the nobility was sure to attract the attention of the French
revolutionaries. Its international character was a cause of offence to
the strong French nationalism engendered during the Revolution, while
its traces of monastic organisation helped to identify the Knights
with the Church.

When Necker, in the financial distress of the autumn of 1789, appealed
for a voluntary contribution from all landowners, the Order gave him a
third of the revenue of its French commanderies, and later it pledged
its credit for 500,000 francs to the destitute Louis XVI., to help him
in the flight that ended so disastrously at Varennes. This last act
put it in definite opposition to the Revolution.

The Constituent Assembly declared the Order of St. John to be a
foreign Power possessing property in France, and, as such, liable to
all taxes to be levied on natives, and immediately afterwards a decree
was passed declaring that any Frenchman belonging to an Order of
Knighthood which demanded proofs of nobility from entrants could not
be considered a French citizen. This was followed by the main attack
on September 19, 1792, when all the property in France was declared
confiscate and annexed to the French national domains. There was
some mention of indemnification to the despoiled Knights, but as the
necessary condition to a pension was residence in France--a dangerous
course for a noble in 1793 and 1794--the scheme came to naught. The
decree of September, 1792, was the death-blow to the Order, and its
extinction was simply a matter of time. The course of the war and the
constant French successes made their position even more perilous. Half
the revenues had gone with the confiscation in France; but this was
not all, for Bonaparte's Italian campaigns meant the loss of the
Order's estates in Northern Italy, and the conquests of the French on