ivilege. The walls of the
Bastille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odious feudal
privileges disappear in a single sitting of the National Assembly; and
the _Parlements_, or supreme law courts of the provinces, are swept
away. The old provinces themselves are abolished, and at the beginning
of 1790 France gains social and political unity by her new system of
Departments, which grants full freedom of action in local affairs,
though in all national concerns it binds France closely to the new
popular government at Paris. But discords soon begin to divide the
reformers: hatred of clerical privilege and the desire to fill the
empty coffers of the State dictate the first acts of spoliation.
Tithes are abolished: the lands of the Church are confiscated to the
service of the State; monastic orders are suppressed; and the
Government undertakes to pay the stipends of bishops and priests.
Furthermore, their subjection to the State is definitely secured by
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, 1790) which invalidates
their allegiance to the Pope. Most of the clergy refuse: these are
termed non-jurors or orthodox priests, while their more complaisant
colleagues are known as constitutional priests. Hence arises a serious
schism in the Church, which distracts the religious life of the land,
and separates the friends of liberty from the champions of the
rigorous equality preached by Rousseau.

The new constitution of 1791 was also a source of discord. In its
jealousy of the royal authority, the National Assembly seized very
many of the executive functions of government. The results were
disastrous. Laws remained without force, taxes went uncollected, the
army was distracted by mutinies, and the monarchy sank slowly into the
gulf of bankruptcy and anarchy. Thus, in the course of three years,
the revolutionists goaded the clergy to desperation, they were about
to overthrow the monarchy, every month was proving their local
self-government to be unworkable, and they themselves split into
factions that plunged France into war and drenched her soil by
organized massacres.

* * * * *

We know very little about the impression made on the young Buonaparte
by the first events of the Revolution. His note-book seems even to
show that he regarded them as an inconvenient interference with his
plans for Corsica. But gradually the Revolution excites his interest.
In September, 1789, we find him on