AUSTRALIA. Woodward, Expansion of the British Empire, 262–266. CANADA. Woodward, 249-264. REFORM PROJECTS OF WILLIAM PITT. Cross, 813-819; Fletcher, Introductory History of England, II, i, c. ix; Gardiner, 806-812; Jenks, Parliamentary England, 274-304; Oman, 558-565; Rosebery, Pitt; Tout, 589–592. CHAPTER XXIV THE GREAT WAR WITH FRANCE 1 Revolution. 472. The French Revolution. In the spring of 1789 a revolutionary movement broke out in France, which in a few years developed into a great international struggle involving nearly all the nations of Europe. The French Revolution had its center at the capital, but the movement was general all over the land, for local despots were to be found every- Causes of where. The common man had good reason to the French complain: the French peasant was still in a measure afflicted with the burdens of villeinage which the English farmers had thrown off in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.2 The masses had to bear the expenses of an extravagant government, while a comparatively small number of nobles and high. officials in the church enjoyed the official honors and privileges. The French thinkers of the age had long agitated for social reforms; yet it is not likely that their demands would have been heeded very soon; for Louis XVI, in whose hands the fullness of power was supposed to rest, was a helpless and incapable, though well-meaning king. But the last war with England, the War of American Independence, had pushed the royal treasury far in the direction of bankruptcy; 3 and the king was forced to call the Estates General, a body that roughly corresponded to the The Estates English parliament. This body had not met for General. one hundred and seventy-five years. In many ways the history of the sessions of the Estates General and the assemblies that succeeded it resembled that of the Long Parliament in England. In both cases many enduring reforms were enacted; 1 Gardiner, 820-821. 3 Ibid., No. 178. 2 Robinson, Nos. 169-170. Louis XVI. Outcome of the Revolution. and in both cases the legislative body went farther than the times would permit. In France as in England the movement led to the trial and execution of the king and to the establishment of a republic. In both cases the revolution produced a dictator. And in both cases the movement ended with a restoration of the old dynasty and in part of the old system. There are, of course, also certain notable differences: the French had suffered longer and more keenly than the English and were more united in their demands. As England was an island kingdom and therefore almost inaccessible to foreign armies, and as the rest of Europe was at the time engaged in the Thirty Years' War, England was allowed to finish her civil conflict without interference from abroad; while in France the revolutionists had to face and fight the combined armies of the European despots, who trembled lest the French movement should extend to their own monarchies. And the leadership of this reactionary alliance was forced upon England and upon the reluctant prime minister, William Pitt. 473. England and the Revolution. The course of the Revolution in France at first produced much satisfaction in England. Cowper and Wordsworth watched the progress of events with much enthusiasm; Coleridge expressed the same feeling in fervid poetry: "When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared, Attitude of the English poets. And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea, But when news came of changes by violent instead of strictly legal means, the early enthusiasm began to cool. The first important political result of the Revolution in England appeared in the Whig party, which was split in twain and practically ruined. Fox was enthusiastic for the uprising of the French; and when he heard of the destruction of the Bastille he proclaimed it "the greatest event . . . that ever happened in the world ;" and not only the greatest but the best. Attitude of THE OUTBREAK OF WAR WITH FRANCE. 1793 515 Burke on the But his old friend Edmund Burke was cool and suspicious from the first. Burke believed that institutions, whether social or political, that had grown up through a long period Edmund of time must have certain merits of their own and should not be tampered with. When he learned that the French were beginning to remodel their constitution, his coolness developed into deep resentment and anger. In 1790 he published his Reflections on the French Revolution, which became the storehouse from which all who opposed the French movement drew their chief arguments. In the Reflections Burke condemned the new revolutionary principles of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, and showed how, in pretended obedience to these principles, the revolutionists had committed great wrongs and even crimes. The same year he broke with his old friend Fox; and under Burke's leadership the more conservative Whigs drifted into an alliance with Pitt's new Tory party into which they were Split in the after a time wholly absorbed. The Whigs were Whig party. left in a sad plight: it was said that all the Whig members of parliament could find room in a single coach, though Fox insisted that they needed at least two. 474. The Outbreak of War with France. 1793.2 William Pitt had been mildly favorable to the Revolution in its earlier stages; but he, too, soon developed a strong Policy of Pitt. aversion to the movement. His policy was, however, to maintain the peace and to leave the French to settle their affairs and difficulties without interference from England. But every day violence grew more common and pronounced across the Channel; and every day the hatred of conservative England for revolutionary methods grew more intense. Still, the movement had gone on for nearly four years Causes of before actual war broke out between England and France. Three events forced this outcome: (1) in November, 1792, the French Convention, which had suc 1 Cheyney, No. 395; Gardiner, 822-823; Kendall, No. 123. the war with France. 3 Kendall, No. 124. ceeded the Estates General, invited all Europe to join in the Revolution and offered to assist any people that wished to overthrow what the French called despotism; (2) French armies had seized the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and were threatening to invade and annex the Dutch Republic; (3) in January, 1793, the French government executed the king, Louis XVI; London put on mourning, while Paris rejoiced. Both sides realized that war between the two countries was unavoidable. England might not feel called upon to avenge the Bourbon dynasty, or even to punish the French for inciting dissatisfied Britons to revolt; but she could not allow France to annex her old commercial rival, the Dutch Republic. France realized the situation and on February 1, 1793, the new Republic declared war on England. 1793. 475. The Reign of Terror and the English Reaction.1 Soon after midsummer of the same year, conditions at Paris The Reign of Terror in France. drifted into what is known as the Reign of Terror: the men in control of the Republic strove to destroy the enemies of the new system by the use of the guillotine. For nearly a year this terrible period lasted. The same years, 1793-1794, a strange panic seized and held the governing classes in England. Burke's Reflections called forth a number of animated replies, some of which attained a wide circulation; an abusive pamphlet by Thomas Paine called the Rights of Man sold to the extent of more than a million copies in The panic in a short time. In 1792 the government issued a England. proclamation against such "seditious writings" and parliament was induced to pass several acts directed against harmless political clubs and even against men who agitated for reasonable and much needed reforms. In applying these and other laws that might cover the offenses, the British courts often went to an indefensible extreme. A Scotch Political trials. lawyer, Thomas Muir, was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years for agitating in favor of universal suffrage and annual elections for members of parliament. There 1 Gardiner, 826-830. |