The French Revolution.--Condition of the People in France.--In their struggle for independence the Americans had been aided by France, who hoped through this opportunity to cripple her great colonial rival, England. Between America and France there was close sympathy of political ideas and theories, although in their actual social conditions the two countries were as widely separated as could be. In America the society and government were democratic. All classes were experienced in politics and government. They had behind them the priceless heritage of England's long struggle for free and representative government. There was an abundance of the necessaries of life and nearly complete freedom of opportunity. France, like nearly every other country of continental Europe, was suffering from the obsolete burden of feudalism. The ownership of the land was divided between the aristocracy and the church. The great bulk of the population were serfs bound to the estates, miserably oppressed, and suffering from lack of food, and despoiled of almost every blessing which can brighten and dignify human life. The life of the court and of the nobility grew more luxurious, extravagant, and selfish as the economic conditions in France became worse. The king was nearly an absolute monarch. His will was law and the earlier representative institutions, which in England had developed into the splendid system of parliamentary government, had in France fallen into decay. In the other countries of Europe--the German States, Austria, Italy, and Spain--the condition of the people was quite as bad, probably in some places even worse than it was in France. But it was in France that the revolt broke forth, and it was France which led Europe in a movement for a better and more democratic order. Frenchmen had fought in the armies of America; they had experienced the benefits of a freer society, and it is significant that in the same year (1789) that saw the founding of the American state the Revolution in France began. It started in a sincere and conservative attempt to remedy the evils under which France was suffering, but the accumulation of injustice and misery was too great to be settled by slow and hesitating measures. The masses, ignorant, and bitter with their wrongs, broke from the control of statesman and reformer, threw themselves upon the established state and church, both equally detestable to them, and tore them to pieces. Both king and queen died by beheading. The nobility were either murdered or expelled. The revolutionary government, if such it could be called, fell into the hands of wicked and terrible leaders, who maintained themselves by murder and terrorism.