The Revolution has
been but one battle in the long war between the rival aristocracies of
birth and of business--a war in which peasants and artisans now give
their lives for illusory dreams of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," now
fight their feudal lords, and now turn on their pretended liberators,
the bourgeoisie. For already it begins to dawn on the dull masses that
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" are chiefly for their masters.
The old regime, its decay, the rise of the bourgeoisie, the
disappointment of the common people,--these are the bold landmarks on
which the student must fix his attention, while in the following
chapters we sketch the condition of Europe in the eighteenth century,
and trace the course of the French Revolution, the career of Napoleon,
and the restoration of "law and order" under Metternich.
CHAPTER XIII
EUROPEAN SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
AGRICULTURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: General Backwardness]
If some "Rip Van Winkle" of the sixteenth century could have slept for
two centuries to awake in 1750, he would have found far less to marvel
at in the common life of the people than would one of us.
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