If the revolution, victorious and possessing territorial securities, had chosen to temporize until Poland was partitioned a second time, in all probability it could have obtained peace from a quarrelling coalition by offering to hand back its spoils on condition that its own independence be respected. This prospect was no doubt what Danton anticipated early in October of 1792. To accomplish it, however, the French would meanwhile have to resist the intoxication of victory that urged them on to a war of propaganda, to further annexation, and hence to a breach with England. They would also have to spare Louis XVI. Any such policy required unity and concord among French republicans. Torn by factional conflicts, the Convention could not offer peace to Europe.
The National Convention assembled for its first session on the afternoon of September 20, just as the battle of Valmy ended. The next day, having settled its rules of procedure, it replaced the Legislative Assembly at the Manège. Towards the end of that day’s session Collot d’Herbois, warmly seconded by Grégoire, rose to move that the monarchy be abolished. The motion was carried easily. The following day Billaud-Varenne had no difficulty in gaining consent to the proposal that decrees thenceforth be headed ‘Year 1 of the Republic’. The first French republic was thus established by indirection, not out of judgment based on theory and formally stated, but because revolutionary France, which for its own safety had dethroned Louis XVI, now had to govern itself.
The Convention could not mirror the nation as a whole. The revolution of August 10 made it necessary to exclude royalist accomplices of foreign powers or suspects for treasonable activities. The masses, who had not voted, were vaguely troubled and mutely discontent: they would have preferred to enjoy the benefits of revolution and abjure the responsibilities it entailed. The new assembly emanated from a national minority resolved to spurn all compromise and to stand fast in the face of danger. It was a constituent assembly even in name—the embodiment of national sovereignty, according to Sieyes’s theory, it enjoyed full and unqualified authority. By law and in fact it was invested with dictatorial powers.
But its composition failed to satisfy the Commune and the insurrectionary elements of August 10, partly because many of those elected called themselves republicans only in deference to events, and partly because the sans-culottes of the ‘days’, partisans of terror and of controls, did not have their own spokesmen: the Mountain represented them only to a limited degree, since it had no social and economic programme as yet, and the forlorn hope of agrarian law was denounced on all sides. Lacking representation in the Convention, extremists promptly took over the Cordeliers Club. In 1793 events were to permit them to sweep along with them both the Mountain and the sections in order to force the hand of the assembly.
Within the Convention two directing groups, the Girondins and the Montagnards, immediately came into conflict. They were not organized, disciplined parties; each had its dissidents and each lacked coordination. Nor did they defend clearly opposing doctrines; instead they revealed tendencies which their rivalry and the difficulties they faced made increasingly disparate.1 Their antagonism dated back to reciprocal accusations of connivance with the court and to the conflict between Brissot and Robespierre over the advisability of war. August 10 and its aftermath then raised other issues. Madame Roland never forgave Danton for attaining his prominence and gathered round her an intransigent faction that included Barbaroux, Buzot, and Louvet. Pétion remained bitter towards the Parisians for not having elected him. And all still felt the fear of September.
The dispute soon grew venomous: to oppose a centralizing dictatorship the Girondins called on the support of local administrative bodies, controlled by the moderate bourgeoisie even after the Convention had decreed new elections, and they encouraged the passion for autonomy which had thrived since 1789. Although a few leaned towards federalism, the party never planned to introduce it in France, but its members relied on particularism for support, which was worse. The Gironde was bound to the business bourgeoisie, had little contact with the people, and had given up the Jacobin Club to meet at the homes of Madame Dodun, Madame Roland, or Valazé. Its members, Roland in particular, remained partisans of economic freedom, and they therefore parted with the people of small means who were wedded to economic controls. From then on, the conflict took on a social aspect. Virtually the entire bourgeoisie lined up behind the Girondins, whose name it used as a shield, in the Convention and even more in the provinces, for its royalist tendencies. The Montagnards were elected from Paris and naturally favoured the throng of sans-culottes sectionnaires. The Mountain controlled the Jacobin Club, where it carried on discussions with the sans-culottes, and it pleaded their cause. Threatened by the Gironde and deeming it incapable, if not of voting, certainly of applying withany conviction the measures that war required, the Montagnards ended by adopting—not without occasional regret—popular attitudes and by assuming leadership of the revolutionary extreme left which had no seats in the assembly. Their union was still not an intimate one, and as the group took on more provincial members it became even less homogeneous.
