Maria Theresa was married to Francis of Lorraine, who was Grand Duke of Tuscany. She was of the Habsburg house. Louis XIV. was a Bourbon—a younger branch of the Capet family—and in direct descent from the Henry IV., who was the first of the Bourbons to be King of France. And of the same Bourbon family was the King of Spain and of Southern Italy and Sicily—"the Two Sicilies," as they were called.

Nearly thirty years before his death, the Emperor Charles had secured the assent of the great powers of Europe to his decree that if he died without sons his daughter should succeed to the Austrian dominions. The Bourbons, with others, had assented. Nevertheless, directly Charles died and Maria Theresa, according to this arrangement, claimed to succeed him, they took sides with the Elector of Bavaria, who claimed the throne.

For allies, she had only England, with Hanover, in the north, and, in the south, the small but ancient kingdom of Savoy, often, in course of the story, the object of fighting between France and Spain, yet still, after varying fortunes, maintaining its independence. Moreover, Sardinia, which had long been a Spanish possession, now belonged to Savoy. The armies of this small State had a great reputation, due to the genius for generalship shown by Prince Eugene of Savoy both against the Turks and in Marlborough's service.

Mainly, however, it was the valour and devotion of the Hungarians that saved Austria for Maria Theresa. The armies of France and Bavaria advanced through Russian territory, but they were flung back by Hungarians and Austrians. Maria Theresa returned to the throne from which she had fled. Her principal enemy, the Bavarian Elector, who had been chosen as Emperor, died, and her own husband, Francis, was elected Emperor in his place.

In the north, England and France met in the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy. The English were assisted by the Dutch, for Holland was now a member of the alliance, but neither of the allies gained much glory in the campaign. They did at least divert some of the strength of France from the Austrian battlefields, while the armies of Savoy occupied the attention of Spain in Italy and also of such troops as France had to spare for that quarter of the far-flung war. Frederick the Great broke his word, with the cynicism which the Prussian has always shown since, and took the field on the side of France and Bavaria. Again he was victorious. He was confirmed in possession of Silesia, though he assented to the election of Francis as Emperor.

Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle

The result of this various fighting was summed up in the Provisions of the famous Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed at that place in 1748. Maria Theresa was established on the Austrian throne, with the formal assent of the other powers. Her dominion in Northern Italy, including Milan and Tuscany, was confirmed. And the territory of Savoy was extended. In the south, the Bourbon king of the Two Sicilies retained these dominions. Thus, in the main, the position of neither Spain nor of France was greatly affected. We may note that one of the treaty provisions put Genoa under the protection of France. That may seem a detail rather small for attention in so outlined a story as this. It is, however, a detail of which the importance must be realised when we observe that Genoa claimed a sovereignty over the little island of Corsica. Corsica shortly afterwards rebelled against this sovereignty, with the ultimate result that the island was annexed by France in 1755. And in 1769 was born, in Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte.

It was in direct consequence, therefore, of this protectorate of Genoa by France under the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and of France's annexation of Corsica a few years later, that Napoleon was born a French subject. That seemingly accidental circumstance was of some importance in the world's history.

The disposition of the various States in Italy, made by this Peace of 1748, was maintained with little disturbance until the armies of the French Republic, under the leadership of the wonderful Corsican, broke up every European disposition.

If France, in the course of this war over the Austrian succession, had possessed an army free for an attack in any force on England, it might have gone very hardly for our country. The son of James II., known as the Old Pretender (pretender to the Crown of England) was still living at the French Court in 1745; and in that year his son, Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, landed in Scotland, and led that rising which is known from its date as "the Forty-five." With the Highland clans to aid, he gained victories over the English generals sent against him, he conquered practically all Scotland and made his way southward in England as far as Derby.

If he had shown determination, if he had pushed on towards London, it is quite likely that much of the future story of England and of the whole Anglo-Saxon community in the world might have to be written very differently. For England was not warmly devoted to her Hanoverian kings. The Young Pretender might have picked up many more adherents as he went south. Had a French force been poured in to his assistance at this critical moment, it seems to be the opinion of historians that his cause would have been won.

But no French force appeared. Probably France had all her available armies fully engaged. Charles Edward did not show determination. He went back to Edinburgh, and the clans, held together by no central authority, but only by their sympathy with the Scottish royal family of Stuart, dispersed to their Highland homes. For a while the Pretender played the king in Edinburgh, but at length a strong English force under the Duke of Cumberland was sent to Scotland. A decisive engagement was fought on the wild moor of Culloden, near Inverness. It settled for all time the fate of the Stuart dynasty, and set the Hanoverians firmly on the throne of England. The clans which had arisen for the Stuarts in the previous attempt by the Old Pretender in "the Fifteen" had suffered slight punishment at the hands of the victorious English. After "the Forty-five," on the contrary, their punishment was cruelly severe; but it had at least the effect of quelling their spirit so that they did not imperil the peace of the realm again.

Ireland's misfortunes

At the same moment, towards the middle of this eighteenth century, Ireland was in terrible suffering also. In 1739 had happened her worst famine, due to failure of the potatoes on which most of the people depended, almost entirely, for their livelihood. It was estimated that no less than one-fifth of the population actually died, and there can be no doubt that the effect of that starvation on the survivors must have been to weaken the stock for more than one generation.

And we are obliged to confess, with shame, that England's dealing with Ireland during all that half-century was as cruel and selfish as it was stupid and short-sighted. There was a moment when it seems as if the people of the smaller island were anxious for union with the greater; but that union was opposed by a section of the English themselves—especially the powerful section interested in the trade of wool with the continent of Europe. A law passed as far back as the second half of the seventeenth century prohibited the Irish from exporting cattle. Consequently they had largely devoted their excellent pasture to producing sheep, for the wool. The English wool traders wished to keep this profitable commerce to themselves. To attain that selfish end they opposed the proposed union, which presumably would have put the Irish wool producers on the same footing as the English. Further, under William III., they succeeded in passing through Parliament a bill prohibiting the Irish from either making up their home-grown wool or from exporting it.

The not unnatural result was that the unfortunate Irish turned to all sorts of secret devices for shipping their wool, contrary to the provisions of this extraordinarily cruel law, to France; and this secret traffic is generally regarded as the starting-point of all the many secret societies, the Whiteboys, the Fenians, and so on, which have figured largely in Ireland's later political story. So much of the bitter feud between England and Ireland has been due to the folly and injustice of the former nation! For all our just pride in the greatness of our country, we must try to keep a clear vision and not let that proper pride blind us to England's faults.

