Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (17 page)

old municipal elites to revolutionary National Guards and the progressive

“notables” ofcities, towns, and villages.

Even while savoring its triumph over the sovereign and his partisans,

however, the National Assembly could never forget that it was legislating

against a background ofeconomic hard times and social unrest. Discontents

festering in many rural regions since the spring broke out into insurrec-

tionary movements over the summer as the strong hand ofthe govern-

ment was removed. Rioting in the countryside reached an early peak in the

“Great Fear” oflate July and early August and continued to flare up here

and there into the autumn. The Assemblymen at Paris were responding to

this disorder, as well as acting out ofaltruism, when on the celebrated night

of4 August they “abolished” feudalism and much ofthe historic structure

ofFrench society.

The deputies, at the same time, had not yet vanquished royal and aristo-

cratic opposition to their reforms. Louis XVI had not accepted the results

of 4 August. He was only further alienated from the Assembly when it

approved the text ofa Declaration ofthe Rights ofMan and the Citizen on

26 August and then, in the following weeks, voted down legislative bicam-

eralism and accorded him merely a “suspensive” rather than an “absolute”

veto over lawmaking. Already, militant politicians and journalists at Paris

were talking ofthe need to install the king in his capital, where he

(and the Court faction)could presumably be overawed by popular pressure.

A counterrevolutionary demonstration by the officers of a regi-

ment recently summoned to Versailles provided the spark for a Parisian

The descent into revolution

65

insurrection on 5–6 October. A riot ofwomen over high bread prices

quickly turned into a march ofthousands ofNational Guardsmen and

other Parisians to Versailles. The king tried to mollify these forces with be-

lated sociopolitical concessions and a promise to ensure the provisioning

ofParis, but in the end he had to accept his removal, and that ofthe Court,

to the French capital. Since the National Assembly voted soon thereafter

to follow its monarch, the “October Days” of 1789 had apparently secured

revolutionary control ofboth the executive and legislative branches ofthe

French government.

t h e c r i t i c a l g e o p o l i t i c a l c o n t e x t

In the caldron ofdiplomacy and war that was late-eighteenth-century

Europe, those who closely monitored power politics were quick to take

note of France’s fall from greatness. “I hear much of French anger and

of their plans for revenge,” Lord Keith had observed complacently from

England a few months before, “but I know that France has at this moment,

a deadly fit ofthe gout, and is debilitated in her legs and arms.”2 The

Prussian diplomat Hertzberg wrote tersely that “France has lost the

alliance ofHolland and the remnants ofher prestige in Europe.” Joseph II

ofAustria concurred. “This shows,” he commented in a letter to his

brother Leopold, “in how short a time so considerable a state
. . .
can lose credit, influence, vigor and power through the want ofa capable leader

and lack oforder.” And Catherine ofRussia, so successful an aggrandizer

ofpower herself, wrote contemptuously: “One cannot say that Louis XVI

is flattered. Everything has been done to persuade him to accept guidance

and to convince him that he understands nothing ofhis task.” Ifthe French

were not going to bounce back from their decline, she continued, “then

goodbye to the reputation acquired through two hundred years! And who

will believe in people who have neither will, vigor, nor enterprise?”3 These

last reflections, coming as they did from one whose imperial predecessors

had scarcely attracted notice at Versailles, drove home with particular

force the collapse ofFrance’s international stature on the threshold ofthe

revolutionary era.

What was more, the specific
timing
ofthe collapse – that is, its

occurrence at the end ofthe 1780s – made it even more perilous (for France

and, belike, for Europe as a whole) than it might have otherwise been.

Since the close ofthe Seven Years’ War, east European and west European

2 Cited in Jeremy Black,
British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783–1793

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 329–30.

3 Quotations are from Albert Sorel,
Europe and the French Revolution: The Political Traditions of the Old Regime
, trans. Alfred Cobban and J. W. Hunt (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1971), pp. 502–3.

66

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

diplomatic-military developments had tended to follow separate tracks.

This state of affairs, however, proved to be temporary. Indeed, the outbreak

ofwar between Russia and Turkey in the late 1780s touched offa sequence

ofevents culminating in something not observed on the Continent for a

generation: a crisis ofEuropean as opposed to merely regional dimensions.4

Thus, the Anglo-Prussian defeat of the Dutch Patriots in 1787, however

humiliating to the Patriots’ backers at Versailles, was but an isolated squall

heralding the approach ofa tempest that could draw into its vortex all

the powers ofEurope. That France should be verging upon revolution in

such a time ofbrewing continental troubles only lent additional urgency

to its need to resynchronize its political and social systems, that is to say,

its governmental and social-elitist values and ambitions. As we shall see,

the politicization ofFrench society that ensued during 1788–89 as a result

ofthe country’s converging geopolitical, constitutional, and social crises

meant that growing numbers ofpeople would come to acknowledge this

critical nexus between foreign and domestic affairs. Catherine II’s dismissal

ofthe French as “people who have neither will, vigor, nor enterprise”

would, as a result, stand revealed before very long as premature at best.

But the international challenge facing the French even as they con-

centrated most immediately upon their impending Estates General was

formidable enough. Europe as a whole was becoming polarized between

two potentially adversarial power blocs. On the one hand there was the

combination, foreshadowed in October 1787 and formalized in August

1788, ofBritain and Prussia. On the other hand there was the older alliance

of Russia and Austria that finally bore full fruit in 1788 with Joseph II’s de-

cision to join Catherine the Great in a military assault on Ottoman Turkey.

