Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A global-historical perspective (53 page)

Hohenzollern state might eventually make territorial gains, and solidified

France’s hold upon the Left Bank of the Rhine. This last provision in

turn assured French mastery over the Dutch. French cavalry had already

marched into Amsterdam; only the diplomatic niceties required comple-

tion, and that came later in 1795. “At the Hague, Reubell and Siéyès negoti-

ated an offensive and defensive alliance with the Dutch, which condemned

them to pay an indemnity of one hundred million florins. . . . Holland was

further asked to support a French army of 25,000 men, and to yield all her

territory south of the Meuse. Dutch naval strength was now at the disposal

of Britain’s enemies.” Spain, too, would soon be compelled to drop out of

the war; indeed, the Treaty of San Ildefonso would revive the old Franco-

Spanish alliance and (at least in theory) add Spanish naval forces to those

of the French and Dutch.9

Before the end of 1795, consequently, Austria was left practically alone

on the Continent to face the rising power of revolutionary France.

The Habsburgs received verbal support (but little else) from a Russia

increasingly beguiled by extra-European aspirations, and financial support

(but little else) from a Britain similarly distracted by interests beyond

Europe.10 Why, then, did Vienna continue to deploy armies against Paris?

Austrian resolve to persist in the war was stiffened in part by what Vienna

saw as the unsatisfactory aftermath of the Polish Partition talks. As we

noted above, those talks pointed to the Low Countries, southern Germany,

or Italy as areas for future Austrian military activity, and in two of those

three regions, French interests would have to be confronted. But it is

only fair to observe that, for Habsburg statesmen, greater issues were also

involved. Austrian Chancellor Thugut “would not seek peace,” a recent

9 The French negotiations with Prussia, the United Provinces, and Spain are usefully recapitulated in Martyn Lyons,
France under the Directory
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), pp. 192–94. Refer also to Bruun, “The Balance of Power during the Wars,”

pp. 255–56.

10 The limited and selfish nature of British support for Vienna is a major theme in Paul W. Schroeder,
The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

The second attempt to stabilize the Revolution

217

biographer has aptly written, “because . . . he had changed none of his views

of revolutionary France. It was still a dangerous force that threatened to

destroy the social and political fabric of Europe. In fact, it mystified him

that the Prussians, regardless of their feelings toward Austria or toward

him, still did not comprehend the true danger of revolutionary France.”

Reacting to intelligence from Berlin that the Prussians no longer feared

the Revolution, Thugut “expressed bewilderment that they could be so

blind.”11 None of this, it is true, should lead us to overlook the very real

statist ambitions at Vienna that served at all times as accompaniment to

Austrian concerns about “balance of power” and sociopolitical stability in

Europe. Even so, Thugut’s larger vision of the geostrategic and sociopo-

litical threat posed to Europe by a French Revolution triumphantly on

the march displayed considerable realism; it was not grounded solely in

Austria’s specific strategic interests.

If the shift in geopolitical fortunes in 1794 and 1795 left the Austrians

determined to stay in the field against the French, the British were left

similarly disposed, although for somewhat different reasons. London’s

European and global situation in the 1790s was paradoxical. On the one

hand, the British, who even before 1789 had scored stunning successes in the

world of commerce and colonies and had left the “defeat” of the American

War far behind, found conditions in the extra-European theater even more

propitious in the years after 1789. We have already seen this to have been

the case in the early 1790s; and nothing in this regard would change funda-

mentally during the remainder of the decade. Pitt’s government, for exam-

ple, reacted to the latest Franco-Spanish-Dutch alliance by smashing the

Spanish navy off Cape St. Vincent and blockading what remained of it in

Cadiz, and by virtually destroying the Dutch naval forces at Camperdown.

Naturally enough, London followed up these resounding victories by seiz-

ing vital Dutch and Spanish colonies in the West and East Indies, at Africa’s

Cape of Good Hope, off India (Dutch Ceylon), and elsewhere. The English

were also poised to deprive the French of their most valuable West Indian

colonies, and thus to disrupt the colonial-domestic trade exchanges through

France’s western ports.12 Moreover, losses of colonies and of commerce

could have broader economic implications. The most percipient observers

could see that England, by using its supremacy at sea to dislocate con-

tinental commerce, could thereby damage key continental industries as

well. Significantly, French industrial output collapsed during these years,

and as late as 1800, according to one set of calculations, amounted to only

60 percent of what it had been before 1789. The roots of this disaster were

11 Roider,
Baron Thugut and Austria’s Response to the French Revolution
, pp. 181–82.

12 On all of this, see Kennedy,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
, pp. 123–24; and Lyons,
France under the Directory
, pp. 192–94.

