Hence arises a serious schism in the Church, which distracts the religious life of the land, and separates the friends of liberty from the champions of the rigorous equality preached by Rousseau.
The new constitution of 1791 was also a source of discord.

In its jealousy of the royal authority, the National Assembly seized very many of the executive functions of government.

The results were disastrous.

Laws remained without force, taxes went uncollected, the army was distracted by mutinies, and the monarchy sank slowly into the gulf of bankruptcy and anarchy.

Thus, in the course of three years, the revolutionists goaded the clergy to desperation, they were about to overthrow the monarchy, every month was proving their local self-government to be unworkable, and they themselves split into factions that plunged France into war and drenched her soil by organized massacres.
* * * * * We know very little about the impression made on the young Buonaparte by the first events of the Revolution.