War itself assumed a new face. Every thing relating to it became
extraordinary: the number of the combatants, the manner of recruiting
the armies, and the means of providing supplies for them; the
manufacture of powder, cannon, and muskets; the ardour, impetuosity,
and forced marches of the troops; their extortions, their successes,
and their reverses; the choice of the generals, and the superior
talents of some of them, together with the springs, by which these
enormous bodies of armed men were moved and directed, were equally
new and astonishing.

History tells us that in poor countries, where nothing inflames
cupidity and ambition, the love alone of the public good causes
changes to be tried in the government; and that those changes derange
not the ordinary course of society; whereas, among rich nations,
corrupted by luxury, revolutions are always effected through secret
motives of jealousy and interest; because there are great places to
be usurped, and great fortunes to be invaded. In France, the
revolution covered the country with ruins, tears, and blood, because
means were not to be found to moderate in the people that
_revolutionary spirit_ which parches, in the bud, the promised fruits
of liberty, when its violence is not repressed.

Few persons were capable of keeping pace with the rapid progress of
the revolution. Those who remained behind were considered as guilty
of desertion. The authors of the first constitution were accused of
being _royalists_; the old partisans of republicanism were punished
as _moderates_; the land-owners, as _aristocrates_; the monied men,
as _corrupters_; the bankers and financiers, as _blood-suckers_; the
shop-keepers, as _promoters of famine_; and the newsmongers, as