The first cause of the Revolution in France was the great change which had taken place in the feelings of the French towards their government, and the monarch who was at its head. The devoted loyalty of the people had been for several ages the most marked characteristic of the nation.— Every true Frenchman submitted without scruple, to that abridgement of personal liberty which appeared necessary to render the monarch great, and France victorious. The same feeling was awakened, after all the changes of the Revolution, by the wonderful successes of the individual of whom the future pages are to treat, and who transferred to his own person, by deeds almost exceeding credibility, the devoted attachment with which France formerly regarded the ancient line of her kings.

The necessity of a great change in the principles of the ancient French monarchy had its source in the usurpations of preceding kings over the liberties of the subject, and the opportunity for this change was afforded by the weakness and pecuniary distresses of the present government. The original movements of the Revolution, so far as they went to secure the people the restoration of their natural liberty and the abolition of the usurpations of the crown, had become not only desirable, through the change of times, and by the influence of public opinion, but peremptorily necessary and inevitable.

The immediate, and most effective cause of the Revolution must be referred to the distresses of the people, and the embarrassments of the government, occasioned by the enormous expenses of the war in which France supported the independence of the American colonies. The profligacy of the Court; the dissentions of the clergy; the gradual progress of general intelligence; the dissemination of revolutionary principles, occasioned by the American contest, and the long established oppressions to which the mass of the people were subjected, all contributed to the same effect, but in a subordinate degree. It was not till the Court and the ministers were reduced to the most desperate expedients of finance, and compelled to court the favor, while they insulted the distresses of the nation, that the latent dissatisfaction of the people was excited to activity, and terminated in the fury of revolution ary enthusiasm. Exhausted by oppression, irritated by the continual presence of insulting tyranny, and unblushing licentiousness, excited to resentment of their wrongs, and instructed in the knowledge of their rights, the people of France

awakened to one universal spirit of complaint and resistance. The cry of liberty resounded from the capital to the frontiers, and was reverberated to the Alps, the Pyrennees, the shores of the Meditteranean and the Atlantic. Like all sudden and violent alterations in corrupt states, the explosion was accompanied by evils and attrocities, before which the crimes and the miseries of the ancient despotism faded into insignifi

cance.

On the first of May, 1789, after an interval of 175 years, the States General of France met for the first time. It was soon discovered that the Assembly was divided into various descriptions of delegates, marshalled under their respective chiefs and ready to combat their antagonists on the field of political warfare. It likewise appeared that the Third Estate, which in 1614, the Nobles had refused to acknowledge even as a younger brother of their order, was now, like the rod of the prophet, to swallow up all those who affected to share its power. Even amid the pageantry with which the ceremonial of the first sitting abounded, it was clearly visible that the wishes, hopes and interest of the public, were exclusively fixed upon the representatives of the commons. The rich garments and floating plumes of the nobility, and reverend robes. of the clergy, had nothing to fix the public eye; their sounding and emphatic titles had nothing to win the ear; the recollection of the highs feat of the one, and long sanctified character of the other order, had nothing to influence the mind of the spectators. All eyes were turned on the members of the Third Estate, in a plebeian and humble costume, corresponding to their lowly birth and occupation, as the only portion of the assembly from whom they looked for the lights and the counsels which the time demanded.

Five or six weeks elapsed in useless debates concerning the form in which the Estates should vote; during which period the Tiers Etat showed, by their boldness and decision, that they knew the advantage which they held, and were sensible that the other bodies, if they meant to retain the influence of their situation in any shape, must unite with them, on the principle according to which smaller drops of water are attracted by the larger. This came to pass accordingly. The Tiers Etat were joined by the whole body of inferior clergy and by some of the nobles, and on 17th June, 1789, proceeded to constitute themselves a legislative body, exclusively competent in itself to the entire province of legislation; and, renouncing the name of the Third Estate which reminded

them they were only one out of three bodies, they adopted that of the National Assembly, and avowed themselves, not merely the third branch of the representative body, but the sole representatives of the people of France, nay, the people themselves, wielding in person the whole gigantic powers of the realm. The members took, and attested by their respective signatures, a solemn oath, to continue their sittings until the constitution of the country should be fixed on a solid basis.

Bat the National Assembly, though almost unanimous in resisting the authority of the crown, and opposing the claims of the privileged classes, was much divided respecting ulteri or views, and carried in its bosom the seeds of internal dissention, and the jarring elements of at least four parties, which had afterwards their successive entrance and exit on the revolutionary stage; or rather one followed the other like successive billows, each obliterating and destroying the marks its predecessor had left on the beach.

