Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (28 page)

Any review of European geopolitics in this period conjures up the same

hard realities that France had been facing for decades: a predatory Russia

responsive to the desires of Catherine the Great; a restless Hohenzollern

Prussia contending with a somewhat less aggressive Habsburg Austria for

influence in central Europe; and a Great Britain opportunistically moving

into markets on the Continent and acquiring colonies overseas.The French

had, somehow, to acknowledge and respond to these forces – and actually

found ways to do so on occasion, even in the midst of their prodigious

labors of domestic reconstruction.

The resumption in 1787 of the historic Russian drive against Turkey had

initially assumed defensive colors: Constantinople had, after all, preemp-

tively declared war against St.Petersburg.The Russian effort was at first

hampered by drought and harvest failure, inadequate military preparations,

Swedish military incursions into the northwestern reaches of Catherine’s

empire, and, perhaps most significantly, the possibility of Prussian and

British intervention on behalf of the Turks.In the end, however, all of

these factors together could not counterbalance the inherent strengths of

the Romanov state’s position.Indeed, the last of these potentially inhibit-

ing factors – that is, the possibility of a coordinated Prusso-British strike

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Reinterpreting the French Revolution

against the Russians – was never very likely to become a reality.Astute

observers found it easy to differentiate between diplomatic viewpoints at

London and Berlin.Pitt’s government had only reluctantly entered into

the alliance of 1788 and saw it primarily as a hedge against instability in

Europe; at the same time, few British statesmen appeared yet to be greatly

concerned about the fate of the Turks.Prussia, in contrast, saw the al-

liance as a means toward important territorial gains.But proposals made

by Frederick William II’s government for cessions of land by Turkey to

Austria, by Austria to Poland, and by Poland to Prussia failed to enthuse

the British.The two “allies” in addition differed sharply over whether or

not to support the secession of the southern Netherlands – modern-day

Belgium – from the Habsburg dominions.In summary, from the start of

Europe’s latest diplomatic crisis, Pitt’s government and the Hohenzollern

authorities were at clear cross-purposes.2

This is essentially why Prussian negotiations undertaken with both

Turkey and Poland in the course of 1790 have, in retrospect, an air of

unreality.However it might indulge in saber rattling against Vienna and

St.Petersburg and pledge aid to the Turks and Poles, Prussia was not

about to intervene single-handedly (that is to say, in this instance, without

London’s support) in the parlous affairs of eastern Europe.Even at this rel-

atively early date, the most farsighted observers could suspect that Berlin,

unaided by a British “ally” championing the current balance of forces

on the Continent, might in time turn toward either Russia or Austria

(or to both together) and against Warsaw and Constantinople in its quest

for territorial acquisitions.

But that was still several years in the future.In the meantime, the

gradual but inexorable shift of fortunes in the Russo-Turkish War against

Constantinople forced Pitt’s government to reassess the situation to the

east.British diplomatic intervention at Berlin and Vienna, coupled with the

quixotic wish of Austria’s Leopold II to stabilize central Europe through a

resolution of Austro-Prussian differences, led to the signing on 27 July 1790

of the Convention of Reichenbach.Under terms of this pact between the

two Germanic powers, Austria agreed to make peace with Turkey through

the offices of Britain, Prussia, and the United Provinces.By separate ar-

rangement, Constantinople acquiesced in a minor surrender of frontier

lands to Vienna – a concession that, along with the larger Convention itself,

would presumably enable the Turks to husband their remaining resources

for the struggle with Russia.3

2 M.S.Anderson, “European Diplomatic Relations, 1763–90,” pp.276–77.

3 On the Convention of Reichenbach, see in particular Karl A.Roider, Jr.,
Austria’s Eastern
Question 1700–1790
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 188–89; and Anderson, “European Diplomatic Relations,” pp.277–78.

The first attempt to stabilize the Revolution

113

The British, too, obsessed as ever by the need to maintain a strategic

balance on the Continent, and temporarily reassured by the paralysis of

affairs within France, concentrated increasingly upon the crisis in east-

ern Europe.But they faced in Catherine’s state a more resourceful power

than Leopold II’s Austria.By the end of 1790 the Russians had overrun

the Danubian principalities and seized Ismail, the key Turkish fortress

at the mouth of the Danube on the Black Sea.By the time the Peace of

Jassy had formally ended this latest conflict between St.Petersburg and

Constantinople in January 1792, Russia’s southwestern frontier had ad-

vanced another one hundred miles or more, to the Dniester River.Pitt’s

government had (in T.C.W.Blanning’s words) marched “to the very brink

of war” with Catherine in March 1791, but in the end it had backed down

and allowed the tsarina carte blanche in her dealings with the Turks.For

this there were many reasons: “divisions in the cabinet, opposition in

Parliament, the deft manipulation of public opinion by the Russian ambas-

sador Count Vorontsov, the problems involved in bringing military and/or

naval pressure to bear on inaccessible Russia, and ...the indomitable will

of the Tsarina.”4

In the final analysis, it was probably above all Russia’s Eurasian hugeness

and its standing as the “flanking power” at the opposite end of Europe from

Britain that enabled it to defy the other major powers and impose peace

on the Ottoman Empire on its own terms.And as if to drive home the

diplomatic implications of its auspicious geographical situation, Russia in

1791–92 was already turning from its triumphs over the Turks to the allur-

ing possibilities of a renewed intervention in Polish affairs.The Poles, who

were striving desperately to modernize their political, military, and social

institutions, had enjoyed a temporary respite from the pressures generated

by Russian expansionism only because of the Russo-Turkish War.5 Now

that Catherine II had settled her account with Constantinople, she could

attempt to revive the old Austro-Prussian rivalry in central Europe, as well

as profit from a more novel obsession at London, Berlin, and Vienna with

revolution in France, to reassert her will at Warsaw.

