even hope and faith had gone.
Idealism was bankrupt, not only in the political but also in the
economic world. Full of the noblest animation, and with the most
joyous confidence, the French nation had entered upon the great
Revolution, and all Europe had looked full of hope towards France,
whence they expected to see the end of all tyranny and--since such
things at that time were not well understood--the end of all misery.
We may be spared the detailed description of the transition by which
this hope and these childish expectations, this Millennialism, were
bitterly disillusioned, and how the excitement of 1789 to 1791 ended
in a great wail of woe; and that too not only in France, where
absolute monarchy _post tot discrimina verum_ had merely changed into
an absolute empire, but also in Germany, whose princes hastened to
recall the concessions made under the pressure of the Revolution. The
monarchs of Europe then celebrated an orgie of promise-breaking, from
which even to-day the simple mind of the people revolts with deep
disgust. It need only be remembered how in the Napoleonic wars of
Germany noble princes exploited the flaming enthusiasm and the naive
confidence of their people for their own dynastic purposes, and then,
after the downfall of the Corsican, drove them back again through the
old Caudine yoke. If, after such unfortunate experiences, the people,
and especially the insatiate elements amongst them, had retained any
remains of confidence in help from above, it must have perished in the
sea of disgust and bitterness at the Revolution of July.

In a struggle for a free form of the State, which lasted almost half a
century, the proletariat and its misery had grown without cessation.
They had fought for constitutional monarchy, for the Republic, and for
the Empire; they had tried Bourbons and Bonapartes and Orleanists;
they had gone to the barricades and to the field of battle for
Robespierre, Napoleon, and finally for Thiers; but of course their
success was always the same: not only their economic position, but
also the social condition of the lower masses of the people had
remained unchanged. It was recognised more and more that between the
proletariate and the upper classes there was something more than a
separation of mere constitutional rights; in fact, that the privileges
of wealth had taken the place of the privileges of birth; and the more
the masses recognised this the more did their interest in purel