Thus it happened that from the hour when the first rumblings of the impending European revolution were heard on this side of the Atlantic, the citizens of these states evinced an earnest and sympathetic concern;[170] and as the revolutionary drama unfolded through its earlier scenes the enthusiasm and lively sympathy of the people grew apace. The atmosphere was electric. Anticipations of citizens ran high. Liberty was again in travail.[171] The institutions of freedom were about to descend upon another nation. The shackles of political and ecclesiastical tyranny were being torn from the limbs of twenty-five millions of slaves.[172] Having revolutionized France, America’s ideals might be expected to leaven the whole of Europe.[173] The millennium could not be far away. Admiration for the French cause and devotion to it swept all before them. So much so that when, in the autumn and winter of 1792–93, the thrilling news of the successes achieved by the French armies in repelling the invaders of the new republic began to arrive in America, a wave of irresistible and uncontrolled enthusiasm swept over the land.[174] The “French Frenzy,” with its maudlin outbursts of professed attachment for the great watchwords of the Revolution—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—with its pageants and civic feasts, its cockades and liberty caps, its ribald singing of republican songs and dramatic intertwinings of the standards of the two sister republics, deserves a place altogether by itself as an extraordinary expression of the public mind. To this wild riot of tumultuous and spectacular enthusiasm an effectual check was soon to be given. With the execution of Louis XVI, in January, 1793, the admiration of the more thoughtful observers of the Revolution, who had accustomed themselves to pass soberly but apologetically over the earlier excesses of the revolutionists as unavoidable concomitants of a struggle necessarily desperate in its character,[175] received a rude shock.[176] The brutal death of a monarch whose personal services on behalf of their own cause during the days of deep necessity had been considerable, brought home to American citizens their first clear conviction respecting the excessively bloody and relentless spirit of the forces in control of the Revolution. The day of disillusionment had dawned. Leaders of thought made no effort to conceal their sense of mingled horror and regret. The amount of popular sympathy for the cause of the Revolution was still too great to allow anything approaching a general condemnation; but none the less a decided chill was felt.[177]