l'homme simple. Rousseau's ideal

249. — 13. Compte rendu. The full title was Compte rendu de l'état des finances (1781). The publication of this statement of the finances was popular, but the privileged classes disliked any publicity given to their pensions, consequently Necker was forced to resign.

251. — Subtitle. La Prise de la Bastille. For the general causes of the French Revolution see introductory note to p. 234. In addition to these may be mentioned the immediate cause of the immense public debt and the virtual bankruptcy of the government. Louis XVI had vainly attempted to restore prosperity by means of his ministers, Turgot and Necker; their fall was brought about by the privileged classes, who feared publicity and disliked economy. Calonne, their successor in the ministry, was incompetent. The king was forced to call a meeting of representatives of the nation (the States General); for the first time since 1614 this representative assembly met at Versailles on May 5, 1789. It consisted of 1200 members (300 each from the nobles and the clergy and 600 commoners or members of the tiers état). The tiers état wished to vote by head, the nobles and the clergy preferred a vote by order, so that they might defeat the commoners. The tiers état refused to accede to the wishes of the other classes and constituted itself the National Assembly. The other two orders joined the tiers état, but the latter resisted the king's attempts to dissolve the Assembly; meantime feeling was running high in Paris because of the rumor that the popular minister Necker, who had been recalled by the king, was to be dismissed. It was at this point that the Bastille was stormed. The result of the Revolution was the overthrow of absolute power. Civil liberty was created August 4, 1789, and the Republic was declared September 21, 1792. Although the Convention was guilty of the greatest excesses in the Reign of Terror, it protected the country from foreign invasion, and a new soul

3l8 NOTES

had been created in France. Out of the Revolution arose Napoleon, first the Consul, then the Emperor (1804), to be himself overthrown at Waterloo, with the resulting restoration of the Bourbons under Louis XVIII and Charles X,

253. — 22. de cette petite lucarne, où coud une pauvre fille. An allusion to Madame Legros; this woman kept a small haberdasher's shop in Paris and found one day in the street a letter from a prisoner (Latude). She was so moved by the pathetic appeal that she walked to Versailles to get some one at court to intercede for the prisoner. She was repeatedly rebuffed, but finally after three years of strenuous effort she succeeded in effecting Latude's release.

256. — 30. la République et l'Empire. The Republic was proclaimed September 21, 1792; the Empire of Napoleon extended from 1804 to 181 5.