One of the reasons why I suggested that a French force landing in England in "the Forty-five" might have changed the subsequent story of the Anglo-Saxon people, is that it might have had the result of modifying those very stupid measures by which England drove her American colonies to revolt, and so caused the separation from the mother land of the United States. It is always interesting to speculate about what might have happened to the world story had this or the other event gone just a little differently. It is interesting; but we can never know the answers to such questioning. The story of that lamentable separation belongs to the second half of the century with which we are now dealing. For the moment preparation is in making for it by the continual increase of the English colonists and their continual expansion over more and more of the virgin land. But still the French are in possession of all that vast extent then included under the name of Louisiana.

In a former chapter we saw how unmeasured were the hopes of Spain regarding that fabled city of El Dorado, which seems to have been imagined as built and paved with gold. In the new world which the voyagers of the previous century had begun to open out for men of Europe, no vision seemed impossible to realise, and the French, in their American possessions, appear to have deemed that they had found something equivalent to a city of gold—a land with boundless possibilities of wealth. Nor were the less imaginative English immune from the like delusive dreams. We had our "South Sea Bubble"; the French their "Mississippi Bubble."

Bubble was the name applied to those schemes only when they had proved themselves, by bursting, to be filled with nothing more substantial or golden than the air. The English bubble, at its inception, was a grave business proposition styled the South Sea Company. The French equivalent was the Mississippi Company, or Compagnie de l'Occident. Like the East India Company, these were formed by persons who subscribed funds for exploiting the wealth, real or imaginary, of the countries indicated by the titles of each. Shares in both one and the other rose to ridiculous values; and the bursting of the one, as of the other, brought ruin to very many in both countries.

The French bourgeois

Nevertheless the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in the middle of the eighteenth century was the starting-point from which began a remarkable commercial prosperity in France. It was a prosperity of the bourgeois, the burghers or dwellers in the towns, who developed the industries and trades, but it did not reach down to the paysans, the peasants or dwellers in the country. They were in a very bad way, ground down by heavy taxes and by the enforced labour demanded from them by the seigneurs, or landowners.

France had expected great things from her Compagnie de l'Occident, and her extensive colony of Louisiana; but the trading stations which she established in increasing number in the East brought her far richer gains. The war of the Austrian Succession engaged England and France in fighting on battlefields as far apart as Canada and Louisiana in the West, and India in the East; and in the East the French, under Dupleix, at first had the advantage again and again. They repulsed an attack of the English on Pondicherry and they captured Madras. Indications, for the moment, pointed towards an Indian Empire for France as far more likely than an English Indian Empire. In the West, England fared better, but the results of the victories of either side were largely neutralised by that far-reaching Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which provided that both should relinquish their recent conquests to the other. So the apparent effect of that far-off fighting was to show England increasing in strength westward, but losing, relatively to France, in the East. The events of the next few years were to prove that appearance true for the West, but completely to disprove it in the East. And we should note here once again that it was mainly on the sea-coasts of India, not inland, that the French established themselves. In the interior, the great empire of the Moguls was passing from its zenith of power. The most remarkable monument to its glory is that surpassingly beautiful Taj Mahal, regarded as one of the world's wonders—the shrine erected by the Mogul emperor in memory of his best beloved wife. And as the Mogul supremacy wanes, the power of the Hindu States of Mahratta and Sindhia increases, so that the balance is nearly equal between the Mahommedans and the Buddhists.

Taj Mahal

THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA.
THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA.

The little kingdom of Afghanistan which we have seen rise on the north-eastern frontier of India established its complete independence towards the middle of the century, after long fighting, with varying fortune, against Persia. On her other boundary, westward and northward, Persia was engaged, on the whole successfully, in perpetual fighting against the Turk; but the result, except as it indicated a decrease in Turkey's striking force, had little or no effect on the Great Story. Under the famous Shah Nadir, Persian armies had penetrated as far eastward as Delhi. But after Nadir's death, in 1747, his eastern conquests were lost.

On its north-western border, India was menaced by Chinese armies, that conquered the warlike Ghurkas and subdued Nepal. At no other moment of our story does China appear so successful or so aggressive in arms or so likely to play an important part in the world drama. Her great emperor Keenlung had come to the throne in 1735, commencing a reign of no less than sixty years. Nor even then did he leave the throne to die, but voluntarily relinquished it to his son—to the fifteenth, in seniority, of his many sons.

This, however, was the farthest limit of Chinese extension in the direction of India. The Ghurkas, a tribe of martial hill-men destined to distinguished service under the British flag in later years, soon regained their independence. China contented herself with a much disputed sovereignty over the more northern province of Tibet.

CHAPTER IX

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR

It is likely that until the latter half of the eighteenth century the people of Europe did not even begin to realise the full meaning of the great New World which Columbus had discovered for them in the West. Spain regarded it as a Tom Tiddler's ground where she would go and pick up gold. France and possibly England too had their foolish dreams. They expected enormous things from that vast continent of which the western limits were only gradually revealed to them. They expected enormous results which never were, nor ever could be realised. But they had no idea whatever of the yet more enormous effect which the finding of the new continent really was to have on the story. All that was hidden from their eyes.

The settlement between the nations agreed at Aix-la-Chapelle was called a "Peace," but it was a settlement that left one of the States of Europe in a situation which did not promise that the peace would last long. That State was Prussia. We have seen her establishing herself and gaining strength. She had taken Silesia from Austria, and Austria had agreed to that loss in the terms of the peace, but yet longed for an opportunity to regain the loss. France and Spain were knit together in an alliance known as the Family Compact, because the rulers of both countries were of the Bourbon family. Austria, under Maria Theresa, joined their family alliance, and brought in Saxony with her, for Saxony was no less jealous of the power of Prussia than Austria herself. Russia, under the Tsarina Elizabeth, was anxious about the growing strength of this Teutonic State on her border; and on her side she brought Sweden into the large conspiracy which had for its object the break up of the power of Prussia and a partition between the conspirators of the Prussian territories.

It was a conspiracy which came to the knowledge of Frederick, the Prussian king.

For many years the interests of England and of France had been in conflict both West and East, in America and in India. The opposition was approaching the point at which war must result from it. Now, in the European position just indicated, England saw the opportunity of getting a strong helper against France. She allied herself with Frederick, who had carried the States of Brunswick and of Hesse-Cassel with him; and together they declared war upon nearly all Europe. France, Austria, Spain, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony were against them.

