In the history of the French Revolution the influence which it exerted upon the surrounding countries demands peculiar attention. The French professed to act upon principles of universal authority, and from an early date they began to seek converts outside their own limits. The effect was slight upon England, which had already secured most of the reforms desired by the French, and upon Spain, where the bulk of the people were entirely submissive to church and king. But in the Netherlands, in western Germany and in northern Italy, countries which had attained a degree of civilization resembling that of France, where the middle and lower classes had grievances and aspirations not very different from those of the French, the effect was profound. Fear of revolution at home was one of the motives which led continental sovereigns to attack revolution in France. Their incoherent efforts only confirmed the Jacobin supremacy. Wherever the victorious French extended their dominion, they remodelled institutions in the French manner. Their sway proved so oppressive that the very classes which had welcomed them with most fervour soon came to long for their expulsion. But revolutionary ideas kept their charm. Under Napoleon the essential part of the changes made by the Republic was preserved in these countries also. Moreover the effacement of old boundaries, the overthrow of ancestral governments, and the invocation, however hollow, of the sovereignty of the people, awoke national feeling which had slumbered long and prepared the struggle for national union and independence in the 19th century. See also FRANCE, sections _History_ and _Law and Institutions_. For the leading figures in the Revolution see their biographies under separate headings. Particular phases, facts, and institutions of the period are also separately dealt with, e.g. ASSIGNATS, CONVENTION, THE NATIONAL, JACOBINS. BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The MS. authorities for the history of the French Revolution are exceedingly copious. The largest collection is in the Archives Nationales in Paris, but an immense number of documents are to be found in other collections in Paris and the provinces. The printed materials are so abundant and varied that any brief notice of them must be imperfect.