Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (30 page)

21 Blanning,
Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars
, pp.74–75.

22 Godechot,
France in the Eighteenth Century
, pp.147–49.

23 Blanning,
Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars
, pp.76–78.

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Reinterpreting the French Revolution

the pressures exerted on the leaders of great and lesser states by military

competition?

In analyzing French attitudes toward the outside world during 1789–91,

therefore, we must take into account traditional patriotic sentiment and

statist ambition as much as novel revolutionary ideology.That these forces

would in fact turn out to be mutually reinforcing became apparent early

on in the revolutionary process, most obviously in regard to those time-

honored enemies of France, Britain and Austria.

Even before the end of the dramatic month of July 1789, the British

ambassador to France, the duke of Dorset, was reporting French suspi-

cions that British money was being doled out to foment public disorder.

Dorset claimed as well that he and his countrymen risked physical harm as

they circulated among the public.24 Rumors about British vessels hovering

with wicked intent off the coast of Brittany and about British logistical

support for incursions by foreigners into southern France reinforced anti-

British sentiments in the capital.25 Within the Constituent Assembly, most

deputies were exhibiting their customary ambivalence toward London:

was Britain “perfidious Albion” or the cradle of constitutional liberty? In

reality, given the age-old rivalry between the two countries, and in particu-

lar the aggressiveness with which George III’s government pursued what it

regarded as its European and global economic interests, it is somewhat sur-

prising that any vestiges of eighteenth-century “Anglomania” could have

survived at all among the French politicians.Nonetheless, over the long

run, a revolutionary regime seeing French national interests as everlast-

ingly threatened by those across the Channel was bound to be tempted to

revive the embers of war and, perhaps, to give any new struggle against

London an unprecedentedly virulent character.Moreover, the fact that the

British government was
representative
in nature would make it all the

easier for statesmen at Paris to transfer their compatriots’ hostility from

Pitt’s ministry to the British people as a whole.A war of people against

people seemed already a realistic possibility in the not-too-distant future.26

Well before this actually happened, a foreign-policy debate in the

National Assembly gave ample warning of the Anglophobia lurking just

beneath the deceptively placid surface of French politics.On 14 May 1790

the deputies were informed of a precautionary mobilization of fourteen

ships of the line ordered by Louis XVI in response to British naval de-

ployments and Spanish requests for assistance stemming from the Nootka

Sound incident.The ensuing deliberation in the Assembly was punctuated

24 Ibid., p. 131.

25 On these rumors, see (among other sources) Lefebvre,
The Coming of the French
Revolution
, pp.118, 127.

26 Norman Hampson,
Prelude to Terror: The Constituent Assembly and the Failure of
Consensus, 1789–1791
(New York: Blackwell, 1988), p.129.

The first attempt to stabilize the Revolution

121

by outbursts of bellicose rhetoric and by more reasoned but no less somber

statements concerning Franco-British relations.Among the former was

the declaration by the baron de Menou, eliciting repeated applause from

his audience, that the French would know how to react in the event that

Britain on this occasion was in the wrong and refused to make amends:

“We shall demonstrate the courage and the power of a nation which is

truly free; we shall proceed to attack England in England itself!” Among

the more thoughtful pronouncements was that tendered by Pierre-Victor

Malouet, erstwhile diplomat and naval administrator.Even a cursory

review of history, Malouet affirmed, led unfailingly to the conclusion that

free peoples were, if anything, even more zealous to wage aggressive wars

than were despotic regimes.27 Precisely the same commentary came at an-

other juncture in this debate from Mirabeau, perhaps the most percipi-

ent and prophetic of all Assemblymen.“Mirabeau,” noted Albert Sorel,

“saw clearly; he dissipated the mists, tore aside the veils and for an instant

revealed to an unbelieving Assembly that strange and fatal future which the

Revolution bore within itself....He showed that free peoples were more

eager for war and democracies were more enslaved by their passions than

the most absolute despots.” In the event of war, Mirabeau warned, the rev-

olutionaries, borne upon the tide of their own heady expectations, would

inflame rather than becalm the masses and push the country headlong into

new and uncharted waters of international adventurism.28 Only Mirabeau’s

sudden death in April of the following year prevented him from witnessing

the melancholy fulfillment of his prophesy.

It is true that on 22 May 1790 the National Assembly solemnly

declared: “the French nation renounces the undertaking of any war with

a view to making conquests, and ...will never use its power against the

liberty of any other people.”29 Yet this statement was but one article in

a constitutional “compromise” on the conduct of French foreign policy

which, admittedly, left Louis XVI in control of day-to-day management of

that policy but reserved for the legislators the major decisions of war and

peace.30 As if to signify their resolution to take a more active role in this

crucial domain of policy-making once time permitted, the Assemblymen

insisted upon doubling the number of warships to be mobilized on this

27 Citations from Blanning,
The French Revolutionary Wars
,
1787–1802
(London: Arnold, 1996), pp.48–49.

28 Cited in Albert Sorel,
L’Europe et la Révolution Franc¸aise
, 8 vols.(Paris: E.Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1885–1904), 2:88–89.

29 Cited by Blanning,
The French Revolution in Germany
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), p.59.

30 See also, on this subject, Barry M.Rothaus, “The Emergence of Legislative Control over Foreign Policy in the Constituent Assembly, 1789–91” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1968).