Thus the growth of Russian power in eastern Europe, directly affecting

three long-standing outposts of French influence, Turkey, Poland, and

Sweden, marked the early 1790s as surely as it had characterized preceding

decades.In times very soon to come, a France expanding first under revo-

lutionary and then under Napoleonic auspices would unavoidably collide

with the Romanov colossus.In the early years of the Revolution, however,

the new statesmen at Paris had primarily to deal (at least in continental

matters) with the policymakers at Berlin and Vienna.

4 Blanning,
The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars
, p. 59.

5 Ibid., pp. 59–60.

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Reinterpreting the French Revolution

We have already seen that the Prussia of Frederick William II was restless

and acquisitive, ever seeking potential victims amid the political uncertain-

ties of the Continent.In the course of 1790–91, the Prussian monarch was

induced by considerations discussed earlier to discard Foreign Minister

Hertzberg’s complicated scheme of territorial exchanges involving the

major states of central and eastern Europe as well as to abandon any rash

idea of war with either Russia or Austria.As time wore on, and as the

political situation within France deteriorated, aggressive instincts at Berlin

were increasingly directed toward the west.On 27 August 1791 Prussia

joined Austria in declaring, at Pillnitz, that Louis XVI’s situation merited

the concerted attention of all the sovereigns of Europe.It was perhaps

significant that Frederick William II was accompanied only by military

officials to Pillnitz and gave a more sympathetic hearing to French émigrés

foregathered there than did Leopold.Moreover, the Prussian king would

soon be dispatching a senior general to Vienna to expedite preparations for

a coordinated attack against the French.6

Austria’s sentiments toward the French were a good deal more am-

bivalent than those of the Prussians.For this there were a number of rea-

sons.The most basic of them become apparent if we emphasize Vienna’s

geostrategic vulnerabilities in the eighteenth century.The Habsburgs had

long realized that Russia’s persistent drive toward the Black Sea, the

Balkans, and Constantinople could eventually bring about an Austro-

Russian confrontation that would pose as great a threat to the security

of the Habsburg dominions as that presented by the Turks in the pre-

ceding century.But how could Vienna contest Russian expansionism in

southeastern Europe without forfeiting tsarist support in its campaign to

check its enemies to the west and north?7 Because the Austrians, unlike the

Russians, had real or potential adversaries on all sides, they had to formu-

late their policies in the early 1790s (including their policy toward revo-

lutionary France) with extreme caution.Any action taken in concert with

Prussia against Paris had to reckon, not only with the highly volatile situ-

ation in France, but also with the easily renewable rivalry between Vienna

and Berlin in central Europe, and with the unavoidable Austro-Russian

tensions in the Balkans.

There were other complicating factors at work as well.As has often been

noted, concerns about revolutionary ideology as a source of domestic sub-

version weighed much more heavily at Vienna than at Berlin.The Prussians

had little to fear from this quarter, facing only traditional and easily isolated

peasant uprisings in hinterland regions like Silesia.Even Prussia’s western

6 See ibid., pp. 85–86, for an analysis of the Prussian stance on these matters in 1790–91.

7 Roider,
Austria’s Eastern Question
, pp.194–95.See also, on Austria’s strategic dilemma throughout the eighteenth century, Paul W.Schroeder,
The Transformation of European
Politics 1763–1848
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), passim.

The first attempt to stabilize the Revolution

115

territories, adjacent to France, offered no evidence of the impact of revo-

lutionary propaganda.Habsburg policymakers, on the other hand, were

severely tested by events in 1789–90, when Belgium had seceded, Galicia

and Hungary had threatened to follow suit, and many other Habsburg ter-

ritories had been restive.Furthermore, Leopold II’s reassertion of Austrian

rule in Belgium at the end of 1790 gave notice that retaining this possession

was – and would remain – a higher priority for him than it had been for

his brother Joseph II.But this meant that, as Paris was sheltering a swarm

of Belgian refugees who zealously anticipated a crusade to liberate their

country, Leopold had to be commensurately more sensitive to the threat

emanating from France.8

Finally, of course, there was the fact of the emperor’s kinship with

France’s embattled royal couple.“During the course of the summer of

1791,” one historian has aptly observed, “Leopold’s policy oscillated be-

tween a fraternal instinct to help his sister and a rational assessment of

Austrian
raison d’état
.” The news from France that the emperor’s royal

brother-in-law had formally accepted his subjects’ new constitution on

13 September was a great source of relief to Leopold and his chief adviser,

Kaunitz.Of course, they were only too cognizant of the fact that Louis XVI

had on this occasion acted under duress and insincerely; still, they seem

to have been hoping for the establishment in France of a constitutional

monarchy that could bank the fires of revolutionary enthusiasm without

acquiring the ability to challenge Habsburg interests in the Low Countries,

Germany, or Italy.Yet this was, from the start, a forlorn expectation: the

men feverishly engaged in remaking France were not likely to accept for

long a reduced French role in continental affairs.The implications of this

last fact were daunting: “a strong France and a strong Austria,” it has been

observed, “could not coexist amicably, no matter what their formal

relationship might be.”9

It was clear, then, that France faced in the early stages of its revolution, as

it had faced through much of the eighteenth century, a continental situation

replete with challenges to its sense of national mission.It became speedily

obvious as well that Great Britain would continue to compete unabatedly

with its French rival in a world of markets and colonies that included – but