Page:The Royal Family of France (Henry).djvu/70

 without dignity, and without result. A ridiculous preface to the grandest reign in the History of France, to that unrivalled era which saw the French victorious on land and sea in fifty battles; the Pyrenees opened to make way for its Royal Princes; the annexation of Flanders, Strasburg, and Alsace; which gave birth to Bossuet and Fénélon, to Racine and Corneille, to Boileau and Moliere, to Conde and Turenne, to Duquesne and Tourville; which saw created its ports, its roads, its fortifications, and witnessed the building of Versailles and the Louvre; and which, in spite of the mischances which are apt to befall all greatness in this world, arrested the foreigner at the gates of Denain, defeated him by the valour of French officers and the heroism of their King, supported by Marshal de Villars, and closed with victory an age whose brilliancy eclipses that of Francis I. and Leo X.

The memorable Revolution of 1793, the most terrible among the revolutions of Europe, testifies still more strongly to the exclusive and imperative incapacity of French innovators and political adventurers, whose shadowy training, jealous sentiments, and "swashbuckler" traditions constitute what to-day's Frenchmen call a Republican policy, and which they put forward once more and try to filter into the popular imagination. On October 16th, 1789, the National Assembly decrees that the title of the King of France shall be changed to that of the King of the French; and, the National Convention having opened on September 17th, 1792, Royalty falls on the 21st, abolished by a decree, and the Bourbon Family, perpetually banished (December 20th), King Louis XVI., Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the Royal Family confined in the Temple excepted. Who then could oppose these horrible regenerators in their work of blood and crime? When they have killed and assassinated to their heart's content, when they have cleansed prisons, palaces, and seminaries, instead of raising a lasting monument to their Republic, they end by sending each other to pay their dues to the executioner. Lastly, instead of their Kingly father, whom they sent to the scaffold, they accept a new master, a military despot, a tyrant! In truth, Burke in England had seen clearly the inevitable and proselytizing course of French Revolutionists, and eloquently declared it in his manifesto, *' Reflections on the French Revolution," and