CHAPTER XIV
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION:
THE ARISTOCRATIC RESURGENCEThe Monarchy might become an aristocracy of magistrates, as contrary to the
rights and interests of the nation as to those of the sovereign power.
—LOUIS XVI TO THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS, 1788
No, Sire, no aristocracy in France, but no despotism either.
—THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS IN REPLY
That the French Revolution had points of resemblance to movements of the time
in other countries is the central theme of this book. Like them, it arose out of cir-
cumstances characteristic of Western Civilization, and it was to merge with them,
especially with the war that began in 1792, into a great struggle that no political
borders could contain. From the beginning, however, there was much that was
unique about the revolution in France.
The very size of France was enough to make its Revolution a special case. Fifty
French cities in 1789 were larger than the Boston of the Tea Party. Paris, except for
London, was by far the greatest city of Europe, having, with over 600,000 people,
three times the population of Amsterdam or Vienna. Twenty- six million French-
men outnumbered the British and the Spanish by more than two to one. Only
small and divided German and Italian states lay along France’s eastern border. The
French outnumbered the subjects of the Russian Empire until after the partitions
of Poland; and if they were not much more numerous than those of the Hapsburg
dominions, they greatly excelled them in wealth, in national unity, and in complex-
ity of social structure. The actual revenues of the Bourbon monarchy, whose inad-
equacy brought on the Revolution of 1789, nevertheless approached 500,000,000
livres a year, and were larger than those of Great Britain, twice as large as those of