The

The measures adopted by the court to defeat the designs of its adversaries, and accomplish its own, were planned without judgment and enforced without energy. Eleven of the footguards were prosecuted for disobedience to orders, and were liberated by the populace without incurring the infliction of punishment for so outrageous a violation of the peace. disorderly state of the metropolis and the unfitness of the guards for re-establishing tranquility, were advanced as ostensible reasons for collecting in the neighborhood of the capital a considerable body of troops from various parts of the kingdom. The citizens, determined to co-operate with the National Assembly in the establishment of a free government in opposition to the military force brought against them, formed themselves into a regular militia, classed according to their several sections, and amounting to 48,000 men. They afterwards took the name of the National Guard and appointed La Fayette commander in chief.

Some unknown individual, on the morning of the 14th of July, after attracting the attention of the citizens, exclaimed, "Let us take the Bastile." The name of this fortress, which recalled to the memory of the people every thing hateful and oppressive in the ancient despotism, operated with immediate and irresistible effect. The cry of "To the Bastile," resounded from rank to rank, from street to street, and from the Palais Royal to the suburbs of St. Antoine. An army com posed of citizens and soldiers provided with pikes forged dur

ing the night, and with muskets procured at the Invalids, was immediately formed. The French guards were prevailed upon to join this motley crew, and the close order of their march, their shining firelocks, their military appearance and their cannon, while they exhibited a striking contrast to their party colored allies, afforded the only reasonable hope of reducing a fortress hitherto terrible to the Parisians, and which since the time of Louis XI, had been accustomed to receive the victims of royal despotism. Deputations from the Hotel de Ville, an astonishing crowd in motion from the vicinity, a body of armed men in front, and forces marching to their support from all parts of an immense capital, equally intimidated and perplexed de Launey the governor, who sometimes parleyed and sometimes fought with the assailants. To the astonishment of all military men, the Bastile, defended by ditches apparently impassable, and to the towers and battlements of which there seemed no access, was carried by storm after an assault of two hours. De Launey the governor, was conveyed to the place de Greve, and instantly massacred. M. de Losme the mayor, a man of great humanity, unhappily shared a similar fate. The marquis of Pelleport was so deeply penetrated with the kindness which the mayor had shown him while a prisoner in the Bastile, that ardently clasping him in his arms, he implored the people, in the most pathetic manner, to spare the life of a friend to whom he was so deeply indebted. But his supplications were unavailing. The mayor's head was inhumanly severed from his body, and it was with great difficulty that the generous marquis, a young nobleman of rank and merit, escaped the same unmerited doom. Regnart, a subaltern officer, who had prevented the governor from setting fire to the magazine, was also killed, and the whole garrison would have been sacrificed by the populace, had it not been for the generous interposition of the French guards, who implored and obtained mercy. populace now proceeded to insult and mutilate the remains of the dead, and exhibited their heads on pikes, to the gaze of insulting multitudes. The victorious Parisians, exploring the gloomy dungeons of oppression, in expectation of delivering numbers of unfortunate victims, found only seven captives, four of whom were confined for forgery; so little was this engine of tyranny employed under the mild and humane sway of the reigning monarch.

The

The insurrection of Paris being acquiesced in by the sovereign, was recognised by the nation as a legitimate con

quest, instead of a state crime; and the tameness of the king in enduring its violence, was assumed as a proof that the citizens had but anticipated his intended forcible measures against the Assembly, and prevented the military occupation of the city. In the debates of the Assembly itself, the insurrection was vindicated; the fears and suspicions alleged as its motives were justified as well-founded; the passions of the citizens were sympathized with, and their worst excesses palliated and excused. When the horrors accompanying the murder of Berthier and Foulon were dillated upon by Lally Tolendahl in the Assembly, he was heard and answered as if he had made mountains out of mole-hills. Mirabeau said,

that "it was a time to think, and not to feel." Barnave asked, with a sneer, "If the blood which had been shed was so pure?" Robespierre, rising into animation with acts of cruelty fitted to call forth the interest of such a mind, observed, that "the people, oppressed for ages, had a right to the revenge of a day.""

But how long did that day last, or what was the fate of those who justified its enormites? From that hour the mob of Paris, or rather the suborned agitators by whom the actions of that blind multitude were dictated, became masters of the destiny of France. An insurrection was organized

whenever there was any purpose to be carried, and the Assembly might be said to work under the impulse of the popular current, as mechanically as the wheel of a water engine is driven by the cascade.

The king came, or was conducted to the Hotel de Ville of Paris, in what compared to the triumph of the minister, was a sort of ovation, in which he appeared rather as a captive than otherwise. He entered into the edifice under a vault of steel, formed by the crossed sabres and pikes of those who had been lately engaged in combating his soldiers, and murdering his subjects. He adopted the cockade of the insurrection; and in doing so, ratified and approved of the acts done expressly against his command, acquiesced in the victory obtained over his own authority, and completed that conquest by laying down his arms.

The conquest of the Bastile was the first, almost the only appeal to arms during the earlier part of the Revolution; and the popular success, afterwards sanctioned by the monarch, showed that nothing remained save the name of the ancient government.

The conviction that the ancient monarchy of France had