It has the sound of a combination of overwhelming force as opposed to the English and the Prussian kings, even though the immense power of Russia was then only in its infancy. England was not likely to send very large armies to the Continent, and an English force of 50,000 retreated before the French and was disbanded very early in the war. But Frederick had a genius for the creation and organisation of armies, and had occupied it, during the eight years following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in making the Prussian army the finest military machine which the modern world had seen.

The Seven Years' War

The war which ensued, known as the Seven Years' War from the time that it lasted, is most remarkable for its dramatic changes of fortune. Frederick began by a victory in Saxony, yet more than once he was so heavily defeated that he almost gave up the fight in despair. It is said that he thought of suicide. England, when the elder Pitt was Prime Minister, gave assistance in form of large subsidies of money rather than large forces of men or arms, and without these subsidies Frederick must have given in. A mixed force of English and Hanoverians did indeed fight under the Duke of Brunswick and drove back the French from their attacks on Hanover in 1758 and again in 1759, but except for this last success everything went heavily against Frederick in the fourth year of the war. In the year following, contingents of Russian and Austrian armies were actually occupying Berlin when he fell upon the main Austrian force at Torgau on the Elbe. The victory that he there gained, over heavy odds, turned the tide of the fighting in his favour when it was at its lowest ebb.

Still the struggle continued, with Frederick and his war-weary troops chiefly on the defensive, exhausted. And to that exhaustion and to his encircling foes he would in all likelihood have been compelled to own defeat, had it not been for the death at the beginning of 1762 of one of his chief enemies, the Tsarina of Russia, and the accession of a Tsar who was his friend. Russia, from a foe became an ally and carried Sweden with her. England, however, had become tired of the war and made alliance with France and Spain by the Peace of Paris in 1763, and in the same year the protagonists, or chief fighters, Prussia and Austria, themselves came to terms. Prussia retained Silesia. The final result of the seven years' fighting, with these singular alternations of victories and defeats, was to leave the map of Europe practically unchanged. From that point of view all the bloodshed had been for nothing.

From another, a larger and more just point of view, however, we are obliged to realise that perhaps no other one war in the whole of the story has made more difference to its future course. If we consider its effect on the Continent alone, we must realise that it laid the foundation on which the union of the German States into a compact nation was later to be built. It established Prussia in far greater strength than before, because, if she had not added to her possessions, she had at least held her own while her enemies vainly dashed themselves against her. Austria had perforce to acquiesce at length in the loss of Silesia and also in the recognition of this strong State of Northern Germany set up against her own strength in the south. Prussia was to prove the nucleus round and under which the unity of Germany should be built, and it was this war which set firm the foundations of that building.

And as to who was the master mason in that building we can have no doubt whatever.

We have come across many men in course of this Greatest Story to whom the title of Great has been given, but surely to none more rightly than to this great King of Prussia. His courage in the hour of defeat has been indicated by the above very brief sketch of the war. It was only by the most steadfast courage combined with rare military genius that he came out of that seven years' fighting unshattered. But his genius served his country in peaceful as well as warlike interests. He was an absolute despot, yet he used himself and his despotic power entirely for his country's good. He set the example, in his own court, of a rigid, a scraping economy. He did all in his power to develop the industries of the country, by road making, by improved means of transport, and by every possible expedient. He encouraged education and brought men of letters like Voltaire to the Prussian court. He was rough and passionate, but a very hard worker, and all his work was given to the strengthening and enlightening of his subjects.

Taken from this point of view, then, the Seven Years' War is seen to have had a very great effect on our story.

But let us regard it also in its effects on the far larger stage upon which the story is being enacted, now that the Old East and the New West have begun to form part of it.

The War overseas

In the very same year, 1757, that Frederick gained two of his most effective victories, those of Rosbach and of Leuthen, in the first of which he broke up the French armies and in the second the armies of Austria, England was gaining success no less important against France far overseas. We have spoken of the East India Company of merchants settled as traders in various places along the coasts of India. It was thus, establishing stations on the coast, that the Portuguese, first, had come; and so too the French and English after them. Already, before the Seven Years' War, we have also noticed sundry clashes of arms between the English and the French, in which the advantage had gone heavily against the former. Both nations were obliged to keep a certain force of troops under arms for their protection in a country where the friendship of the natives was uncertain. The natives were of various races; the land was divided between many rulers of different States; and there was the one outstanding division of religion between Hindus and Mahommedans.

It may seem a strange thing to say, but really it was the French ambition to found a French Empire in India which led to the foundation of the British Empire. Under their able and ambitious leader, Dupleix, the French began to push inland from their coastal stations and forcibly to claim authority in some of the native States. It was, of course, an authority which they exercised in favour of their own people and against the English traders. When the Seven Years' War broke out, English and French in India as elsewhere were declared and open enemies. It was at this very moment that the Nawab, the native ruler, of Bengal, began to quarrel with the English. Naturally he was supported by the French. At first things went badly for the English in some fighting which led to no decisive result, but in the following year—the year of Rosbach and of Leuthen—the British, under Clive, gained a victory of the greatest importance over the troops of the Nawab, supported by the French, at Plassey.

It seems to have been quite a revelation to the natives that the British were able to fight at all, and from this time forward their prestige was established in the East, The battle which mainly decided the issue, as between English and French, was not fought until three years later, for at Plassey there had been only a few French supporting the native forces. But at Wandewash, in 1760, the battle was between British and French almost wholly, and its result was a decisive British victory. From that time forward Britain was always regarded as the principal European power in India and on all the eastern sea-coasts.

That was the mark made in the East on this greatest of all stories by the Seven Years' War.

Its mark was planted no less deeply on the western side. Montreal and Quebec were French towns at the beginning of the war. Moreover, Montcalm, the French governor, had established the authority of the French, supported by a chain of forts, right away west as far as the Mississippi. Take out the atlas, and, remembering that the French possession of Louisiana at that time stretched right up from New Orleans at the Mississippi's mouth to the Great Lakes, you will realise what this meant to the British people in America. It meant that they were completely hemmed in and shut off from all access to the West.

