Soon afterwards the force of the Revolution had spent itself. The constitution which the French people then adopted recognized the existence of different denominations and gave them the same rights and privileges. Officially at least the Republic washed her hands of all religion. Those who wished to form a church, a congregation, an association, were free to do so but they were obliged to support their own ministers and priests and recognize the superior rights of the state and the complete freedom of choice of the individual. Ever since, the Catholics and Protestants in France have lived peacefully side by side. It is true that the Church never recognized her defeat, continues to deny the principle of a division of state and church (see the decree of Pope Pius IX of December 8th, 1864) and has repeatedly tried to come back to power by supporting those political parties who hope to upset the republican form of government and bring back the monarchy or the empire. But these battles are usually fought in the private parlors of some minister’s wife, or in the rabbit-shooting-lodge of a retired general with an ambitious mother-in-law. They have thus far provided the funny papers with some excellent material but they are proving themselves increasingly futile. CHAPTER XXVIII LESSING On the twentieth of September of the year 1792 a battle was fought between the armies of the French Revolution and the armies of the allied monarchs who had set forth to annihilate the terrible monster of insurrection. It was a glorious victory, but not for the allies. Their infantry could not be employed on the slippery hillsides of the village of Valmy. The battle therefore consisted of a series of solemn broadsides. The rebels fired harder and faster than the royalists. Hence the latter were the first to leave the field. In the evening the allied troops retreated northward. Among those present at the engagement was a certain Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, aide to the hereditary Prince of Weimar. Several years afterwards this young man published his memoirs of that day. While standing ankle-deep in the sticky mud of Lorraine, he had turned prophet. And he had predicted that after this cannonade, the world would never be the same. He had been right. On that ever memorable day, Sovereignty by the grace of God was blown into limbo. The Crusaders of the Rights of Man did not run like chickens, as they had been expected to do. They stuck to their guns. And they pushed those guns forward through valleys and across mountains until they had carried their ideal of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” to the furthermost corners of Europe and had stabled their horses in every castle and church of the entire continent.