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JOHN RUDD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME XIV

PAGE
_Charlotte Corday, after the assassination of Marat,
apprehended by the Jacobin mob (page 305)_,
Painting by J. Weerts. Frontispiece

_The Siege of Yorktown_, 108
Painting by L. C. A. Couder.

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

(THE EPOCH OF REVOLUTION)

CHARLES F. HORNE

"After us, the deluge!" said Louis XV of France. He died in 1774, and
the remaining quarter of the eighteenth century witnessed social changes
the most radical, the most widespread which had convulsed civilization
since the fall of Rome. "As soon as our peasants seek education," said
Catharine II of Russia to one of her ministers, "neither you nor I will
retain our places." Catharine, one of the shrewdest women of her day,
judged her own people by the more advanced civilization of Western
Europe. She saw that it was the growth of ideas, the intellectual
advance, which had made Revolution, world-wide Revolution, inevitable.

If we look back to the beginnings of Teutonic Europe, we see that the
social system existing among the wild tribes that overthrew Rome, was
purely republican. Each man was equal to every other; and they merely
conferred upon their sturdiest warrior a temporary authority to lead
them in battle. When these Franks (the word itself means freemen) found
themselves masters of the imperial, slave-holding world of Rome, the two
opposing systems coalesced in vague confusing whirl, from which emerged
naturally enough the "feudal system," the rule of a warrior aristocracy.
Gradually a few members of this nobility rose above the rest, became
centres of authority, kings, ruling over the States of modern Europe.
The lesser nobles lost their importance. The kings became absolute in
power and began to regard themselves as special beings, divinely
appointed to rule over their own country, and to snatch as much of their
neighbors' as they could.

Secure in their undisputed rank, the monarchs tolerated or even
encouraged the intellectual advance of their subjects, until those
subjects saw the selfishness of their masters, saw the folly of
submission and the ease of revolt, saw the world-old truth of man's
equality, to which tyra