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BOOK VIII. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NAPOLEON CHAPTER XXXIII THE EVE OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION I. THE OLD REGIME IN FRANCE 730. The French Revolution not the Reign of Terror. It was France that first carried out the great reforms that did away with many of the old institutions and much of the confusion that had come down from the Middle Ages. Even in England little was done in the eighteenth century to remedy the great evils of which the reformers complained. But in 1789 the king of France asked his people to submit their grievances to him and to send representatives to Versailles to confer with him upon the ways in which the government might be improved so as to increase the general happiness and the prosperity of the kingdom. The French National Assembly swept away the old institutions and accom- plished more in a few months than the reforming kings had done in a century. However, when one meets the words "French Revolution," he is pretty sure to call up before his mind's eye the guillotine and its hundreds of victims, and the Paris mob shouting the hymn of the Marseillaise as they paraded the streets with the heads of unfortunate "aristocrats" on their pikes. Everyone has heard of this terrible episode in French history even if he knows nothing of the permanent good which was accomplished at the time. Indeed, it has made so deep an impression that the Reign of Terror is often mistaken for the real Revolution. It was, how- ever, only a sequel to it, an unhappy accident, which will seem 419