FROM THE

COMMENCEMENT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

IN MDCCLXXXIX

TO THE

RESTORATION OF THE BOURBONS

IN MDCCCXV

BY

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, BART.

F. R. S. E.

NINTH EDITION

VOL. I.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLIII

tion; the heart-rending sufferings of persecuted virtue; and the means by which Providence caused the guilt of the Re-,

THE History of Europe during the French Revolution naturally divides itself into four periods :The first, commencing with the Con-volutionists to work out their own devocation of the States-General in 1789, served and memorable punishment. terminates with the execution of Louis, and the establishment of a republic in France, in 1793. This period embraces the history and vast changes of the Constituent Assembly; the annals of the Legislative Assembly; the revolt and overthrow of the throne on the 10th August; the trial and death of the king. It traces the changes of public opinion, and the fervour of innovation, from their joyous commencement to that bloody catastrophe, and the successive steps by which the nation was led from the transports of general philanthropy to the sombre ascendant of sanguinary ambition.

The second opens with the strife of the Girondists and the Jacobins; and, after recounting the fall of the former body, enters upon the dreadful era of the Reign of Terror, and follows out the subsequent struggles of the now exhausted factions, till the establishment of a regular military government, by the suppression of the revolt of the National Guard of Paris, in October 1795. This period embraces the commencement of the war; the immense exertions of France during the campaign in 1793; the heroic contest in la Vendée; the last efforts of Polish independence under Kosciusko; the conquest of Flanders and Holland; and the scientific manoeuvres of the campaign of 1795. But its most interesting part is the internal history of the Revolu

VOL. I.

The third, commencing with the rise of Napoleon, terminates with the seizure of the reins of power by that extraordinary man, and the first pause in the general strife at the Peace of Amiens. It is singularly rich in splendid achievements, embracing the Italian campaigns of the French hero, and the German ones of the Archduke Charles; the battles of St Vincent, Camperdown, and the Nile; the expedition to Egypt, the wars of Suwarroff in Italy, and Massena on the Alps; the campaigns of Marengo and Hohenlinden; the Northern Coalition, with its dissolution by the victory of Copenhagen; the overthrow of the French in Egypt, and their expulsion from it by the arms of England. During this period, the democratic passions of France had exhausted themselves, and the nation groaned under a weak but relentless military despotism, the external disasters and internal severities of which prepared all classes to range themselves under the banners of a victorious chieftain.

The fourth opens with brighter auspices to France, under the firm and able government of Napoleon, and terminates with his fall in 1815. Less illustrated than the former period by his military genius, it was rendered still more memorable by his resistless power and mighty achievements. It embraces the campaigns of Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland; the destruction

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