Page:The coronation of Edward the Seventh - a chapter of European and imperial history.djvu/14

 to the institution of monarchy. It was not merely Louis Capet (as they inaccurately called their sovereign) and his wife, "the Austrian," whom they wished to be rid of. Such was their doctrinaire fury, fostered by the superficial teaching of the philosophers, that their desire was to put down from their seats the hereditary rulers of all civilised countries. '"Wherever there is a throne we have an enemy," said Hérault de Séchelles the year before at the Legislative Assembly; while Danton, who was fated to die with him on the same scaffold, declared, at the Convention, whose first act had been the formal abolition of royalty in France, that that newly elected body ought to act as a committee of insurrection against all the kings in the universe.

The French revolutionists did not confine themselves to mouthing their international theories. The Convention sent agents to London and other capitals to spread the revolutionary doctrine: it encouraged deputations to come from England and other countries to discuss with it the best ways of securing "liberty": it issued a decree promising fraternal aid to all peoples that should revolt against their established rulers. All monarchies were thus put on their defence, and constitutional England had to follow the lead of the despotisms of the Continent in taking up the challenge thrown down by the champions of the new order of things. It was the war with the French Republic, under the conduct of Mr Pitt, which first counteracted the diffusion of anti-monarchic principles among the people of England. They were subsequently checked at the fountain-head by the Jacobin general, Bonaparte, who organised the Revolution in a way unexpected by