them, he must fall back to take the next best position in his rear, and thus a country falls in a day, and, perhaps, without a battle. Ir is evident, that this new method of employing so vast armies, and this wasteful activity of manoeuvring and fighting incessantly, by which a campaign has become unusually destructive of human life, will require Europe to be more military than ever; all must be soldiers, or all will be slaves: and this boasted and boastful revolution will tend to hasten and to fix for ages both barbarism and despotism. THE NEW ROMANS. ART cannot soon form the character of a nation, nor can violence soon change it. Of all the barbarous nations, the Franks were the most martial. Fourteen hundred years ago, they formed their petty tribes into a conquering nation. The greatness of the nation early inspired ambition, which several able and warlike princes inflamed into a national enthusiasm. While most other European states were feeble by their divisions, the French were powerful, and aspired to dominion and influence over other nations. More than a thousand years ago, their kings led armies into Italy, and parcelled out its governments, as Buonaparte has done. The splendour of the reign of Charlemagne fascinated the French, as much as their late victories, and established the pretensions of their vanity to be the great nation, the arbiters of Europe. The compactness as well as immensity of their force engaged them in every war that occurred. We know the power that habit has to form the characters of individual men and whole nations: by continual wars, the French lost nothing of the military spirit of their barbarous ancestors. The crusades and the age of chivalry exalted this spirit to its highest degree, and greatly distinguished the French among the crusaders. The Edwards, and still more Henry the seventh, of England, and afterwards the wise Elizabeth, introduced commerce and the arts, and gave a new turn to the enterprise of the English nation. It may be conjectured with some appearance of probability, that the insular position of England very early determined the English character towards the arts of peace. As soon as the struggles between the king and the barons, and the rival houses of York and Lancaster, afforded any respite from arms, and any interiour order in the kingdom, two consequences resulted: a greater portion of the English inhabited the country, the country being as safe to inhabit as the cities; the yeomanry, or cultivators of land, increased in wealth and influence in the state, and constituted the mass and body of the nation: husbandry forms a class of men, and a determined character for the class, very unlike that of soldiers. A second consequence, and connected with the former, was, that the English were afterwards engaged less actively and, indeed, less dangerously in wars than their rivals: except the incursions of the Scotch, their wars were abroad, they were only occasional and of short duration. When the reign of Henry the seventh, and the discovery of America, awakened the ardour of discovery and commercial enterprise, this new propensity found little rivalship or impediment from the military passion, and, as it was fostered afterwards by Elizabeth and the Stuarts, the English soon became a shopkeeping nation, une nation boutiquiere, as the French contemptuously denominate them. Hence, the passion to acquire is characteristick of the English; the passion to rule is predominant with the French: the one seeks gain; the other glory. THE causes which have led to this national character, not only lie deep in the most remote antiquity, but events of a more recent date have contributed to decide and for ever to fix their preponderance. THE ravages of national wars frequently exposed the country people to spoil and violence; but the great lords and feudal chiefs claimed and exercised the right of private vengeance. Hence, animosities and endless civil wars desolated the continental states of Europe. The only places of security were the fortified towns. Thus it happened, that the country was inhabited by a wretched, defenceless peasantry, without character or spirit, and subject to the corvee or ruinous slavery of performing certain labour for their lords, and to a whole system of feudal exactions and oppressions so heavy and so dispiriting, as to prevent their having any character of their own, or any influence on that of the nation. Indeed, emulation will be directed towards such qualities as are esteemed; and there was nothing in the condition of the labouring class to gratify pride or to inspire it. The soldiers only were respected or imitated: they gave the tone and the fashion to every thing in France. Cities were not much occupied in arts, and not at all in commerce. They were crowded with retainers to princes and nobles, who even wore their livery and fed at their tables: they followed them in war, and their multitude was the rule, by which the magnificence and power of the nobles was measured and displayed. THUS the taste and manners of the French were not formed, like the English, in solitude and by the occupations of country life. Fashion governed the crowds in cities, and the nobles and their martial followers alone gave law to fashion: arms engrossed all thoughts, the business of war and the conversation of peace. WHEN Louis the eleventh humbled the great lords of France, and established a standing army, his sagacity discerned, that this leading propensity of the French character was to be used as the instrument to keep the nation in subjection. His successors cherished the military sense of honour, as the basis and guardian principle of the monarchy. The noblesse despised trade, and an artisan, however ingenious, was one of the peuple, or populace or mob. FROM hence it followed, that arms alone were honoured: a rich man could not pretend to be a gentleman till he had served a campaign; and the French noblesse preserved undiminished, the gallantry, the impetuous valour that courted danger, which so much distinguished the age of the crusades and of chivalry that gallant race was extinct, excepting in France. THE revolution began, and was in a great measure effected, not by quenching this chivalrous spirit, but by awakening it in the rabble. They were sensible to honour and shame, and they claimed to be as brave, and, therefore, as much gentlemen as the noblesse. This emulation, the more lively for being newly inspired, animated the attack of the bastile, arrayed the national guards, and spread the power of enthusiasm, like the electrick fluid, over all France. The leaders of the revolution, as skilful to guide as to excite the popular ferment, availed themselves of these new energies to raise armies, and, after having subverted the monarchy, to find work for them in a war with Austria. The progress of this war, it was foreseen, would throw all the political and physical power of France into their hands, as the fervour of the revolution had already given them absolute power over opinion. Never, in the history of mankind, did the rulers of a nation possess an influence so combined and so unlimited. Robespiere held all France in his hand as a machine, he wielded it as a weapon, while the emperour and the king of Great Britain, whom the French call despots, could command only the surplus of the revenues, and some fragments of the force of their states. BUT the manner, in which this gigantick despotism has proceeded, will best illustrate the popular sentiment, from which it sprung, and the end, which alone it deems worthy of its ambition and its efforts. THE NEW ROMANS. N. IV. IT has been attempted to shew, that military glory has ever been the first object of desire, the most fascinating claim to superiour consideration in France. SAVAGES take their character from their situation as individuals, from their appetites and their wants, rather than from any sympathy of national sentiment: hunger makes them hun ters; fear, and, sometimes, revenge makes them warriors. But in polished societies, men derive their national cast from their intercourse with one another. Absolute want is felt by few, and those who feel it, are without influence on the society. Man ceases to be merely an individual; he models his desires and his sentiments according to his relation to the national body, of which he is a member. That class in society which is the most respected, is the most imitated. It has been shewn, that the class of artisans, or that of merchants, did not hold that envied place in France, but that the men of the sword did. THIS being the national sentiment, it is obvious, that the government could not disobey, much less offend or shock, that sentiment, without losing, in a moment, all its hold on the popular affections. A dastardly policy, a dread of war with Austria or England, would have blasted the new leaders with disgrace. Taken, as they were, from the lowest classes of the nation, they would have been charged with having souls as mean as their condition, too mean to govern a republick, all whose citizens claimed an equal rank with their high-spirited nobles, and who required, that the great nation should adopt the lofty pretensions, and display the impetuous courage, of its military class. All the classes of society claimed an equality, and to be at the top, and thus the depression of ranks instantly produced an elevation of national spirit. Believing that they were all sovereign, and that France, by raising its spirit, had raised its power, they were anxious to make such a display of it, as should astonish and confound kings, whom they hated, and the English nation, whom they envied and feared. They considered their new liberty, as a new rank, and the highest rank, which, of course, in their eyes, was military; and that this sudden dignity was neither solidly established, nor sufficiently enjoyed, unless the power of France was displayed in a manner to excite both terrour and wonder, to make kings quake and their subjects admire. How dear a triumph for republicanism! How lofty a stage for equality! |