218

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

complex, but the interruptions of French foreign trade (owing not only to

London’s blockade but also to the closing of continental markets inimical

to France) were a pivotal factor.13 Meanwhile, out in India, “only . . . French

military adventurers survived to trouble the English,” and they could do

little to disrupt Indian markets for the goods being produced in a rapidly

industrializing England.14

This, then, was assuredly one side of the strategic-economic coin for

the British. Profiting from the preoccupation of France and its allies with

continental affairs, London could tap into the markets and raw materials

of the extra-European world and thus further develop its own economic

(and strategic) resources. On the other hand, there is reason to question

whether Britain’s preeminent role in regions
beyond
Europe, however im-

pressive in itself, could adequately compensate for France’s growing power

within
Europe.15 This was, of course, the paramount issue – and must have

been for
any
government at London. The British were still facing their

permanent strategic nightmare: the prospect of an adversary’s achieving

hegemony on the Continent and then threatening to marshal all continen-

tal resources to defeat them in their own (maritime) element. In this case,

the collapse of the First Coalition in 1795 seemed to leave Pitt’s ministry

with little choice but to continue subsidizing Austria and hope for some

dramatic turn of events in Europe. “There was no consistent ‘right’ policy

for a British government to pursue,” Piers Mackesy has put it. “Only coali-

tion warfare in Europe could lead to a decisive victory and the checking of

France’s overweening power; and only during a coalition war could Britain

hope to maintain a military front in western Europe. Without major allies

she could pursue no independent strategy of her own in the European

heartland.” For the foreseeable future, the British could do little but react

in opportunistic fashion to the “shifting continental situation” and hope

for new developments that could somehow produce a new combination of

European powers to fight the French.16

As it turned out, those “new” developments were not long in coming,

and they derived from a traditional quarter: unremitting French aggression

that appeared to portend a Gallic domination of much of Europe. There

was, in fact, no real letup in the message of expansionism emanating from

Paris. Even in the waning days of the Convention in October 1795, Merlin

de Douai was insisting that “there is no one among us who does not hold

steadfastly to this one great truth . . . namely, that the consolidation of the

13 Franc¸ois Crouzet, “Wars, Blockade, and Economic Change in Europe, 1792–1815,”

Journal of Economic History
24 (1964): 567–88.

14 See again K. A. Ballhatchet, “European Relations with Asia and Africa,” pp. 229–30.

15 Kennedy,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
, p. 123.

16 Piers Mackesy,
War without Victory: The Downfall of Pitt, 1799–1802
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 228–30.

The second attempt to stabilize the Revolution

219

Republic and the peace of Europe are linked essentially to the extension of

our territory to the Rhine.” French soldiers, Merlin declared, were not cur-

rently risking all “beyond that river . . . for the sake of a shameful return to

our old frontiers.”17 This continued to be the guiding spirit in ruling circles

after the inauguration in France of the new constitutional regime known

as the Directory. True, several of the country’s new executive Directors –

Carnot, Barthélémy, Letourneur – courageously advocated a quick peace

on the basis of France’s return to its
anciennes limites
; but they were op-

posed stubbornly by their colleague Jean-Franc¸ois Reubell. As a Director

throughout this period, “and through his control of the various diplomatic

agencies, he served as a stable pole around which all the other forces push-

ing for the
grandes limites
could cluster.”18 The coup d’état of 18 Fructidor, Year V (or 4 September 1797) “put an end to [the Directory’s] vacillation by

expelling Carnot and Barthélémy, the strongest opponents of annexation,

and by introducing Merlin de Douai and Franc¸ois de Neufchâteau, both

supporters of Reubell’s line.”19

There were, at this point as at every juncture in the revolutionary period,

powerful interests arguing for French aggrandizement. Some of these in-

terests were of a domestic nature. Domestic considerations in part involved

the implications of revolutionary war for French industry, commerce, and

finance. No doubt there were those industrialists, merchants, and financiers

who advocated an aggressive foreign policy for the new markets, raw ma-

terials, and speculative opportunities it might afford in interior Europe.

(Many of these entrepreneurs were, we recall, being shut out of overseas

and peripheral European activities by the English blockade.) But the most

critical domestic considerations probably were the Directory’s need to

retain the support of its armies and its perpetually strained finances. On

the former matter, it has been noted,

the penniless Directory could not feed its soldiers, but it could not disband them

[either], because they were needed to keep the ruling clique in power, and because

it was feared that they would enter the pay of the government’s political opponents

unless work were found for them. . . . T he only solution was to continue the war,

and order the troops to “live off” the invaded countries.20

War, then, was needed to keep the generals and their men happy and

amenable to Directorial wishes – and, belike, to keep them out of France

altogether. But the financial side of this dilemma was also all-devouring.

To begin with, scholars have cited the Directory’s increasing tendency to

17 Blanning,
The French Revolution in Germany
, p. 74.

18 Ibid., pp. 74–75. On Reubell and his co-Directors, see also Albert Goodwin, “The French Executive Directory: A Revaluation,”
History
22 (1937): 201–18.

19 Blanning,
The French Revolution in Germany
, p. 79.

20 For this discussion of the domestic roots of the Directory’s foreign policy, see Biro,
The German Policy of Revolutionary France
, esp. 1:963–66.

220

Reinterpreting the French Revolution

see its conquests as financing not only the armies in the field but also the

government’s
entire
war effort. Yet, beyond even this, “there was a fur-

ther development, from making war finance itself, to waging war
for the

purposes of finance
” in general.21 As one official put it to the Venetian

ambassador in August 1796, the Directory could not afford to wage war,

but it could not afford to stop either.

There can be little doubt, then, that the Directory’s aggressive for-

eign policy was responding in part to domestic pressures. But, as always,

Frenchmen in positions of power were also mesmerized by the possibilities

of
gloire
to be achieved in a Europe that seemed almost to be inviting such adventurism. For all his accentuation of economic arguments for French

expansion, Sydney Biro has also made a point of listing additional motives:

“bounds of Gaul, territorial ambition, military glory,” and “national pres-

tige.”22 Sorel, we may feel, came closest to the heart of the matter in writing

that “The feeling of the ‘purged’ Directory was arrogance. It believed itself