The Russo-Austrian collaboration threatened to destabilize the balance of

power in eastern Europe radically. For that very reason (and because ofthe

undiminished rivalry in Germany between Berlin and Vienna), there was

a genuine chance that the British and Prussians might be drawn into war

with St. Petersburg and Vienna over issues ofgeopolitics in the Near East.5

It was equally clear that France, habituated to seeing itselfas the “arbiter

ofEurope,” was utterly incapable ofintervening on either side in this tense

situation. Yet even ifbankruptcy had not ruled out an active French role

in the international politics ofthe day, could the statesmen at Versailles

have gravitated happily toward either ofthe coalitions now existing on

the Continent? On the one side, the British and Prussians had in alliance

humbled the French twice since midcentury: that is, in 1757–63 and 1787.

Now, Vergennes’s successor, Armand-Marc, comte de Montmorin, held

4 Anderson, “European Diplomatic Relations, 1763–90,” p. 274.

5 For a classic account ofall this, see Sorel,
Europe and the French Revolution
, esp. pp. 502–5, 514–17.

The descent into revolution

67

steadfastly to the French tradition of distrust toward London and Berlin.

The new foreign minister, to begin with, found it impossible not to suspect

the eternal opponent across the Channel of scheming for the further reduc-

tion ofFrench influence. “This government is jealous ofus and hates us,”

Montmorin wrote on 8 February 1789; “ifwe are friendly with them they

will want to dominate us; ifwe resist their desires they will not scruple to

betray us.
. . .
” At the same time, the foreign minister was no less wary of Prussia’s machinations.6 Yet, on the other side, why should France hasten

to endorse the actions taken in the Balkans by its nominal ally Austria in

league with voracious Russia? It is true that Montmorin’s colleague Saint-

Priest later claimed in his memoirs that he, the foreign minister, and all

the other members ofthe Council save for Necker had in early 1789 ad-

vocated Versailles’s adherence to a “quadruple alliance” bringing together

France, Austria, Russia, and Spain.7 Such a diplomatic gambit by Versailles

undoubtedly would have been one way ofspiting the British and Prussian

authors ofthe French humiliations of1757–63 and 1787. In addition, it

would have well served the purposes ofthose diplomatists,
militaires
,
gens
de lettres
, and merchants in France who still dreamed ofa vastly expanded

sphere ofFrench influence in the eastern Mediterranean. Still, adoption of

such a policy at Versailles could not have been squared with the traditional

French commitment to the security ofTurkey, and it would have re-

dounded chiefly to the advantage ofthe already dangerously successful

Catherine ofRussia.

Therefore, even a powerful, self-confident France in 1788–89 would

have found it impossible – as it always had – to achieve predominance

in Europe. This was all the more certain given the global-historical reali-

ties looming behind the Anglo-Prussian and Russo-Austrian alliances of

the day. More than ever before, Great Britain and Russia were attuned to

extra-European worlds wholly beyond the ken oftheir feuding German

confederates, Prussia and Austria – and now largely beyond the reach of

the crippled French as well.

There can be little doubt in retrospect that, by the late 1780s, Britain

was consolidating its position as the most potent naval state in the world,

prepared as no other country could be to project its power across the globe.

Reflecting this unique status were the Britons’ establishment ofa colony in

Australia in 1788 and their unremitting challenge to Spain’s presence on the

Pacific side ofthe New World. Moreover, London’s success in the recent

Dutch crisis had done much to preclude any French challenge to its imperial

position.8 Of course, British success in affairs abroad also spoke volumes

6 Ibid., pp. 514–15.

7 Robert Harris discusses this diplomatic option in
Necker and the Revolution of 1789
, pp. 304–6.

8 Black,
British Foreign Policy
, p. 536.

68

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

about fundamental economic and sociopolitical strengths at home. Indeed,

against the background ofa booming economy and growing bullion re-

serves in the Bank ofEngland, and benefiting naturally from his country’s

securely rooted tradition ofaccountable governance, Pitt was at this time

enacting fiscal and administrative reforms that would pay immeasurable

dividends in the next round ofEuropean warfare. As Hawkesbury could

smugly put it: “the revolutions that have lately happened in the government

of France afford a very flattering contrast to the stability and prosperity of

our administration.”9

At the other end ofEurope, Catherine’s state enjoyed a similarly envi-

able situation. If, on the one hand, Russia lacked the insularity that spared

the British the nightmare ofa lightning invasion by land, on the other

hand its Eurasian hugeness allowed it to play Berlin and Vienna off against

each other, and its sheer distance from the West would for the foresee-

able future insulate it somewhat from any destabilizing consequences of

renewed Anglo-French conflict. Furthermore, just as London was occupy-

ing itselfat this time with Australia, Spanish-held territories and markets

on the “Pacific Rim,” and other concerns far removed from Europe, so

St. Petersburg was as immersed in its dealings with Persia and China as it

was in its machinations in central and eastern Europe.

For France, then, any taking ofdiplomatic sides in 1788–89 would have

entailed, even more than previously, a challenge to state power generated

within but also far beyond the confines of west-central Europe. In point of

fact, however, Versailles could not even think of attempting the impossible,

as it had so often essayed it in the past. The king, the queen, and Necker

realized only too well that governmental insolvency precluded for the time

being any kind of French assertiveness in foreign affairs. Apart from the

possibility that an alliance between France and Russia could impede rather

than facilitate any French effort to mediate between Austria and Turkey,

Marie-Antoinette repeatedly reminded her compatriot Mercy-Argenteau,

it would require new expenditures on the French side and consequently

give to the impending Estates General an excellent excuse to trespass on