372 Chapter XV
ditions, however, in which people of all classes had been politically aroused, the
exclusion of a considerable segment from the vote led to disturbance, especially
with the beginning of war and the raising of a popular army in 1792. The Con-
stituent Assembly, on finishing its work in 1791, did not submit the new constitu-
tion to any form of popular ratification, such as had occurred for the federal and
some of the state constitutions in America. Here again, not without reason, the
Assembly was afraid of lesser assemblies throughout the country, many of which
might not agree with it, and some of which, even those influenced by “aristocrats,”
would claim to represent the people more than the National Assembly itself. As
Sieyès said, the authority of the National Assembly must be upheld, and no au-
thentic national will could be known except as expressed by it.
After the fall of the Bastille, Camille Desmoulins began to publish a political
paper in which he liked to emphasize the international character of the Revolu-
tion. He called it the Révolutions de France et de Brabant, and in December 1789 he
added etc. to “Brabant.” He put in news items from all kinds of places: there were
“fermentations” at Rome, “murmurs” in Hungary, troubles in Denmark, Spain, and
Poland, and at Geneva, Liège, and London. In March 1790 he took note of the
French émigrés, among whom such incongruous personages as Mounier and the
Count of Artois were now included, and of the agitation of the émigrés for inter-
vention in France by foreign powers. Against intervention he made the counter-
threat of international subversion. “I would not advise their Sardinian, Bohemian,
Spanish, Neapolitan, and Prussian Majesties to get mixed up in our affairs. Four or
five million armed men would fight for liberty and pro aris et focis against merce-
naries at four sous a day.” And he said that the American Revolution proved that
citizen soldiers could stand against regular armies. And that foreign troops would
be subverted by “our cockades and our decrees.”
The new French constitution went into effect in September 1791. “The Revolu-
tion is over,” said Robespierre, in a phrase often quoted. What he said was that the
Revolution was over if the constitution was firmly established, if all concerned
would live under it peaceably, if it had no dangerous enemies either inside France
or beyond its borders. These conditions did not obtain. The Revolution, was there-
fore by no means over. Only a challenge had been issued to the old order; the real
struggle was yet to come.