The unjust apportionment of the rev enues of the Church, which gave the higher clergy extraordinary sums of money while the parish priests barely received a living wage, had been one of the most obvious abuses of the ancient regime. By its action of Aug. 4th the Assembly had abolished the tithes; it now confiscated to the state the im mense properties of the Church, and made all the clergy dependent on the state for their revenue. The lands of the Church were sold and served as se curity for paper money—the assignats which the government issued in great quantities. Owing to the amount is sued and to the drop in the market price of the land this paper money greatly depreciated. Equally sweeping were the changes made by a bill passed by the Assembly entitled "The Civil Con stitution of the Clergy." By it the 134 bishoprics were reduced to 83, the num ber of the departments, and the bishops were to be elected by the people. Al though the salaries of the parish priests were greatly increased by these meas ures, thousands of them and nearly all of the bishops refused to take the oath required of them by the state, and the harsh treatment of these "non juring clergy" aroused the enmity of many who had hitherto wished the revo lution well.
The year 1790 saw many of the French nobles leave the country and col lect upon the border of France a small army, with which, with the assistance of Leopold II., the Emperor and brother of Marie Antoinette, they hoped to regain their former privileges. The result of the action of the émigrés was to further excite hostility to their fellows who re mained in France. Suspicion was al ready general in France that the king and queen were secretly opposed to the "patriot" party, nor was this suspicion lessened by the attempted flight of the royal family from France on June 21, 1791. The National Assembly finished its work on the new Constitution the following month and gave way to the Legislative Assembly which was to operate under its provisions.
Meanwhile, on Aug. 27, 1791, the king of Prussia and the Emperor Leopold united in issuing the Declaration of Pillnitz in which they asserted their readiness to join with other powers to place the king of France in a position to form a government which "shall once more be in harmony with the rights of sovereigns and shall promote the wel fare of the French nation." This idle threat, issued on the eve of the assem bling of the new lawmaking body, served to throw power into the hands of the Jacobins—as the extremists of the Paris Commune were called. Radical news papers, such as "The Friend of the People," called for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a re public. The Legislative Assembly declared the property of the émigrés confiscated to the state and passed severe laws against the non-juring clergy. The dep uties from the Gironde district, sus pecting the patriotism of the king, urged upon the Assembly a declaration of war against Austria in which event the king would be forced to show his colors. Ac cordingly, France, on April 24, 1792, de clared war upon Austria, thus opening a struggle which was destined to con tinue almost uninterrupedly for nearly twenty years.
The half-hearted measures of the king, the ill-success of the French arms, and a threatening manifesto of the commander of the Austrian-Prus sian army invading France, brought about a rising of the Paris mob on Aug.
10, 1792. The king was forced to take refuge in the Assembly, while the mob placed its leaders in control of the munic ipal government of Paris. The use lessness of the monarchy was now ap parent to all the leaders and a call was issued for a Constitutional Convention to form a new government for France. The Convention met on Sept. 21, 1792, and its first act was to declare France a republic, and to declare the twenty second day of September as the first day of the Year One of French Liberty. The Convention was a much more radi cal body than either of its predecessors and more under the influence of the Paris Commune. Three weeks before the meeting of the Convention the Parisian leaders had arrested and ex ecuted hundreds of persons suspected of sympathy with the emigres. The pur pose of these "September Massacres" was to inspire terror in the hearts of the aristocrats who still remained in France.
The problem of how to treat the king who was now rendered useless puzzled the Convention until in January, 1793, the monarch was brought before the Convention and by a small majority was sentenced to death. Louis XVI. mounted the scaffold with the dignity and composure of a martyr. His death aroused his brother monarchs to greater exertions to put down the revolution. The convention now offered the as sistance of its armies to any nation whose people would throw off the yoke of monarchy and, ten days after the ex ecution of Louis, they declared war on England. When, in March, Spain joined the enemies of France, a formidable coalition had been formed in Europe against the revolution. The loss of the Netherlands, together with the treason of one of the French generals, con vinced the Convention that it had no opportunity to take thought on anything but defense. For that purpose they placed all power in the hands of a Corn mittee composed of twelve of its mem bers, the famous "Committee of Public Safety." From the date of the appoint ment of this committee in April, 1793, the reign of terror may be said to have begun. Power in the Convention had previously passed from the Girondists to the more radical "Mountain." These men believed that every trace of the ancient regime should be completely eliminated, even those who sympathized with the old regime or who were luke warm toward the new should be put to death. The people of Paris were easy converts to this view and by their influence on the Convention imposed it on the rest of France. Robespierre and Danton were the leaders of the Moun tain and, while heartless in the prose cution of their aims, few will question their ability and the sincerity of their views. Among the first to be arrested were the Girondist deputies who on June 2, 1793, were expelled from the Convention. These extreme measures brought about a serious rebellion in some of the outlying provinces, notably in La Vendee and in Lyons, which were put down only with terrible slaughter by the troops of the Convention. Mean while the Committee was displaying great energy in meeting the attacks of its foreign enemies. In August, Carnot, the "Organizer of Victory," was added to the body and before the end of the year he had raised and equipped the armies which expelled the invaders from French soil.