Chapter I: Front Matter

PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY
REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE
1789–1815

REVOLUTIONARY
EUROPE
1789–1815

BY

H. MORSE STEPHENS, M.A.
BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, U.S.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION,’ ETC.

_PERIOD VII_

London
RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL, & CO.
1896

_Third Edition_

_All Rights Reserved_

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

In this volume I have endeavoured to write a history of Europe during an important period of transition. I have reduced military details to the smallest possible limits, and have preferred to mention rather than to describe battles and campaigns, in order to have more space to devote to such questions as the Belgian revolution of 1789, the reorganisation of Prussia in 1806–12, and the Congress of Vienna. I have throughout tried to describe the French Revolution in its influence on Europe, and Napoleon’s career as a great reformer rather than as a great conqueror. The inner meaning of the period and its general results I have sketched in a short introductory chapter, on which the rest of the volume is really a detailed historical commentary.

The maps which accompany the volume are intended to show the changes in the boundaries of States, and not to give the position of places mentioned in the text. Every one who reads such a volume as the present must use an atlas as his constant companion, for no book of this size could possibly contain a sufficient number of maps adequate to the illustration of the events narrated.

In conclusion, I must express my thanks to Mr. W. R. Morfill, Reader in Slavonic to the University of Oxford, for giving me a canon for the spelling of Russian proper names, and to the Editor, Mr. Arthur Hassall, for willing assistance and friendly encouragement.

H. MORSE STEPHENS.

CAMBRIDGE, 1893.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PAGE

The Period from 1789 to 1815 an Era of Transition—The Principles
propounded during the period which have modified the
political conceptions of the Eighteenth Century: I. The
Principle of the Sovereignty of the People; II. The Principle
of Nationality; III. The Principle of Personal Liberty—The
Eighteenth Century, the Era of the Benevolent Despots—The
condition of the Labouring Classes in the Eighteenth Century:
Serfdom—The Middle Classes—The Upper Classes—Why France
led the way to modern ideas in the French Revolution—The
influence of the thinkers and writers of the Eighteenth
Century in bringing about the change—Contrast between the
French and German thinkers—The low state of morality and
general indifference to religion—Conclusion, 1