Chapter VIII: The Fall of the Two Kingdoms

The Poles, a divided nation.—The three partitions.—Wars and
revolts as a result.—The disappearance of Lithuania.—The growing
power of the king of France.—An extravagant and corrupt
court.—Peasants cruelly taxed and oppressed.—Bankruptcy at
last.—The meeting of the three estates.—The third estate defies
the king.—The fall of the Bastille.—The flight and capture of the
king.—The king beheaded.—Other kings alarmed.—Valmy saves the
revolution.—The reign of terror.

In the flat country to the northeast of Austria-Hungary and east
of Prussia lay the kingdom of Poland, the largest country in
Europe with the exception of Russia. The Poles, as has been said
before, were a Slavic people, distant cousins of the Russians and
Bohemians. They had a strong nobility or upper class, but these
nobles were jealous of each other, and as a result, the country
was torn apart by many warring factions. The condition of the
working class was very miserable. The nobles did not allow them
any privileges. They were serfs, that is to say, practically
slaves, who had to give up to their masters the greater part of
the crops that they raised. In the council of the Polish nobles,
no law could be passed if a single nobleman opposed it. As a
result of this jealousy between factions, the Poles could not be
induced to obey any one leader, and thus, divided, were easy to
conquer.

Frederick the Great, regretting the fact that he was separated
from his land in East Prussia by the county of West Prussia,
which was part of Poland, proposed to his old enemy, Maria
Theresa of Austria, and to the Empress Catharine II of Russia
that they each take a slice of Poland. This was accordingly done,
in the year 1772. Poor Poland was unable to resist the three
great powers around her, and the other kings of Europe, who had
been greedily annexing land wherever they could get it, stood by
without a protest. Some twenty years later, Prussia and Russia
each again annexed a large part of the remainder of Poland, and
two years after this, the three powers divided up among them all
that was left of the unhappy kingdom. The Poles fought violently
against this last partition, but they were not united and were
greatly outnumbered by the troops of the three powers.

This great crime against a nation was the result of the military
system; and this in turn was the result of the feudal system,
which made the king, as commander-in-chief of the army, the
supreme ruler of his country. The men in the Prussian and
Austrian armies had no desire to fight and conquer the poor
Poles. Victory meant nothing to them. They gained no advantage
from it. To the kings who divided up the countries it simply
meant an enlargement of their kingdoms, more people to pay taxes
to them, and more men to draw on for their armies.

Instead of crushing out the love of the Poles for their country,
this wrongful tearing apart has made their national spirit all
the stronger. There have been revolts and bloody wars, caused by
Polish uprisings, time and time again, and the Poles will never
be satisfied until their unhappy country is once more united.

To the northeast of the Poles live the Lithuanians, whose country
had been annexed to the Polish kingdom when their duke, who had
married the daughter of the king of Poland, followed his
father-in-law on the Polish throne. Lithuania fell to Russia’s
share in the division, so that its people only changed masters.
They are a distinct nation, however, possessing a language and
literature of their own, and having no desire to be ruled by
either Poles or Russians. If they were to receive justice, they
would form a country by themselves, lying between Poland and
Russia proper.

The Downfall of the French Monarchy

In the meantime, a great change had come about in France. There,
for hundreds of years, the power of the king had been growing
greater, until by the eighteenth century, there was no one in the
country who could oppose him. He had great fortresses and prisons
where he sent those who had offended him, shutting them up
without a trial and not even letting their families know where
they had been taken. The peasants and working classes had been
ground down under taxes which grew heavier and heavier. The king
spent millions of dollars on his palaces, on his armies, on his
courts. Money was stolen by court officials. Paris was the gayest
capital in the world, the home of fashion, art, and frivolity and
the poor peasants paid the bills.

For years, there had been mutterings. The people were ripe for a
revolt, but they had no weapons, and there was no one to lead
them. At last, came a time when there was no money in the royal
treasury. After all the waste and corruption, nothing was left to
pay the army and keep up the expenses of the government. One
minister of finance after another tried to devise some scheme
whereby the country might meet its debts, but without success.
The costly wars and wasteful extravagances of the past hundred
years were at last to bring a reckoning. In desperation, the king
summoned a meeting of representative men from all over the
kingdom. There were three classes represented, the nobles, the
clergy, and what was called “the third estate,” which meant
merchants, shopkeepers, and the poor gentlemen. A great statesman
appeared, a man named Mirabeau. Under his leadership, the third
estate defied the king, and the temper of the people was such
that the king dared not force them to do his will. In the midst
of these exciting times, a mob attacked the great Paris prison,
the Bastille. They took it by storm, and tore it to the ground.
This happened on the fourteenth of July, 1789, a day which the
French still celebrate as the birthday of their nation’s liberty.
All over France the common people rose in revolt. The soldiers in
the army would no longer obey their officers. The king was
closely watched, and when he attempted to flee to Germany was
brought back and thrown into prison. Many of the nobles, in
terror, fled from the country. Thus began what is known as the
French Revolution.

As soon as the king was thrown into prison and the people of
France took charge of their government, a panic arose throughout
the courts of Europe. Other kings, alarmed over the fate of the
king of France, began to fear for themselves. They, too, had
taxed and oppressed their subjects. They felt that this revolt of
the French people must be put down, and the king of France set
back upon his throne, otherwise the same kind of revolt might
take place in their countries as well. Accordingly, the king of
Prussia, the king of England, and the emperor of Austria all made
war on the new French Republic. They proposed to overwhelm the
French by force of arms and compel them to put back their king
upon his throne.

Of course, if the soldiers in the armies of these kings had known
what the object of this war was, they would have had very little
sympathy with it, but for years they had been trained to obey
their officers, who in turn obeyed their generals, who in turn
obeyed the orders of the kings. The common soldiers were like
sheep, in that they did not think for themselves, but followed
their leaders. They were not allowed to know the truth concerning
this attack on France. They did not know the French language, and
had no way of finding out the real situation, for there were no
public schools in these countries, and very few people knew how
to read the newspapers. The newspapers, moreover, were controlled
by the governments, and were allowed to print only what favored
the cause of the kings.

The French, however, knew the meaning of the war. A young French
poet from Strasbourg on the Rhine wrote a wonderful war song
which was first sung in Paris by the men of Marseilles, and thus
has come to be called “La Marseillaise.” It is the cry of a
crushed and oppressed people against foreign tyrants who would
again enslave them. It fired the French army with a wonderful
enthusiasm, and untrained as they were, they beat back the
invaders at the hard-fought field of Valmy and saved the French
Republic.

The period known as “the reign of terror” now began in earnest. A
faction of the extreme republican party got control of the
government, and kept it by terrorizing the more peaceable
citizens. The brutal wrongs which nobles had put upon the lower
classes for so many hundred years were brutally avenged. The king
was executed, as were most of the nobles who had not fled from
the country. For three or four years, the gutters of the
principal French cities ran blood. Then the better sense of the
nation came to the front and the people settled down. A fairly
good government was organized, and the executions ceased. Still
the kings of Europe would not recognize the new republic. There
was war against France for the next twenty years on the part of
England, and generally two or three other countries as well.

Questions for Review

Why was Poland an easy prey for her neighbors?

Why did not Spain, France, or England interfere to prevent
the partition of Poland?

How did Lithuania come to be joined to Poland?

What things could the king of France do which would not be
tolerated in the United States today?

Why did the people of France submit to the rule of the king?

Why did the king call together the three “estates”?

Why do the French celebrate the 14th of July?

Why did the other kings take up the cause of the king of
France?

What was the cause of the reign of terror?