When the French
democracy was attacked by its monarchical neighbors, the newly aroused
national energy of the French people was placed enthusiastically at the
service of the military authorities. The success of the French armies,
even during the disorders of the Convention and the corruption of the
Directory, indicated that revolutionary France possessed possibilities
of national efficiency far superior to the France of the Old Regime.
Neither the democrats nor Napoleon had, in truth, broken as much as they
themselves and their enemies believed with the French national
tradition; but unfortunately that aspect of the national tradition
perpetuated by them was by no means its best aspect. The policy, the
methods of administration, and the actual power of the Committee of
Public Safety and of Napoleon were all inherited from the Old Regime.
Revolutionary France merely adapted to new conditions the political
organization and policy to which Frenchmen had been accustomed; and the
most serious indictment to be made against it is that its excesses
prevented it from dispensing with the absolutism which social disorder
and unwarranted foreign aggression always necessitate.
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