In spite of Burke and Burke's melancholy vaticinations the course of the Revolution in France seemed at first to most liberal-minded Englishmen to move along reasonable lines and to confine itself within the bounds of moderation. The excesses and outrages that followed immediately upon the first upheaval, the murders of Foulon and Berthier in Paris, the peasant war upon the castles, were regarded as the unavoidable, deplorable ebullitions of a long dormant force which, under the guidance of capable and honorable men, would be directed henceforward solely to the establishment of a stable and popular system of government. The men who were, or who seemed to be, at the head of affairs in France had names that for the most part commended themselves to such Englishmen as had anything more than a superficial knowledge of the country. The fame of Lafayette, the hero of the American war, seemed to answer for the conduct of the army. In Bailly, the astronomer whom unhappy chance had made Mayor of Paris, constitutionalism recognized a man after its own heart. The majority of the members of the National Assembly seemed to be gloriously occupied in evolving out of the chaos of the old order a new and entirely admirable framework of laws modelled boldly after the English pattern. Most English observers thought, in opposition to Burke, what the majority of the members of the National Assembly themselves thought, that the Revolution was an accomplished fact, a concluded page of history, brought about not indeed bloodlessly, but still, on the whole, with comparatively slight shedding of blood, considering the difficulty and the greatness of the accomplished thing. The practical imprisonment of the King and Queen within the walls of Paris, within the walls of the Tuileries, seemed no great hardship in the eyes of the Englishmen who sympathized with the aims of those of the French revolutionaries with whom they were acquainted. The French King himself seemed to be reconciled to his lot, to have joined himself frankly and {299} freely enough to the party of progress within his dominions, and to be as loyally eager to accept the new constitution which the National Assembly was busy framing as the most ardent patriot among its members. Even the flight of the Royal Family, the attempted flight that began with such laborious pomp at Paris to end in such pitiful disaster at Varennes, the flight that condemned the King and Queen to a restraint far more rigorous than before, did not greatly disturb British equanimity. [Sidenote: 1791--Burke and the coalition against France]