Excerpt from The French Revolution: A Sketch It is this need of studying the spirit of the French people quite as much as their deeds, that has led to what may appear, in a book of this size, a somewhat disproportionately extended treatment of the pre revolutionary condition of France. But the change of temper which made the Old Regime unendurable and compelled Louis to summon the State General, was by far the most important element of the Revo lution. One might properly call it the Revolution itself, so completely were the years of violence under the Convention the outcome of the attempt to preserve advantages the Constituent Assembly had gained. To understand the conditions which were outgrown and the origin and growth of the revolutionary spirit, seems, therefore, quite as necessary as to trace the history of the destruction of abuse and the struggle for liberty and rights. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.