THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

BY

EDWARD J. LOWELL



TO MY WIFE





PREFACE


There are two ways in which the French Revolution may be considered. We
may look at the great events which astonished and horrified Europe and
America: the storming of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the
massacres of September, the Terror, and the restoration of order by
Napoleon. The study of these events must always be both interesting and
profitable, and we cannot wonder that historians, scenting the
approaching battle, have sometimes hurried over the comparatively
peaceful country that separated them from it. They have accepted easy
and ready-made solutions for the cause of the trouble. Old France has
been lurid in their eyes, in the light of her burning country-houses.
The Frenchmen of the eighteenth century, they think, must have been
wretches, or they could not so have suffered. The social fabric, they
are sure, was rotten indeed, or it would never have gone to pieces so