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Germany from the Earliest Period Volume 4 by Wolfgang Menzel
page 22 of 470 (04%)
quelling the rebellion, fraternized with the people. The national
assembly, emboldened by these first successes, undertook a thorough
transformation of the state, and, in order to attain the object for
which they had been assembled, that of procuring supplies, declared
the aristocracy subject to taxation, and sold the enormous property
belonging to the church. They went still further. The people was
declared the only true sovereign, and the king the first servant of
the state. All distinctions and privileges were abolished, and all
Frenchmen were declared equal.

The nobility and clergy, infuriated by this dreadful humiliation,
embittered the people still more against them by their futile
opposition, and, at length convinced of the hopelessness of their
cause, emigrated in crowds and attempted to form another France on the
borders of their country in the German Rhenish provinces. Worms and
Coblentz were their chief places of resort. In the latter city, they
continued their Parisian mode of life at the expense of the avaricious
elector of Treves, Clement Wenzel, a Saxon prince, by whose powerful
minister, Dominique, they were supported, and acted with unparalleled
impudence. They were headed by the two brothers of the French king,
who entered into negotiation with all the foreign powers, and they
vowed to defend the cause of the sovereigns against the people. Louis,
who for some time wavered between the national assembly and the
emigrants, was at length persuaded by the queen to throw himself into
the arms of the latter, and secretly fled, but was retaken and
subjected to still more rigorous treatment. The emigrants, instead of
saving, hurried him to destruction.

The other European powers at first gave signs of indecision. Blinded
by a policy no longer suited to the times, they merely beheld in the
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