REVOLUTION, in politics, any extensive change in the constitution of a country sud denly brought about. The two most important events in modern history known under this name are the English revolution of the 17th c. and the French revolution of the 18th. The former began in the early part of the reign of Charles I., with the struggle between that king and his parliament. In 1642 the struggle became a civil war, in which the parliament obtained the ascendeney, and brought Charles to the block in 1649. A republic followed, under the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, which was succeeded in 1660 by the restoration of monarchy in the person of Charles II. but the arbitrary rule of James II. brought the king and people again into antagonism; and James having fled the country, William III. was called to the throne under such condi tions and safe-guards as secured the balance of the constitution.—The French revolution was a violent reaction against that absolutism which had come in the course of time to supplant the old feudal institutions of the country. It began with an outbreak of insurrectionary movements at Paris in July, 1789, including the destruction of the Bastille. On Jan. 21, 1793, king Louis XVI. was beheaded. The Christian religion
was deposed, the sacredness of the republic and worship of reason solemnized, and a disastrous reign of blood and terror followed, which was brought to an end in 1794, when Robespierre himself suffered on the guillotine the fate to which he had condemned countless multitudes of his countrymen.
Among other important revolutions in the modern world are the American revolution of 1775, by which the United States threw off their dependence on Great Britain; the French revolution of 1830, which drove Charles X. into exile, and raised Louis Philippe duke of Orleans to the throne by the will of the people; as also the revolution of 1848, when France rose against Louis Philippe, and adopted for a time a republican form of government, the revolutionary contagion temporarily over most of continental Europe. By the Italian revolution of 1859-60, the various minor sovereigns of Italy were driven into exile, and the whole of the peninsula became, with the incorporation of the Roman territories in 1870, subject to Victor Emmanuel. •The third French republic was also established in 1870-71 by a revolution.