Canada gained by England

Pitt seems to have realised it. He sent out a strong force, which was ably helped by the militia called up from the British who were settled in America. Montcalm appears to have shown much genius for friendship with the Indians, and he had many of their tribes to aid his French forces. But the British gained post after post, and the crowning victory was won by Wolfe in 1759 on the Plains of Abraham, which dominate Quebec. Canada was won for Great Britain. The way to the almost boundless West was opened to men of British race. France's dream of Western empire was broken as completely as her dream of empire in the East. Florida, moreover, became British under the terms of the Peace of Paris, being assigned to Great Britain in return for Cuba and the Philippine Islands which had been taken from the Spaniards during the war.

1760, the year of the Wandewash battle in India, saw two great battles in Europe, one on land, at Minden, and one on sea, in Quiberon Bay, in both of which the French were heavily beaten. They happened at a moment when Frederick's fortunes were at low ebb, and were sorely needed. In the land battles the French were broken by a charge of the English line which seems to have been delivered contrary to all then recognised rules of war. At sea the French fleet was practically destroyed by the English under Admiral Hawke just when it was actually preparing for an invasion of England.

And the rewards of these conquests, both East and West, were confirmed to Britain by that Peace of Paris which terminated the Seven Years' War.

CHAPTER X

HOW THE UNITED STATES WON INDEPENDENCE

We have come to a moment in our story at which the events which modified it most importantly occurred, not in Europe at all, but in that new West which was still British. Before considering them, however, it will be well to gather up some loose ends of the European story.

There had been some rearrangement of territory, in the year 1767, between Denmark and Sweden, by which most of what we may see on modern maps marked as Schleswig-Holstein was given over to Denmark in exchange for the Duchy of Oldenburg; but a rearrangement of far more importance was that which is known as the first partition of Poland in 1772. It was a mutual arrangement, between the three strong powers of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, to dismember and embody as parts of themselves such pieces of Polish territory as lay most neighbourly to their own boundaries.

The Seven Years' War had been in large measure brought about by a rather similar design against Prussia and Poland seems to have been one of the consenting parties, if not an active partaker, in that proposed robbery. Now a robbery yet more audacious was not only proposed but actually perpetrated upon her. She was powerless to resist; though there had been a time when she was a great power and Russia was scarcely heard of, Austria no more than the boundary buffer state between the Teuton and the Slav, and Prussia of no account whatever in the story. This first partition was followed by a second and yet a third rather more than twenty years afterwards. By that latest division she was almost wholly swallowed up in Russia and ceased to exist as an independent State until her comparatively recent resuscitation.

Expansion of Russia

On whatever side we now look of the boundaries of Russia we see them continuously extending. Her armies defeat the Tartars eastward, the Turks southward; she destroys a large Turkish fleet; she gains the extensive region called White Russia, and the Crimea, and sends conquering armies into the Balkan States, where the Bulgarian Slavs are establishing themselves ever more firmly as an independent nation. Largely it is by reason of the growing power of Russia that the Turks, are more and more compelled to fight for their existence and for their hold on even a part of their wide conquests in Europe. They are no longer fighting to extend them. And at the same time, that is to say, in 1768, Egypt, under the Mamelukes, throws off the domination of the Ottomans. Originally these Mamelukes themselves were Turkish—a bodyguard of Turkish slaves enrolled for the protection of the Egyptian rulers. They had revolted and seized the government soon after the reign of Saladin. And it is worthy of note that in the midst of all the fighting which goes on in and around the Balkans between Venetians, Turks, Russians, and others, the little mountain State of Montenegro always retains her independence. Though often attacked, she is never subdued. Her story may remind us of those valiant and invincible Swiss, for doubtless it is because of the mountainous character of the two countries alike, giving the defence such a great advantage over the attack, that the heroic defenders of both kept their homeland free against enemies whose numbers were many times greater than their own.

Now, turning to the far western side of the stage, the leading feature of the drama is that the British had established themselves as the great power in America. They had little to fear now from the French. And the reason why that fact is of such vast importance in the story is that, had it not been for that freedom from the French menace, the independence of the United States could not possibly have been won as, and at the time when, it was won. We may regard that independence as a good thing or a bad thing for the world: we may think it better for the world that there should be this great free nation in the West, not united by any political ties with Europe; or we may, on the contrary, deem that the peace and prosperity of man would be better served if the United States belonged to that confederation of States which we call the British Empire—although "Empire" is rather a misleading name for it. The voice of the Anglo-Saxon communities would certainly speak even more forcibly than it does in the world's counsels if there were such union and such unity.

But, whatever view we may take as to that, we cannot but see that the English settlers in America could never, with even tolerable safety, have declared themselves independent of the British Government, if they had still had the French menace hanging over them. They could not possibly have dispensed with the support of the British army and navy. But after the defeat of the French in Canada they were free to assert themselves.

George III

And again whatever be our opinion about this great splitting up into two branches of the Anglo-Saxon stock, we of England are painfully obliged to realise that it was England's fault. It came about owing to the obstinacy and the despotic ideas of that king of the Hanoverian Royal family, George III., who was on the throne of Great Britain. He even tried his hardest, but in vain, to suppress the newspapers which dared to comment on matters of public interest at home. As a foreigner, and very ignorant of the temper of the people, he was in some degree to be excused. He could scarcely be expected to know better than he did.

There were those about him whom we might have expected to know better—his Prime Ministers, and notably Lord Grenville and Lord North. But Lord Grenville was as proud and arrogant as the king himself, and Lord North was not at all a clever man, and, besides, was the absolute servant of his king, not daring to assert his voice against his master's, as Pitt, who had been Prime Minister a little while before, had dared often and long.

We have to realise that the actual government was very much in the hands of the king at this date. Then, as now, it was nominally the Parliament that governed. The Cabinet, in fact, does most of the business to-day. Under George III. it was George III. that governed, because the Parliament was full of "the king's friends," as they were called—members whom affection or bribery or some other form of interest influenced so that they could be relied on to support any measures which the king wished to be carried.

The population and the wealth of the British colonies in America had grown very rapidly. At the beginning of George III.'s reign the colonists are said to have numbered nearly a million and a half, which was then just about a fourth of the population of the mother country. And there was already half a million of slaves in the South.

The slaves were already creating a difference between the South and the North, or, shall we say, were emphasising and widening the difference created by the different type of colonist by which the two districts were populated. For Virginia and the other southern States had been occupied largely by emigrants from the West of England and by aristocratic families, and with the slaves to work for them they tended to divide up the country into large estates; whereas in the North, whither the emigrants had come from a lower social stratum at home, and where they had no slaves to work for them, the holdings were small.

