In 1789 France adopted a constitution. Provoked at this, the friends of absolute monarchy withdrew from France, and incited the other powers of Europe to interpose in effort to restore to Louis XVI. his lost power. The result was that Louis lost his head as well as his power, and that France became a republic. War with all Europe followed, which elevated that matchless military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte, first to the head of France's armies, then to her throne, to be toppled thence in 1814, partly by his own indiscretions, partly by the forces combined against him. From the beginning to the end of this revolutionary period abroad, European politics determined American politics, home as well as foreign, causing dangerous embarrassment and complications. War having in February, 1793, been declared by England and France against each other, what attitude the United States should assume toward each became a pressing question. Washington's proclamation of neutrality, April 22, 1793, in effect, though not so meant, annulled our treaty of 1778 with France, which bound us to certain armed services to that monarchy in case of a rupture between her and England. Washington's paper alleged that "the duty and interests of the United States" required impartiality, and assumed "to declare the disposition of the United States to observe" this. "The proclamation," wrote Jefferson, "was in truth a most unfortunate error. It wounds the popular feelings by a seeming indifference to the cause of liberty. And it seems to violate the form and spirit of the Constitution by making the executive magistrate the organ of the 'disposition' 'the duty' and 'the interest' of the nation in relation to war and peace--subjects appropriated to other departments of the Government." "On one side," says Mr. Rives, in his "Life of Madison," "the people saw a power which had but lately carried war and desolation, fire and sword, through their own country, and, since the peace, had not ceased to act toward them in the old spirit of unkindness, jealousy, arrogance, and injustice; on the other an ally who had rendered them the most generous assistance in war, had evinced the most cordial dispositions for a liberal and mutually beneficial intercourse in peace, and was now set upon by an unholy league of the monarchical powers of Europe, to overwhelm and destroy her, for her desire to establish institutions congenial to those of America."