Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (19 page)

The descent into revolution

73

to the world.” This “messianic psychology” only too plainly foreshadowed

the chauvinistic oratory ofthe Legislative Assembly of1791–92 and,

beyond that, the bellicose mentality of1793–94.21

What was more, a “messianic psychology” was already discernible in

such institutions as the army and the soon-to-be National Constituent

Assembly. Ofcourse it is hardly astounding that this should have been

the case with the military. Those Frenchmen who wielded authority in the

army, whether ofnoble or common extraction, thought ofthemselves as

professionals in the métier ofwar, trained to take up the cudgels against

the perdurable Austrian foe – or to exact a sweet revenge against Prussia.22

No matter how divisive status considerations may have been within army

officer ranks in 1788–89, the stinging memory of Rossbach and other com-

bat fiascos tended to forge within those ranks a countervailing patriotic

consensus.

More intriguing were the sentiments ofthe neophyte representatives

who transformed the Estates General into the National (Constituent)

Assembly during the summer of1789. It is true, ofcourse, that the mem-

bers ofthis body were little inclined at the time to hurl anathemas at the

crowned heads ofEurope. They had more pressing problems on their

hands, including the drafting of a constitution for France. Still, it is worthy

ofnote that the Assemblymen betrayed their underlying patriotism even

as they went about this irenic task. “They have so much national vanity,”

observed a Swiss publicist ofthese legislators, “so much pretension, that

they will prefer all kinds ofstupidities oftheir own choice to the results

ofBritish experience.”23 During the constitutional debates, Robespierre

declared that “the representatives ofthe French nation, knowing how to

give their country a constitution worthy ofher and ofthe wisdom ofthis

century, were not delegated to copy servilely an institution [i.e., the English

constitution] born in times ofignorance, ofnecessity, and ofthe strife of

opposing factions.” Camille Desmoulins brazenly predicted: “We shall go

beyond these English, who are so proud oftheir constitution and who

mocked at our servitude.”24 And Alexandre de Lameth queried amazedly:

“Well! Do we not have the precious advantage over England ofbeing able

to assemble all the parts ofour Constitution at the same time?” Even Jean-

Joseph Mounier, marked for his Anglophile opinions, conceded defensively

that it was in the power ofFrance “to have a Constitution superior to that

21 Ibid., pp. 124–25, 172–73.

22 Jean-Paul Bertaud,
The Army of the French Revolution: From Citizen-Soldiers to Instrument of Power
, trans. R. R. Palmer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 21.

23 Cited in Frances Acomb,
Anglophobia in France, 1763–1789
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1950), pp. 120–21.

24 Cited in ibid., p. 121.

74

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

ofEngland.”25 Such rodomontade in the National Assembly, like much of

the rhetoric in the anonymous pamphlets and official
cahiers de doléances

ofthe early Revolution, heralded “a spirit that would joyfully assume the

mission ofcarrying that Revolution to other nations as well, by force of

arms.”26

True, not all ofthese politicians gave themselves over to disparaging

constitutional arrangements across the Channel. Some ofthe more far-

sighted among their number, including Mirabeau and Talleyrand, were

concerned, like Vergennes before them, about the need to preserve an equi-

librium ofgeostrategic forces in Europe, and seem accordingly to have

been willing to solicit British aid in counteracting Russian, Prussian, and

Austrian depredations to the east. This does not mean that such individ-

uals were unstintingly pro-English. Surely Mirabeau was not – and yet at

the same time he apparently concluded that the configuration offorces

on the Continent was driving the English and his countrymen together.

Indeed, in striking anticipation ofdiplomatic ideas that Talleyrand him-

selfwould relay to London just three years later, Mirabeau in 1789 op-

timistically broached the possibility ofan Anglo-French collaboration in

Spanish American markets that would reconfirm ties offriendship already

rooted (he assumed) in the “Eden Treaty” of1786 and in shared fears of

St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna.27

Whether such ruminations were any more realistic in 1789 than they had

been in Vergennes’s time may, however, be doubted. It is hard to see how

even the most creative statesmanship could at this point have fashioned an

Anglo-French pact warding off colonial and maritime rivalry between the

two powers. All the more was this true in view ofthe English and French

naval buildups undertaken during the Dutch imbroglio.28 In any case, few

ofMirabeau’s and Talleyrand’s compeers in the National Assembly drew

such sophisticated distinctions between Great Britain, on the one hand, and

the three east European autocracies, on the other. For most ofthese men,

an unquestioned pride in country went hand in hand with an inveterate

distrust of
all
foreign states. For precisely this reason, the Assemblymen

striving to fashion a new France could not escape the misgivings and fears

that derived then, as they would derive throughout the revolutionary era,

from the turbulent international context of their efforts.

Today it is easy enough for us to perceive, through the eyes of Périsse-

Duluc, a deputy from Lyon to the self-proclaimed Constituent Assembly,

25 Lameth and Mounier are cited in Egret,
La Révolution des notables: Mounier et les
Monarchiens
(Paris: A. Colin, 1950), p. 149. My translation.

26 Acomb,
Anglophobia in France
, p. 123.

27 On the diplomatic thinking ofMirabeau and Talleyrand at this time, see Sorel,
Europe and
the French Revolution
, pp. 311–12.

