Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/409

 The Eve of the French Revolntioii 371 Yet the embarrassment of the treasury which resulted from France's intervention in the war, and the liberal ideas which it suggested to some of the nobility, may have hastened the French Revolution. The count of Segur, looking back long years after the events he narrates, thus describes the intervention of France in the struggle of the American colonists. At this time libertv, which had been hushed in the civi- lized world for so many centuries, awoke in another hemi- sphere and engaged in a glorious struggle against an ancient monarchy which enjoyed the most redoubtable power. Eng- land, confident of its strength, had subsidized and dispatched forty thousand men to America to stifle this liberty in its cradle ; but a whole nation which longs foi freedom is scarce to be vanquished. The bravery of these new republicans won esteem in all parts of Europe and enlisted the sympathies of the friends of justice and humanity. The young men especially, who although brought up in the midst of monarchies had by a singular anomaly been nurtured in admiration for the great writers of antiquity and the heroes of Greece and Rome, carried to the point of enthusiasm the interest which the American insurrection inspired in them. The French government, which desired the weakening of the power of England, was gradually drawn on by this liberal opinion, which showed itself in so energetic a manner. At first it secretly furnished arms, munitions, and money to the Americans, or permitted supplies to reach them by French ships ; but it was too weak to venture to declare itself openly in their favor, affecting on the contrary an appearance of strict neutrality and so far blinding itself as to imagine that its secret measures would not be suspected, and that it might ruin its rival without incurring the danger of meeting it in the open field. Such an illusion could not last long, and the English cabinet was too clear-sighted to let us gain the advantages of a war without incurring any of its risks. 383. How France became interested in the American Revolution. (From the Memoires of Segur.)