122

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

occasion.Subsequently, they would increase this number by yet another

50 percent.31

H.V.Evans has argued plausibly that, at least for the time being, the

balance of political forces within the new legislature militated against a

resumption of Franco-British hostilities.At bottom, most of the delegates

distrusted and would always distrust their haughty cross-Channel neigh-

bors; still, they had little use for what they regarded as a superannuated and

reactionary alliance with the Bourbon government of Spain.The strongest

advocates of the Family Compact within the Assembly were naturally the

royalists, but it was precisely the royalists whose influence was most pal-

pably on the wane in this second year of the Revolution.Thus, the Family

Compact, if still a major issue in May, excited little controversy six months

later.Nevertheless, the Patriots, ever more influential in the Assembly, were

not about to abandon their prejudices against the English.Lafayette, for

example, could never be convinced that Britain did not covet revenge for

France’s role in the American Revolution and always saw London’s arma-

ments as aimed chiefly against the French.And the “hero of two worlds”

was but one of the Assembly’s incorrigible Anglophobes.32 Moreover, the

very dialectics of constitutional debate worked to the advantage of such

individuals.As time went by and as the center of gravity in the Constituent

Assembly shifted toward the Left, the old admiration for British consti-

tutional arrangements tended gradually to give way to an understandable

annoyance at the constant references to British practices by those in the

Center and on the Right.This could only serve to revive an animus against

France’s insular rival that had at most been repressed.33 In the end, the

Patriots were likely to remember Malouet’s assertion in May 1790 that

“France needed her colonies, Spain her alliances and British ambitions

were liable to endanger both.”34

But if the French gave notice to the world in May 1790 (and thereafter)

that their revolution was doing nothing to diminish their historic antipathy

toward the British, they were almost as quick to own up to their undying

Austrophobia.An incident in July 1790 underscored this powerfully.The

legislature received the news that Vienna had requested permission for a

detachment of Austrian soldiers to traverse French territory on their way

to restoring “order” in Belgium.The revolutionaries, already mistrustful

of the Austrians due to long historical memories, and energized further

by wild rumors circulating daily about Marie-Antoinette and an “Austrian

Committee” at Court, reacted strongly to this report.They gave them-

selves over to all kinds of speculation.Could not this outrageous incursion

31 Blanning,
The French Revolutionary Wars
, pp.48–49.

32 Evans, “The Nootka Sound Controversy,” pp.634–35.

33 Hampson,
Prelude to Terror
, p.128.

34 Ibid., p. 132.

The first attempt to stabilize the Revolution

123

be the prelude to all the horrors of counterrevolution in France as well as

in Belgium? Were there not alarming stories that the French military forces

in the northern and northeastern provinces were stretched thin? Were not

counterrevolutionary troops, according to all reports, mustering in Savoy

and the Rhineland? Was not Prussia verging upon rapprochement with

Austria? Such suspicions may have been (somewhat) exaggerated; further-

more, France and Austria were still supposedly allies, and consequently

pledged to accommodate each other’s strategic needs.Still, accusations re-

lating in any way to Vienna seem to have touched such a raw nerve in the

psychology of the revolutionaries that they quickly generated an outburst

of Austrophobic paranoia.35 And from this near-hysteria issued a call for

tighter legislative control over the crown in foreign affairs, control to be ex-

ercised in part through the creation of a committee charged with reviewing

all pacts between France and other powers.36

During the final fifteen months of the Constituent Assembly, Franco-

Austrian relations were continually roiled by issues we have already

reviewed: the grievances of the German princes relating to Alsace; the

complaints of French émigrés now congregating in the cities of the empire;

the resentments of foreign refugees now lobbying the legislators at

Paris; and the legislators’ fears about the queen and the so-called Austrian

Committee.In connection with this last point, it is relevant to note

that Marie-Antoinette’s growing conviction that only foreign interven-

tion could stem the tide of revolution had already been attributed to her in

advance by the most extreme Patriots.Attitudes of the old France and the

new France seemed to be converging in the ever more belligerent stance of

the Assembly.An assertion of French superiority and a distrust toward for-

eign states that harkened back to earlier times were now inspiring a novel

kind of nationalism and making old attitudes ideologically respectable.If

this was not yet a full-blown development, surely the seeds of it “were in

the wind, and if they germinated they would bear poisonous fruit.”37

To sum up, it is clear, on the one hand, that European and global realities

challenged the French even in the radiant early days of their revolution,

and, on the other hand, that they were determined eventually to rise to

that challenge.That the undying fires of Anglophobia and Austrophobia

cast their lurid glow over the otherwise benign landscape of reconstruc-

tive French politics in 1789–91 reminds us how closely the Constituent

Assemblymen were tied into the old world of politics abroad even as they

35 Blanning,
Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars
, p.76.On the question of Marie-Antoinette and the rumored “Austrian Committee,” see also Thomas E.Kaiser, “Who’s

Afraid of Marie-Antoinette? Diplomacy, Austrophobia, and the Queen,”
French History
14 (2000): 241–71.

36 Blanning,
The French Revolutionary Wars
, p. 49.

37 Hampson,
Prelude to Terror
, p.138.

124

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

strove to fashion a new world at home.Furthermore, as seems particularly

obvious in the light of hindsight, some of the legislature’s more audacious

members in 1791 were already looking much farther afield than the tradi-

tional battlefields of western and central Europe.They were presaging new

partitions of Poland, and even a dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire,

with strategic Turkish possessions in the eastern Mediterranean – including,