population
swollen by political excitement, became ever shorter of bread. The
forestallers of wheat, aided by the we akening of the executive power, drove the price up to new and dangerous levels. On October 5th an armed mob, incited by the orators of the Pa lais Royal, set out to cover the thirteen miles to Versail les. It was partly composed of women, many of them showing masculine legs striding beneath their petticoats. The King retur ning from hunting in the forest found his Palace surrounded. While the Co urt debated the pros and cons of flight, the Guard w as relieved by the half-trained Citizen Army which under the l iberal Marquis de Lafayette had followed the crowd out from the cap ital. In the early hours of the 6th a mob broke into the Queen's bedchamber : hurried flight down a secret passage alone averted tragedy. Prese ntly an unappeasable
1 S, T. Coleridge, The Friend, Section I, Essay III. In the light of later experience this early adherent of the Revolution gave it as his opinion that a " constitution equally suited to China and America or to Russia and Great Britain must be equally unfit for both."
clamour arose demanding the seizure of the Royal Family—the " baker " and the " baker's wife." A little before two, the King's coach, surrounded by drunken fishwives and mysteriously followed by laden grain waggons, set out for the capital. For seven hours the bacchanalian rout continued amid obscene jests and threats of " A la lanterne" until the sweating captives were deposited at the Hotel de Ville. Thence they were consigned by the city fathers to the palace of the Tuileries.
These events caused much astonishment in England. The meeting of the States General had at first been greeted with general sympathy. France, it was felt, was following the British example. Whig magnates and parliamentary lawyers imagined they were witnessing a repetition of the "glorious" Revolution of 1688: Dissenters and Protestants hailed an end of Popish superstition and wooden shoes. The age of reason which William III had established in England seemed to be dawning across the Channel: henceforward the two great nations of the West would lead the world hand in hand. A treaty of commerce with France concluded a few years before by the young Tory Prime Minister, William Pitt, which had been much criticised by the Whigs—a party traditionally hostile to Bourbon and military France—was now universally acclaimed as a far-sighted act of statesmanship. Pitt assured the new French Ambassador " that France and England had the same principles, namely, not to aggrandise themselves and to oppose aggrandisement in others."
Some went further. The leader of the Opposition, Charles James Fox, in his generous enthusiasm described the fall of the Bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever happened. And all who felt that the libertarian tradition of England was not yet liberal enough—Dissenters who wanted the last religious disabilities repealed, parliamentary reformers who wished to see Manchester and Birmingham enfranchised, freethinkers and Unitarians who hated the Church monopoly of education—applauded the lofty sentiments of French orators who in the course of a few weeks seemed to have advanced further on the democratic road than slow-moving England in a century. Most enthusiastic of all were the young: those who like Wordsworth " approached the shield of human nature from the gold en side" and sensed the love of humanity that was coursing like an intoxication through the veins of a great people waking from sleep:
" France standing on the top of golden hours And human nature seeming born again."
Many, unwisely as it afterwards turned out, crossed the Channel and imbibed at the source new and generous sympathies.
But, when the Paris mob threatened the life of the Queen and insulted the King, sober Britons began to have their doubts. The King of England was no genius. But his people
swollen by political excitement, became ever shorter of bread. The
forestallers of wheat, aided by the we akening of the executive power, drove the price up to new and dangerous levels. On October 5th an armed mob, incited by the orators of the Pa lais Royal, set out to cover the thirteen miles to Versail les. It was partly composed of women, many of them showing masculine legs striding beneath their petticoats. The King retur ning from hunting in the forest found his Palace surrounded. While the Co urt debated the pros and cons of flight, the Guard w as relieved by the half-trained Citizen Army which under the l iberal Marquis de Lafayette had followed the crowd out from the cap ital. In the early hours of the 6th a mob broke into the Queen's bedchamber : hurried flight down a secret passage alone averted tragedy. Prese ntly an unappeasable
1 S, T. Coleridge, The Friend, Section I, Essay III. In the light of later experience this early adherent of the Revolution gave it as his opinion that a " constitution equally suited to China and America or to Russia and Great Britain must be equally unfit for both."
clamour arose demanding the seizure of the Royal Family—the " baker " and the " baker's wife." A little before two, the King's coach, surrounded by drunken fishwives and mysteriously followed by laden grain waggons, set out for the capital. For seven hours the bacchanalian rout continued amid obscene jests and threats of " A la lanterne" until the sweating captives were deposited at the Hotel de Ville. Thence they were consigned by the city fathers to the palace of the Tuileries.
These events caused much astonishment in England. The meeting of the States General had at first been greeted with general sympathy. France, it was felt, was following the British example. Whig magnates and parliamentary lawyers imagined they were witnessing a repetition of the "glorious" Revolution of 1688: Dissenters and Protestants hailed an end of Popish superstition and wooden shoes. The age of reason which William III had established in England seemed to be dawning across the Channel: henceforward the two great nations of the West would lead the world hand in hand. A treaty of commerce with France concluded a few years before by the young Tory Prime Minister, William Pitt, which had been much criticised by the Whigs—a party traditionally hostile to Bourbon and military France—was now universally acclaimed as a far-sighted act of statesmanship. Pitt assured the new French Ambassador " that France and England had the same principles, namely, not to aggrandise themselves and to oppose aggrandisement in others."
Some went further. The leader of the Opposition, Charles James Fox, in his generous enthusiasm described the fall of the Bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever happened. And all who felt that the libertarian tradition of England was not yet liberal enough—Dissenters who wanted the last religious disabilities repealed, parliamentary reformers who wished to see Manchester and Birmingham enfranchised, freethinkers and Unitarians who hated the Church monopoly of education—applauded the lofty sentiments of French orators who in the course of a few weeks seemed to have advanced further on the democratic road than slow-moving England in a century. Most enthusiastic of all were the young: those who like Wordsworth " approached the shield of human nature from the gold en side" and sensed the love of humanity that was coursing like an intoxication through the veins of a great people waking from sleep:
" France standing on the top of golden hours And human nature seeming born again."
Many, unwisely as it afterwards turned out, crossed the Channel and imbibed at the source new and generous sympathies.
But, when the Paris mob threatened the life of the Queen and insulted the King, sober Britons began to have their doubts. The King of England was no genius. But his people
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