The only real echoing point of the Continent was Paris.

There the smallest things made great noise, literature was the vehicle of French influence; there intellectual monarchy had its books, its theatre, its writings even before it had its heroes.
Conquering by its intelligence, its printing-presses were its army.
IX.
The parties who divided the country after the death of Mirabeau were thus distributed; out of the Assembly, the Court, and the Jacobins; in the Assembly the right side and the left side, and between these two extreme parties--the one fanatic by its innovations, the other fanatic from its resistance,--there was an intermediate party, consisting of the men of substance and peace belonging to both these parties.

Their views moderate, and wavering between revolution and conservatism, desired that the one should conquer without violence, and the other concede without vindictiveness.

These were the philosophers of the Revolution,--but it was not the hour for philosophy, it was the hour of victory; the two ideas required champions, not judges; they crushed men in their encounter.

Let us enumerate the principal chiefs of the contending parties, and make them known before we bring them into action.
King Louis XVI.