Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/360

 348 THE EUROPEAN CONVULSION effect for longer, the man who controlled the destinies of Great Britain was the second William Pitt. Great Britain was the last of the great states to be drawn into the struggle with France; but from the beginning of 1793 she was the only one which to the very end was persistently dominated by the determination to resist French aggression at all costs. Almost down to that date there was a strong inclination in England to regard the French Revolution with sympathy ; after it the con- viction prevailed that France was once again, as in the days of Louis xiv., seeking to become not the liberator but the dictator of Europe. Moreover, the Reign of Terror in France produced in England as elsewhere a strong reaction against all previous tendencies to increase the political power of the populace. The States General met, having before it the immense task of reorganising French finances, dealing with the oppressive 2 Fall of the P r i y il e g es of the nobles, the clergy, and the court, French and reconstructing the Constitution on lines re- Monarchy, cognising the popular right to a share in political power. The three estates were the noblesse, the clergy, and the commons. A battle at once began for the predominance of the third estate, which turned on the principle that the three estates should vote as one body, since otherwise the two privileged The States bodies would outvote the third unprivileged body. General, 1789. The third estate, led by Mirabeau, himself a scion of the nobility, carried the day. But it seemed that the court and the privileged orders meant to override what had now been converted into the 'National Assembly.' The people of Paris enrolled themselves in the force which became the National Guard; the soldiers sided with the people; amid general acclamation, the Bastille, the fortress prison representative of arbitrary rule, was stormed and overthrown. The populace of Paris were masters of the situation. The court party were cowed ; many of them took flight from the country. Most of the sincere reformers had not yet realised The End of now weak were the forces left to control the Feudalism. passions of the mob if they were once fairly roused, though the risings of the peasantry against the 1 seigneurs,' over half France, might have given warning. The