re bobbing along the street on pikes. "In all," as historian Otto Scott put it, "a glorious victory of unarmed citizens over the forces of tyranny, or so the newspapers and history later said." The French Revolution had begun. Despite the bloodshed at the Bastille and the riots in Paris, there was some clear-headed thinking. Mirabeau wanted to keep the Crown but restrain it. "We need a government like England's," he said. The French would never accept it though, for they hated anything to do with the English. On October 5, the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, a good document all right, but only if it were followed. Twenty-eight days later, the Assembly showed they did not intend to do so: the government confiscated all church property in France. It was the wrong way to go about creating a free society. Certainly the Church was responsible for some abuses, but to seek to build a free society by undermining property rights is like cutting down trees to grow a forest. Such confiscation only sets a precedent for further violation of property rights, which in turn violates individual rights, the very rights of man and the citizen the new government was so loudly proclaiming. By confiscating church property, no matter how justified, France's Revolutionary leaders showed that they weren't interested in a true free society, only in one created in the image of their own philosophers. Soon France began to descend into a state of anarchy in which it would remain for the next 25 years. In towns where royalist mayors were still popular, bands of men invaded town halls and killed city magistrates. Thousands of people sold their homes and fled the country, taking with them precious skills and human capital. Francois Babeuf, the first modern communist, created a Society of Equals dedicated to the abolition of private property and the destruction of all those who held property. The king's guards were...
