of Prussia, Austria, and the French refugee noblesse, determined at once and for ever the belligerent character of the Revolution. The raw artisans and tradesmen, the clumsy burghers, the base mechanics and low peasant-churls, as it had been the fashion to term the middle and lower classes in France, found that they could face cannon-balls, pull triggers, and cross bayonets, without having been drilled into military machines, and without being officered by scions of noble houses. They awoke to the consciousness of their own instinctive soldiership. They at once acquired confidence in themselves and in each other; and that confidence soon grew into a spirit of unbounded audacity and ambition. "From the cannonade of Valmy may be dated the commencement of that career of victory which carried their armies to Vienna and the Kremlin."[1]
One of the gravest reflexions that arises from the contemplation of the civil restlessness and military enthusiasm, which the close of the last century saw nationalized in France, is the consideration that these disturbing influences have become perpetual. No settled system of government, that shall endure from generation to generation, that shall be proof against corruption and popular violence, seems capable of taking root among the
- ↑ Alison