In religion the Virginians were mainly of the Established English Church. In Maryland, the inhabitants were chiefly Roman Catholic. In New England, Puritans were in a large majority; and in Pennsylvania, the State of William Penn, the people were largely Quakers.

It was for the sake of religion that most of them, or their forbears, had left their native land. And just because the religions were so many and various, it was impossible that there could be any established Church among them in the land of their adoption. Men were free to serve God according to the dictates of their consciences.

Each State was governed by an Assembly elected by its own people and by a Governor appointed by the Crown. The States had their "charters"—documents in which were drawn up their rights and their duties—and so long as they acted within the provisions of those characters the Governor had no right or reason to interfere. The right of taxing themselves for the purpose of administering their own affairs was given them. The home Government derived a revenue from the colonies by the duties charged on articles which they imported by sea. And the colonies were obliged by their charters to engage in no trade overseas except with the home country.

This last provision had not been faithfully observed, and a considerable trade was going on illicitly between the British and the Spanish colonies. Britain, short of money by reason of the cost of the Seven Years' War, raised the import duties and enforced the prohibition against trading with the Spaniards.

Certain of the expenses of the war had been incurred for the protection of the colonies, and though they might not welcome this action of the home Government they could not legally resist it. Nor did they. But then the king and his minister Grenville imposed, or sought to impose, on them a tax which surely was illegal and which surely they were within their rights in resisting.

The Stamp Act

It was imposed by the piece of legislation known as the Stamp Act, because its object was to levy money from the colonists by making it illegal for them to buy and sell certain articles within the colonies themselves unless they bore a government stamp; for which stamp payment had to be made to the home Government.

It was a manifest breach of the agreement which had been made with the colonists, and the principal effect of the passing of this Stamp Act in 1765 was that the colonists called together a Congress of delegates from all the colonies and passed a protest against the Act and a demand for its repeal. More than that; when the ship came into Boston harbour carrying the first batch of the stamps to be used for the new tax, they had the stamps seized and retained. It was open defiance. It was defiance by something like three millions of determined people, the population having nearly doubled itself since the beginning of George III.'s reign. Pitt's generous comment upon it is well known: "Three millions of people so dead to all feelings of liberty as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest."

It was chiefly Pitt's influence which led to the repeal of the Act in 1766; but much of the good effect of its repeal must have been spoiled by a measure called the "Declaratory Act," passed at the same time, declaring that the power of the British Parliament was supreme over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." It was as much as to say, "We yield on this particular point, but we maintain that our right over you is despotic whensoever we think fit to exercise it." It did, in fact, claim to enslave, as Pitt indicated, these people, because, as we have seen all through the story, it was by insistence on the right to tax themselves that Britons had painfully won liberty: it was a right expressed in the words "no taxation without representation": and here was a declaration directly opposed to that right, for it declared that the home Government might tax the colonists, although they had no representation in the home Government!

But for the moment the trouble passed. The colonists had all the substance of victory in the repeal of the Stamp Act: they could afford to disregard the shadowy threat of the Declaratory Act. They may have thought that, since the king and Parliament had yielded to their resistance once, they were not likely to challenge that resistance again. But King George appears to have been incapable of learning. Seven years later the trouble broke out anew, again provoked by the question of taxation. The colonists protested against import duties which they considered illegal and oppressive, and their protest was met by the withdrawal of all the duties objected to except that on tea. They accepted this withdrawal, and this exception, amicably; but they countered the exception by generally refusing to drink tea, so that no tea was imported and no duty on it was payable. It was a situation which would be laughable if the consequences had not been so tragic.

Opposition to the tea duty

Despite the non-tea-drinking resolution, English ships laden with tea put into Boston harbour towards the end of 1773, doubtless with a view to landing it. Whether or no it would have been landed we can never know, for the ships while in harbour were boarded by a mob disguised as wild Indians and all the tea-chests were thrown into the sea.

Again it would be laughable but for the tragic consequence. The colonial Governments deplored the lawless act and were ready to make compensation. But the king, who had ever bewailed what he called "the fatal compliance" in the repeal of the Stamp Act, would accept no expression of regret. Measures were introduced into Parliament for closing the port of Boston to all commerce, by way of punishment for the act of "hooliganism," as we now should call it, and virtually all the liberties granted by charter to the State of Massachusetts, of which Boston was the chief city, were withdrawn. Troops were sent out to enforce these decrees, and the general in command was appointed Governor of the State with powers such as had never before been vested in any governor of any American colony.

The citizens of Massachusetts refused to obey the enactments of the Governor, and all the colonies in America sooner or later came to the support of Massachusetts. And that is no matter for our wonder, seeing that they must have felt that what was done to Massachusetts to-day might be done to them to-morrow. They must quickly have realised that their best hope of liberty lay in opposing a united front to the servitude that threatened them. It might seem but a slender hope; yet we may remember that those colonists of a new world were far more apt to make good fighters than agriculturists or townsfolk in a long settled land. They were still surrounded by hostile tribes of Red Indians. Many of themselves, and most of their forefathers, must have lived with rifle ever ready at hand, for protection against sudden attack, while they went about their tasks of peace. They were doubtless quick-witted, as men needs must be who are constantly facing new conditions. They were tough, determined men, and in their struggle to be free they found a man to lead them—George Washington.

Of their tough quality the British soldiers made experience in the first serious clash of arms at Bunker's Hill. I cannot tell you, in a story of barest outlines like this, the details of the long drawn-out fighting, how the cause of the colonists' freedom seemed now and again all but lost, how the fortunes of the war went this way and that. For its changes were scarcely less remarkable than those of the Seven Years' War in Europe. The quality that served the colonists best and enabled them to win through was that essentially British quality of refusing to believe themselves defeated. They endured with an extraordinary steadfastness and they recovered themselves when beaten to the ground with a marvellous resilience.

Even after fighting had begun, a reconciliation might have been made had the counsels of Lord Chatham prevailed at home. George Washington was representative of the great landowners of Virginia. By their traditions, and also owing to the fact that their state lay far south of that Massachusetts which was the immediate sufferer by the British tyranny, the Virginians clung more closely and longer to the mother country than any of the other colonial children. But their clinging was of no use. Chatham's good counsel was rejected. Washington, as leader of the nation in war, was probably the more looked up to because he had tried so hard for peace. His face now was set as firmly towards the prosecution of the war as it had been towards peace while any hope of favourable peace was left. And every year of the war's duration revealed more and more his rare character for wisdom, determination, and moderation.

