The Old Regime and the Revolution

OPPOSING JUDGMENTS PASSED ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AT ITS ORIGIN.

Nothing is better fitted to give a lesson in modesty to philosophers and statesmen than the history of the French Revolution; for never were there events more important, longer in ripening, more fully prepared, or less foreseen.

The great Frederick himself, with all his genius, failed to perceive what was coming, and was almost in contact with the event without seeing it. Nay, more, he even acted in the spirit of the Revolution beforehand, and was in some sort its precursor, and already its agent; yet he did not recognise its approach, and when at length it made its appearance, the new and extraordinary features which were to distinguish its aspect, amidst the countless crowd of human revolutions, still passed unheeded.

The curiosity of all other countries was on the stretch. Everywhere an indistinct conception arose amongst the nations that a new period was at hand, and vague hopes were excited of great changes and reforms; but no one as yet had any suspicion of what the Revolution was really to become. Princes and their ministers lacked even the confused presentiment by which the masses were agitated; they beheld in the Revolution only one of those periodical disorders to which the constitutions of all nations are subject, and of which the only result is to open fresh paths for the policy of their neighbours. Even when they did chance to express a true opinion on the events before them, they did so unconsciously. Thus the principal sovereigns of Germany assembled at Pillnitz in 1791, proclaimed indeed that the danger which threatened royalty in France was common to all the established powers of Europe, and that all were threatened by the same peril; but in fact they believed nothing of the kind. The secret records of the period prove that they held this language only as a specious pretext to cover their real designs, or at least to colour them in the eyes of the multitude.