Book Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. 17S9. Causes of the Revolution?Paris divided into districts or sections? The sections meet in churches?Camille Desmoulins?Prince de Lambesc?Fall of the Bastille?Recall of Necker?King visits Paris?Foulon and Berthier a la Lanterne. Sergent describes the state of affairs in 17S9, and hia motives for joining the revolutionary party in the following passages? 1 A financial difficulty, the necessity for repairing an enormous deficit caused by the extravagance of the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., obliged Louis XVI. to convoke the States-General. All he wanted was money. But the people who had to furnish it knew that it would be quickly swallowed up by the insatiable avidity of the ministers, the courtiers, and the officials; they therefore ordered their deputies to grant nothing until the abuses which had brought about this distress were removed. The chief, the most insupportable, and the most iniquitous was the absolute power of the Crown. It had been cleverly and wickedly disguised and madeendurable in every Court by the formula?' Such is our good pleasure.' Thus the absolute power which reduced a whole nation to misery called itself ' good pleasure, ' and it was consecrated by Divine Right. This is why any imprudent wretch who ventured to speak, or write, or prove that its real name was tyranny, was sent to rot in the Bastille. The Assembly convoked at Versailles began indeed by rectifying abuses; the Court, in great alarm, tried to oppose its proceedings by threats, by violence, and by calling in the aid of the army, whose chiefs throve upon these abuses. It was at this time that I became a Revolutionist. I joined the cause of the Tiers Etat, the real force of the nation, which in the month of May was attired in the dress of beadles, and walked behind t...