shape of a thesis. Thus the reader must know not only that the failure of the royal family's flight was followed by war, but how and why it was followed by war. He must not only appreciate the severity of the government of the great Committee, but why that severity was present, and of the conditions of war upon which it reposed. But in so explaining the development of the movement it is necessary to select for appreciation as the chief figures the characters of the time, since upon their will and manner depended the fate of the whole. For instance, had the Queen been French either in blood or in sympathy, had the King been alert, had any one character retained the old religious motives, all history would have been changed, and this human company must be seen if its action and drama are to be comprehended.

      The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (and but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; and this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, that historians, even when they recognise the importance of the military side of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and think it sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. The military aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in the campaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts. In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armies if he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly given him. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to the importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of a general position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, a story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how the two combine.

      Now, the Revolution, more than any other modern period, turns upon, and is explained by, its military history. On this account has so considerable a space been devoted to the explaining of that feature.

      The reader will note, again, that the quarrel between the Revolution and the Catholic Church has also been dealt with at length.

      To emphasise this aspect of the revolutionary struggle may seem unusual and perhaps deserves a word of apology.

      The reader is invited to consider the fact that the Revolution took place in a country which had, in the first place, definitely determined during the religious struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to remain in communion with Rome; and