the Europe of today.

[First threats of foreign Courts against France, 1791.]

The first two years of the Revolution had ended without bringing France
into collision with foreign Powers. This was not due to any goodwill that
the Courts of Europe bore to the French people, or to want of effort on the
part of the French aristocracy to raise the armies of Europe against their
own country. The National Assembly, which met in 1789, had cut at the roots
of the power of the Crown; it had deprived the nobility of their privilees,
and laid its hand upon the revenues of the Church. The brothers of King
Louis XVI., with a host of nobles too impatient to pursue a course of
steady political opposition at home, quitted France, and wearied foreign
Courts with their appeals for armed assistance. The absolute monarchs of
the Continent gave them a warm and even ostentatious welcome; but they
confined their support to words and tokens of distinction, and until the
summer of 1791 the Revolution was not seriously threatened with the
interference of the stranger. The flight of King Louis from Paris in June,
1791, followed by his capture and his strict confinement within the
Tuileries, gave rise to the first definite project of foreign intervention.
[4] Louis had fled from his capital and from the National Assembly; he
returned, the hostage of a populace already familiar with outrage and
bloodshed. For a moment the exasperation of Paris brought the Royal Family
into real jeopardy. The Emperor Leopold, brother of Marie Antoinette,
trembled for the safety of his unhappy sister, and addressed a letter to
the European Courts from Padua, on the 6th of July, proposing that the
Powers should unite to preserve the Royal Family of France from popular
violence. Six weeks later the Emperor and King Frederick William II. of
Prussia met at Pillnitz, in Saxony. A declaration was published by the two
Sovereigns, stating that they considered the position of the King of France