Course of the War

A solemn and formal declaration of the independence of the United States of America was made on July 4th, 1776, but all that year and the greater part of the next the fighting went hardly for the colonists until, in October, 1777, the British under Burgoyne suffered their first serious—and it was very serious—defeat at Saratoga.

It was a disaster to the British arms which had far-reaching effects. France was still seething with discontent over the loss of colonies in the Seven Years' War. Now, encouraged by the event of Saratoga, she declared war on Great Britain. Spain shortly followed her lead. And in the same year Lord Chatham died. A little later Holland took the side of the enemies of Great Britain also, provoked by the claims of Britain to search the ships of neutral nations for arms or other "contraband of war" which they might be carrying for the Americans. Sweden, Russia, and Denmark united in an "armed neutrality" compact against her, to enforce the freedom of the seas and the right which they claimed for their ships to cross the ocean without liability to be searched.

A further effect of Saratoga was that the British armies took the field no more in the northern States, but concentrated in the south. There they held their own, if not more than their own, until in 1781 a second blow, even more calamitous than that of Saratoga, befell them. The generals in command of the sections of the British did not work in harmony. Lord Cornwallis was disappointed in the support which he had expected, and entrenched himself behind defensive lines in York Town in Virginia. The French fleet held the sea. Washington marched round and cut him off from supplies by land. He was driven by famine to surrender, with all his army.

It was the end of the war. It was the establishment, never again to be shaken, of the independence of the United States of America. It looked grievously like the end of Great Britain as a leading power in the world. Ireland rose against her in a clamour for what virtually was independence, Spain claimed Gibraltar as the price of peace, and France demanded that Great Britain should give over to her the greater part of British India.

Then, in that very dark hour for England, deliverance came, as more than once before, from the sea. Lord Rodney had already struck a disabling blow at a main portion of the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent; and now, in 1782, he dealt what really was a shattering stroke on the French fleet in the West Indies. These naval victories and the repulse of the French and Spanish ships beleaguering Gibraltar disposed those nations to agree to terms of peace in which England could acquiesce without dishonour. She lost nothing to France; to Spain she resigned the island of Minorca and gave back Florida; and—she lost the United States.

CHAPTER XI

HOW THE STAGE WAS SET FOR THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Thus England's star went setting in the West; but in the East coincidentally it rose continuously to greater glory. Plassey had given Bengal into her hands; Wandewash had made her authority dominant in Southern India. But as yet it was not England, the nation and the King of England, that held this scarcely defined authority. It was the great trading concern known as the East India Company.

"Some have greatness thrust upon them"; and this was remarkably true of the empire of India which Great Britain was really compelled by the force of circumstances to assume. The trading company did not desire to govern the country: they wished to fulfil their original purpose of trade, of making money. It was the aggression of the French and the oppression of the native ruler of Bengal, as we have seen, which obliged them to fight for the very liberty to trade. Further, they were compelled to maintain some kind of order in the districts in which they thus became supreme. It was not easy for them to do this under their charter as traders. The government of the native princes of Bengal was inefficient and corrupt and the people under them were in misery. An Act of the British Parliament in 1773 appointed a Governor-General with powers over all the British possessions in India. Warren Hastings, a civilian in the Company's service, was the first to hold that high post, and with a strong hand he reduced to nothing the powers of the worst of the native rulers and made the government of the better among them less ineffective and corrupt. With the rulers of some of the independent States he entered into treaties and alliances. The idea of Britain's Indian Empire seems to have been born in the brain of Warren Hastings.

Warren Hastings

And the peculiar conditions of India made the realisation of that idea not only possible but inevitable. Through the whole of her story Hindustan has been a land of constant strife between various races settled on her soil and between those settled races and warlike tribes coming down upon her from the north through the passes of her great boundary mountains, the Himalayas. But the greatest cleavage of all among her people was that which still exists between the Moslems and the Hindus of the Buddhist faith. All the many divisions have been causes of jealousies and fighting, but none so constant and prolonged as those due to these two opposed faiths. It is that opposition, in the main, which has made the British Empire in India both possible and necessary—possible, because without that cleavage there might well have been a union of native strength sufficient to withstand the British domination, and necessary, because at every step the British found their trade and their peace imperilled by disturbances beyond the latest limits within which they had made good their authority. They were impelled, for their own mere safety, to push that authority further and further again. And it was a necessity imposed on them also by consideration for the sufferings of the natives in some of the worst governed States. It was a veritable "white man's burden" laid, of no will of their own, and sometimes sorely against their will, upon their shoulders.

WARREN HASTINGS
WARREN HASTINGS

Warren Hastings had to stand a prolonged trial on his return home for what almost certainly were acts of exceeding harshness in his dealings with some of the native rulers. He was acquitted; and it is not possible for us now to try him over again. Almost certainly he dealt very hardly; but almost as certainly no man who did not deal very hardly could have done what he did to bring a large part of India under a government which gave its subjects greater peace and happiness than they had known before.

As we know, there was another power besides the French with which Great Britain came into collision in the East—the Dutch. Ever since the middle of the eighteenth century there had been much ill-will in Holland against England. Holland only a little while before had been the chief naval power in the Northern seas. Her ships had even come conquering and destroying far up the Thames. And now the Dutch saw that supremacy gradually taken from them; the British Government actually passing resolutions to restrain their free right of traffic on the high seas. And at the same time Great Britain was taking much, and constantly more and more, of the carrying trade away from Holland; Great Britain was trading more and more, on her own behalf and on that of other nations, with the East; Great Britain was bringing to the West, from her ever-growing Eastern possessions, the produce of the East which used to be brought from the Dutch colonies in Dutch ships; some of these colonies and trading settlements themselves were being taken from the Dutch by the British; and where the Dutch rights were not very firmly established British traders set up settlements to compete with them.

A state of actual war between the countries existed from 1780 to 1784. The terms of the treaty which put an end to that active warfare could not put an end to their constant trade rivalry in the East in which Great Britain was usually the gainer and Holland the loser. By the date of the great convulsions caused by the French Revolution we find Holland so diminished in power as to be ready to do the bidding of Great Britain and of Prussia.