28 Black,
British Foreign Policy
, pp. 161–62.

The descent into revolution

75

how that international context could be translated into the nagging anxiety

ofone intelligent and articulate bourgeois. As June ended and July began,

Périsse-Duluc got wind ofalarming rumors that the king’s reactionary

younger brother, the comte d’Artois, would flee the country and solicit

aid from foreign monarchs should his efforts to throttle reforms prove

unavailing. And what could have been more natural? Was not Louis XVI

brother-in-law both to the Habsburg emperor at Vienna and to the king

ofNaples? Furthermore, was he not cousin to Charles IV ofSpain, and

were not his two brothers, Provence and Artois, married to daughters of

the king ofSardinia? Why, then, should such foreign princes
not
invade

France at the sinister behest ofArtois? Such a scenario seemed all the

more believable to Périsse-Duluc in that he remembered having explicitly

foreseen, before the first session of the Estates General, that France’s

aristocracy might follow the example of the Dutch counterrevolutionaries

in 1787. They, needless to recall, had invited the Prussians in to secure

a victory over their own compatriots! With memories ofwhat had tran-

spired in the United Provinces still unpleasantly fresh in Patriot minds,

it would have been surprising ifa reasonably well-informed bourgeois

such as Périsse-Duluc had not found a number of his fellow delegates

in the Third Estate sharing his fears and suspicions in that tense and

eventful summer.29 The latest inquiries into the Constituent Assembly,

admittedly, suggest that most ofthe deputies did not subscribe this early

in the Revolution to any notion ofa conspiracy being hatched against the

public weal.30 Still, the “exposed” situation ofFrance in battle-scarred

Europe likely made it easier for some of these men to entertain such an

idea.

Furthermore, elitist Frenchmen in the Constituent Assembly were

often exposed to anxieties and paranoia in society’s popular ranks. For the

humbler classes, mistrust and outright fear of the world beyond France –

and folk memories of how French kings had repeatedly raised troops to

combat that world – interacted with and magnified a veritable complex

ofeconomic, social, and political concerns in the course of1789. It was all

too easy for artisans, urban laborers, and peasants, prey to the wildest of

rumors even in the best oftimes, to believe in 1789 that selfish aristocratic

reactionaries favored the hoarding of food in order to annihilate the

Third Estate and, for similar reasons, were delighted to see the harvest

being pillaged or the crops cut down before they were ripe. Even more

to the point, those laboring subjects who viewed the “aristocrats” as

29 Lefebvre,
Coming of the French Revolution
, pp. 100–101.

30 See, in particular, Timothy Tackett, “Conspiracy Obsession in a Time ofRevolution: French Elites and the Origins ofthe Terror, 1789–1792,”
American Historical Review
105 (2000): 691–713.

76

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

disposed to resort to arms naturally expected them to recruit followers

among vagrants and vagabonds, just as the kings’ recruiting officers filled

their quotas from such sources. Furthermore, since it was widely expected

that the aristocrats would call on foreign troops, was it not equally

natural to believe that they would also draw on “brigands” from adjacent

countries? It was this assumed and unholy collusion between highborn

Frenchmen and foreigners of all social backgrounds that diffused anxiety

about so-called brigands throughout the kingdom, endowing it thereby

with major social and political significance. Townspeople and countryfolk

reacted fearfully and at times violently to stories about the emigration

ofnobles, the movements ofbrigands, and the diabolical preparations

ofthe British, Spanish, Piedmontese, and other f

oreigners to invade

France.31

It is also important to note that, at times, the incendiary passions ofthe

populace reflected international pressures in ways that were much more

indirect, and hence much less obvious. For example, popular hearsay in

1788–89 frequently ascribed the widespread suffering occasioned by the

industrial recession to the commercial treaty recently concluded with the

nefarious English. Although subsequent scholarship has not uncondition-

ally confirmed that contention, it
has
seen the recession as aggravated by

the dislocation ofmarkets for French goods in eastern Europe, and this lat-

ter phenomenon resulted directly from the military strife involving Russia,

Austria, Turkey, and Sweden.

There were, in sum, a number ofways in which the old nexus between

external and internal affairs reincarnated itself as part and parcel of the

revolutionary process in France from the very beginning. The king and his

closest advisers could not help but deplore the country’s unabated decline

among the European powers. It is difficult to see how they could have failed

in the long run to assign a high priority to the task ofreinforcing the secu-

rity and (beyond that) restoring the traditional greatness ofFrance in the

world at large. What was more, a determination in the ministries to remain

true to this international mission could –
under the right circumstances
–

command powerful support among citizens in all walks of life motivated

(in part) by pride in France and mistrust offoreigners. But “under the

right circumstances” meant in the first place a monarch psychologically

capable ofaccepting an ongoing process ofsociopolitical reform at home

that would accommodate the aspirations ofprogressive Frenchmen in the

upper and middle classes. How, then, Louis XVI would position himself

on fundamental constitutional and social questions unavoidably posed in

1789 would be critical.

31 Lefebvre,
Coming of the French Revolution
, pp. 108–9, 146. On all these points, see also, by the same author,
The Great Fear of 1789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary France
, trans.

Joan White (New York: Pantheon, 1973).

The descent into revolution

77

t h e f a i l u r e o f t h e k i n g t o c o m p r o m i s e

There can be no doubt that the process ofchange in France in and after

1789 would have been markedly different – among other things, proba-

bly, less violent – had Louis XVI been able to relinquish unequivocally his

commitment to the old ways ofabsolutism and social privilege. Yet such

speculation is as profitless in connection with this monarch as like conjec-

ture would be in the cases ofEngland’s Charles I and Russia’s Nicholas II.

The entire course ofevents from August 1788 to October 1789 revealed

that this sovereign, like his counterparts in the other revolutions, sim-

ply could not bend to the degree required by evolving geopolitical and

sociopolitical realities. Some ofthe kingdom’s brightest luminaries tried

to convince Louis XVI that basic sociopolitical reform was inescapable