were even prohibited from cultivating their fields at certain seasons, as this disturbed the partridges and other game. Being kept in a state of abject poverty, a failure of crops reduced them to absolute starvation. It was not an unusual thing to find women and children dead along the roadways. In a word, to use the language of one (Fénelon) who saw all this misery, France had become "simply a great hospital full of woe and empty of food."
Revolutionary Spirit of French Philosophy.—French philosophy in the eighteenth century was sceptical and revolutionary. The names of the great writers Rousseau (1712–1778) and Voltaire (1694–1778) suggest at once its prevalent tone and spirit. Rousseau declared that all the evils which afflict humanity arise from vicious, artificial arrangements, such as the Family, the Church, and the State. Accordingly he would do away with these things, and have men return to a state of nature—that is, to simplicity. Savages, he declared, were happier than civilized men.
The tendency and effect of this sceptical philosophy was to create hatred and contempt for the institutions of both State and Church, to foster discontent with the established order of things, to stir up an uncontrollable passion for innovation and change.
Influence of the American Revolution.—Not one of the least potent of the proximate causes of the French Revolution was the successful establishment of the American republic. The French people sympathized deeply with the English colonists in their struggle for independence. Many of the nobility, like Lafayette, offered to the patriots the service of their swords; and the popular feeling at length compelled Louis XVI. to extend to them openly the aid of the armies of France.
The final triumph of the cause of liberty awakened scarcely less enthusiasm and rejoicing in France than in America. In this young republic of the Western world the French people saw realized the Arcadia of their philosophers. It was no longer a dream. They themselves had helped to make it real. Here the Rights of Man had been recovered and vindicated. And now this liberty which the French people had helped the American colonists to secure, they were impatient to see France herself enjoy.