It was thus that Britain's star rose higher and brighter in the East even as it sank in the West, and if we look to the far southern quarter of the world stage we find it in the ascendant there also, for in 1787 New Zealand was declared a British possession, and that declaration was followed in the next year by the colonisation of New South Wales. The beginning of the British occupation of the west coast of Africa dates from the same time. On every side therefore, except along that eastern fringe of the American continent where the colonists had gloriously won their independence, the British, the Anglo-Saxons, were extending their sway.

Poyning's Act Repealed

There was one people, British yet not Anglo-Saxon, very, much nearer the home centre, who made a bold claim, and in part a successful claim, at this moment for their independence—the Irish. By a law of George I., known as Poyning's Act, from its proposer, no measure passed by the Parliament of Ireland could become law until it had received the assent of the King of England. It was this law of which the Irish, under the lead of Grattan, their great orator, obtained the repeal in the year 1782, taking advantage of the dire straits in which England then found herself. It needs but a moment's thought to show that this repeal meant all the difference between a dependent and an independent Parliament in Ireland. It put Irishmen into the position that they were free to legislate in all Irish matters without interference from England. Irishmen in large numbers had before this emigrated to America, and naturally had been active in inflaming the anti-English feeling in the colonies. Besides all political reasons, and the real grievances under which the Irish had suffered from the English, the fact that the great majority of them were Catholics was an added occasion why these people of a Celtic origin could not be at rest under the government of the Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Church of Rome in Ireland

The political power of the Church of Rome, that is to say, the power of the Pope to interfere in the government, had received some severe checks even in the countries where Roman Catholicism was the religion of the State. As early as 1753 the Pope had yielded to the King of Spain the power to make appointments to the high dignities in the Church; but still the Romish Church meddled with politics abroad. Such interference was resented by the despotic kings of the Bourbon branch of the great Capet stock, both in France and Spain. The political activities of the very able and energetic order of Jesuits gave special offence to the Governments. Portugal had commenced the campaign against them by driving them out as early as 1759. In France their activities were suppressed five years later. In 1767 they were expelled from Spain, and within a very few years such pressure was put upon the Pope that he was obliged to break up their order in Italy itself. We have seen how Spain was ground beneath the heel of the Inquisition—not acting under orders from Rome but on its own initiative. Now, that is to say, in 1774, the Spanish Government asserted itself to confine the judicial power of the Inquisition to ecclesiastical cases; that is to say, that its officials might only arrest and try and punish the people guilty, or suspected of guilt, against the laws of the Church. Before that, it had been in the habit of arresting and trying and punishing persons suspected of breaking the common law of the land, the civil law. The Inquisition's claim to try these civil cases had been without legal warrant, but the Government had not till now found the courage to resist it. And this withdrawal of all such cases out of the hands of the Inquisition gave a blow that was really deadly to the power of that cruel and dreaded institution, though it was not finally abolished until nearly half a century later.

Thus, in all these strongholds of the Roman Catholic faith the political activity of the Church was checked. It received no such check, however, in Ireland. That island was as true a stronghold of the old faith as any of those others and had escaped, as they had not, much, both of the darkening of the faith in the Middle Ages, and also of the storms that shook it in the Reformation. Rome's authority received no check from any Government in Ireland, because it had never come up against the authority of an Irish Government. During the years in which other Governments were growing restive under the political interference of the Church, and latterly of the Jesuits more particularly, there was no independent Government in Ireland, and the native leaders of Ireland were ready enough to welcome any form of interference with England's Government. For this reason the Church continued to be politically active in Ireland—always in opposition to Protestant England—without arousing the hostility to which it had been obliged to yield in other Catholic countries.

And now the course of this Greatest Story has brought us to the years in which the centre of the stage begins to be occupied by the tragic figure of France struggling in the throes of her revolution. Even at that time, although communication was comparatively very difficult and slow, the tremors of the revolution were felt over nearly all the world stage. Temporarily it changed the map of Europe beyond recognition. And not only temporarily, but for all time, it changed the minds of men not only in Europe, but nearly the whole world over.

CHAPTER XII

THE REVOLUTION AND THE TERROR

The position in Europe at this time, that is to say, about 1790, was singular and interesting. That continent, always since the establishment of the power of Rome the stage on which the principal world drama was played, was in the enjoyment of a peace which was unexpected. A time of extreme tension, during which war on a great scale had seemed most probable, had just been safely passed—war provoked by the ambition of Russia still further to extend her vast territories, and especially to acquire the port of Constantinople.

But first it seemed good to her to proceed to a second partition of Poland, and Poland lay at her mercy, unless some foreign power intervened. Annexation perhaps would be a better word than partition, for she had little thought of letting in another to share with her.

Alliance against Rome

Another power, however, namely Prussia, with Frederick as its king, claimed a share, and drew the Emperor and King of Austria into alliance with him. Austria, also, demanded her slice of Polish land, and in consequence of these conflicting claims, the whole scheme was allowed to drop for the time being.

The next act in the drama was that Prussia and Austria fell to quarrelling over the latter's proposal to annex Bavaria, and of that quarrel Russia took advantage to seek the alliance of Austria with the design of parcelling out between the Russian and the Austrian powers, the territory of the Turks in Europe and establishing herself as mistress of Constantinople.

Again it was Prussia that stepped in to foil the scheme, and this time Prussia had once again on her side her old ally, Great Britain. The American war and the formation of that Northern League, as it was called, of the neutral powers who opposed Great Britain's claim to search their ships, and so on, had made a breach of that friendship, for Prussia had been a member of the League. But now that trouble was healed. The two old allies had come together again over the business of restoring the Stadholder, the constitutional ruler, of Holland, who had been driven out by a revolutionary movement. Holland also, therefore, came as a third into the alliance, now reformed, between Great Britain and Prussia for the special purpose, as was said, of preserving the Turkish Empire. The real motive of the compact was probably to hold Russia in check; but no doubt the other way of putting it sounded more unselfish. A very great struggle appeared imminent. But the danger passed, yet again, as soon as Austria realised the strength of the opposition. She withdrew from the war with Turkey, and Russia, left alone, did not press it. The war cloud passed. Men might again draw their breath freely after a time of breathless suspense in which the worst had been expected. They were free to sit in the audience and look on at the great events that quickly followed upon each other in France.

