Yale Center for British Art Europe a Prophecy Plague, Plate 13 |
Yale Center for British Art Europe a Prophecy Famine, Plate 8 |
Yale Center for British Art Europe a Prophecy Terror, Plate 17 |
Yale Center for British Art Europe a Prophecy Blight, Plate 10 |
Yale Center for British Art Europe a Prophecy Imprisonment, Plate 15 |
You can learn here more about conditions during the Ancien Regime which preceded the French Revolution. Resistance to the regime became too widespread to avoid revolution:
Kropotkin, P. (1927). The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793 (N. F. Dryhurst, Trans.) New York: Vanguard Printings. (Original work published 1909)
THE SPIRIT OF REVOLT: THE RIOTS
"If there had been only their few attempts at resistance France
might have waited many years for the overthrow of royal despotism.
Fortunately a thousand circumstances impelled the masses to revolt.
And in spite of the fact that after every outbreak there were
summary hangings, wholesale arrests and even torture for those
arrested, the people did revolt, pressed on one side by their
desperate misery' and spurred on the other by those vague hopes of
which the old woman spoke to Arthur Young. They rose in numbers
against the governors of provinces, tax-collectors, salt-tax agents
and even against the troops, and by so doing completely disorganised
the governmental machine.
From 1788 the peasant risings became so general that it was
impossible to provide for the expenses of the State, and Louis
XVI., after having refused for fourteen years to convoke the
representatives of the nation, lest his kingly authority should
suffer, at last found himself compelled to convoke, first the two
Assemblies of Notables, and finally the States-General."
by William Blake, (E 385)
THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION.
A POEM,
IN SEVEN BOOKS.
BOOK THE FIRST.
LONDON: Printed for J. Johnson, No 72,
St Paul's Church-yard. MDCCXCI.
(Price One Shilling.)
...
"From my window I see the old mountains of France, like aged men, fading away.
Troubled, leaning on Necker, descends the King, to his chamber of council; shady mountains
In fear utter voices of thunder; the woods of France embosom the sound;
Clouds of wisdom prophetic reply, and roll over the palace roof heavy,
Forty men: each conversing with woes in the infinite shadows of his soul,
Like our ancient fathers in regions of twilight, walk, gathering round the King;
Again the loud voice of France cries to the morning, the morning prophecies to its clouds."
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