its sense of human brotherhood, its
hatred of oppression, its pity for the guilty and the poor, its longing
after a higher and nobler standard of life and action, were expressed by
a crowd of writers, and above all by Rousseau, with a fire and eloquence
which carried them to the heart of the people. But this new force of
intelligence only jostled roughly with the social forms with which it
found itself in contact. The philosopher denounced the tyranny of the
priesthood. The peasant grumbled at the lord's right to judge him in his
courts and to exact feudal services from him. The merchant was galled
by the trading restrictions and the heavy taxation. The country gentry
rebelled against their exclusion from public life and from the
government of the country. Its powerlessness to bring about any change
at home turned all this new energy into sympathy with a struggle against
tyranny abroad. Public opinion forced France to ally itself with America
in its contest for liberty, and French volunteers under the Marquis de
Lafayette joined Washington's army. But while the American war spread
more widely throughout the nation the craving for freedom, it brought on
the Government financial embarrassments from which it could only free
itself by an appeal to the country at large. Lewis the Sixteenth
resolved to summon the States-General, which had not met since the time
of Richelieu, and to appeal to the nobles to waive their immunity from
taxation. His resolve at once stirred into vigorous life every impulse
and desire which had been seething in the minds of the people; and the
States-General no sooner met at Versailles in May 1789 than the fabric
of despotism and privilege began to crumble. A rising in Paris destroyed
the Bastille, and the capture of this fortress was taken for the dawn of
a new era of constitutional freedom in France and through Europe. Even
in England men thrilled with a strange joy at the tidings of its fall.
"How much is this the greatest event that ever happened in the world,"
Fox cried with a burst of enthusiasm, "and how much the best!"

[Sidenote: Pitt and Russia.]

Pitt regarded the approach of France to sentiments of liberty which had
long been familiar to England with greater coolness, but with no
distrust. For the moment indeed his attention was distracted by an
attack of madness which visited George the Third in 1788, and by the
claim of a right to the Regency which was at once advanced by the Prince