In course of telling this greatest of all stories I have thought it worth to turn aside now and again from the direct narrative in order to attempt a brief sketch of the peoples that have played a leading part in it. The tough tenacity of the Jews, the subtle intellectual curiosity of the Greeks, the determination and directness of purpose of the Romans have been such important moving forces in the history of the world that they claim to be considered. No less consideration is due at this point to the national character of the French. It is largely because of that character that the Revolution took place at all. It was a Revolution not only in the government of France, but in the thoughts of men all over the world. And it was largely because of the French national character that Napoleon's empire, rising out of the ruin wrought by the Revolution, had force to extend itself even more widely than that of Charlemagne.

We are able to realise something of the qualities of the national character which had such remarkable results; but I think we are obliged to confess ourselves unable to give a very perfect account of the causes which made it such as it was. For the French nation, after all, as its very name implies, is the nation of the Franks; and the Franks were but one of the many Gothic tribes which came breaking through the weakened defences of the later Roman Empire. Then, having so broken through, they found themselves in contact with the settlers already in possession of the land; and no doubt this contact modified more than a little the national character which they brought with them. Probably most of the settlers whom they would find, and by whose influence they would be affected, would be of the Latin race; and therefore the blend would be in the main a Franco-Latin blend.

But this Franco-Latin is really nothing more, as we have just said, than a Gothic-Latin—or Germano-Latin, if you like—and the other Gothic or German tribes coming in would be subject to just the same blend, so far as we can see, and therefore we should naturally expect to find the same characteristics in them all.

But certainly we do not. Certainly the Batavians, who settled to the northward of the Franks, and the Burgundians who settled to their westward, did not show the same blend. We have seen how the subtlety of Louis XI. proved too much at last for the audacity of his great Burgundian vassal, Charles the Bold, and after Burgundy had become part of the French kingdom its national characteristics do seem gradually to have blended nearly into identity with those of the French.

The Visigoths passing on into Spain became subject to other influences. They do not come into the comparison.

But the Batavians and the peoples of the Netherlands generally, where the Batavians settled, were very different from the French. Doubtless there was an increasing blend of Latin as the invaders went south, but an adequate reason for their difference is hard to find.

The French character

At all events what we can say confidently is that the French developed, and still express, a national character of their own which is distinct from that of the others that broke through the bounds. It is also different from that of those German peoples who did not break through, who remained east of the Roman Empire's palisades.

One distinguishing characteristic of the French is that they are very "quick at the uptake," as we say: their minds respond quickly to suggestion, and they act quickly on the ideas thus quickly grasped. Thinking and acting more quickly than, say, Britons or Germans, they also set a much higher value on presenting to themselves a clear reason for any action that they undertake. The Briton, and in less degree the German, is tolerably well content to do the act which appears likely to give the best result, without troubling himself much as to what account he would give of the action if he were required to explain just why, in accordance with what law of right reason, he so acted. The French mind is not at ease unless it can refer an act back to some such reason as its motive. And one of the tendencies of that disposition of mind is that, if the French once perceive a reason of this kind clearly, they act according to it and are very readily obedient to its prompting.

So it was that when the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote about Egalité, Fraternité, and Liberté, with the idea that all men were created equal (and therefore ought to be equal always), that all men ought to live in brotherly love, and that all men should be free, these ideas won an immediate influence over the minds of Frenchmen that they would not have exercised over the minds of Britons or Germans. No doubt they are pleasant ideas, and would be very welcome, if they could be practically realised, to all reasonable men of any country; but on the French their effect was such that the nation at once had an eager desire to act on them. Frenchmen deemed that they might bring about the millennium, or a heaven on earth, by striving for their realisation.

Rousseau, then, and other writers inspired with his sentiments, prepared the minds of men in France for revolution. Many, with an ardour for freedom from the hard conditions which bound them, went as volunteers to help the Americans fighting against England. Those who returned came back with their ardour further kindled.

Now most of the historians write as if the immediate occasion of the Revolution was the misery, the oppression, the poverty, and the hunger of the lowest classes in the towns and in the country. Yet other historians, perhaps more judicious, tell us that, evil as their condition was, it was certainly no worse than that of the lowest classes elsewhere on the Continent. Let us admit, at any rate, that it was a cruelly evil condition and left much to be desired. What was different in France was the very rigid division between the classes of society and the fact, noticed before, that the king had all the real power in his own hands. The nobles and large landowners had none, except over their own dependants.

Thus there was no link, no connexion, between the Government and the great mass of the governed: the governed were dumb; they could not make their voices heard.

The "States General"

The reckless extravagance of three successive French kings had exhausted the treasury. Money was needed for the bare necessities of Government, for the pay of soldiers and officials. His ministers having failed to devise a means of raising the sums required, the king, Louis XVI., called together the "States General," a measure to which the Government had not resorted since the early years of the seventeenth century.

This States General was an assembly of the whole nation of France represented by deputies elected by the three great classes, the nobles, the Church, and the commoners. Each class elected its own deputies and sent them up to Paris to take counsel together and assist the Government in its distress.

The deputies of the three estates came to Paris in 1789, and though they did not succeed in finding money for the Government, they did succeed in finding a voice for the people. And it was by this voice that the Revolution was declared.

Trouble began over the manner in which votes were to be recorded. The clergy and the nobles demanded that each estate should give a single vote on any measure under discussion, and since clergy and nobles were likely to cast similar votes, the result would then be that the commoners would be outvoted. The commoners demanded that the votes of all three estates should be given in mass, a vote by each deputy. And since the deputies of the commoners outnumbered the other two combined, this would give them a majority. The clergy and nobles thereupon began their deliberations and excluded the deputies of the third estates from the assembly hall.

The deputies of the people, thus isolated, went in a body to the neighbouring tennis court, and there began their deliberations apart from the deputies of the other classes. They assumed the name of the National Assembly and took an oath not to dissolve until they had given France a constitution under which men might live in the desired condition of equality, brotherhood, and liberty. They commenced their sitting on June 20th, 1789.

THE MODERN PALACE OF VERSAILLES, FRANCE.
THE MODERN PALACE OF VERSAILLES, FRANCE.

In the spring of 1791 the king and Royal family attempted to escape, secretly, out of France, but were recognised before they reached the frontier and forcibly brought back. The aristocrats all over the country had fled from the persecution, or had been caught in the attempt, and forced to return. Large numbers were imprisoned, given a form of trial and decapitated by the guillotine. A mob stormed the Tuileries, where the Royal family were living, and the king barely escaped with his life. He implored the help and mercy of the Assembly, and for the time being the whole of the Royal family were kept closely imprisoned.