Between the two factions lay the centre. No majority could be formed without it, but it was an unstable group that never made a decision without later reversing itself. Resolved to defend the Revolution and the territorial integrity of the nation, its members were opportunists in selecting their means. Very bourgeois, they were at heart afraid of the people; arbitrary and bloody violence repulsed them; economic freedom they, too, considered dogma. But as long as the Republic was in danger they thought it unwise to break with the men of August 10, especially since those men demanded measures which could be of some use until victory was won. For these reasons a few—Barère, Carnot, Lindet, Cambon—rallied to the Mountain. More foresighted than the party leaders already enraged with hate, the largest block of deputies realized that the republicans were too few to escape perishing together if they tore one another to pieces. By changing sides at frequent intervals they forced the Convention to incredible reversals, but they were guided by a well-grounded sense of reality.
For several weeks the Girondins preserved their popularity and appeared to be masters in the Convention. The jealousy that provincial deputies felt towards the Commune and sans-culottes of Paris, the fear that massacres had inspired, the anger that was provoked by remarks interpreted as threats against private property, the sense of security that was engendered by victory with its consequent reaction to terror—all aligned the majority behind the Gironde. When Danton withdrew from the Executive Council to take a seat in the assembly, Roland, ‘the virtuous’, judged himself leader in the Council. The Commune was not actually dissolved until the end of November, but it had lost its exceptional powers and had abolished its vigilance committee. The ‘commissioners of executive power’ were recalled to Paris. The high police force found that it was controlled by Roland and the assembly’s Committee of General Security: prosecutions stopped, suspects were freed, many deported priests and émigrés were allowed to return. Next, the extraordinary tribunal of August 17 was suppressed, and as normal judicial processes were restored, special trials for counterrevolutionaries ended, for the High Court had already been abolished. Controls over the grain trade fell into disuse, and the September decrees had never been strictly applied. Roland continued to denounce grain controls, and when partisans of fixed prices resorted to violence between the Eure and the Loire he restored free trade on December 8.
Government controls relaxed in other areas as well. Private contractors had been enjoying immense profits from the war, especially when operations in Belgium provided lucrative opportunities for those employed by Dumouriez. The abbé d’Espagnac was the best known of the general’s clients. When Pache, the new war minister, substituted a ‘purchasing directory’ for the contractors, Dumouriez protested unceasingly until the Convention granted him exclusive authority over expenditures allocated to supply his army. When it was decided not to fortify Paris, the labourers engaged for that purpose were dismissed. Roland restored piece-work wages in national manufactories and energetically denounced the prodigality of the Commune in keeping bread prices down to 3 sous a pound at the taxpayers’ expense. The peasants, too, were affected by new measures: it was decided to postpone division of commons and sale of émigré lands. This general policy made the sans-culottes increasingly bitter towards the ‘Rolandins’, but within the Convention such measures did not encounter as much resistance as might have been expected. During the long debate on the grain trade, Saint-Just, orthodox economist, showed that the only way to check high prices was to curb inflation. Robespierre gave eloquent expression to the people’s grievances and demanded that hoarding be stopped, but he proposed neither requisitions nor price controls.
The republicans seem to have agreed, with little dissent, as to their views on the clergy. They refused to abolish the budget of public worship, a course advocated by Cambon, but in December calmly discussed—without reaching any conclusion—the establishment of public, lay, free, and compulsory education, following the principles of the celebrated report delivered by Condorcet to the Legislative Assembly.
Danton did not share Robespierre’s deep hatred of the Girondins; instead he offered them his support. At heart he belonged more to the centre, as Levasseur has noted. He only asked that extreme measures be avoided, and in October he promised Théodore de Lameth, who had returned from London to seek his assistance, that he would try to save the king. He well knew that this was a primary condition for peace, and to obtain a truce he might even have gone so far as to re-establish constitutional monarchy, perhaps with the duc de Chartres on the throne. As early as October 4 he proposed that the fatherland be declared out of danger. But, conversely, moderation and appeasement could not come before the end of hostilities. The dilemma could only be resolved by unity among the parties; in any case the Montagnards had to be silenced. On September 21 and 25 Danton criticized dictatorial powers and agrarian law as well as federalism. Wisdom advised the Girondins to come to terms with him.
Instead they wanted to crush their opponents. They forced Danton to move towards the left when they attacked him, demanding an account of his secret expenditures, which he could not provide, while Madame Roland charged that he had pilfered the royal storerooms, which had recently been broken into. On September 25 Marat and Robespierre heard themselves violently denounced as aspirant dictators. Attacks on the Commune increased. On October 29 Louvet launched a new campaign against Robespierre. It was obvious that the Girondins were seeking by every means to indict those among the ‘instigators’ of August 10 who had not rallied to them—as had Carra and Barbaroux—by attributing the September massacres and revolutionary dictatorship to them. The Girondins realized that by placing blame on the sans-culottes and driving them to a more desperate stand, they risked exposing themselves to a new ‘day’. On this account Roland asked the Convention on September 23 to give him a private bodyguard, and Buzot, whose love for Madame Roland was turning him against his former comrades, proposed the formation of a ‘departmental guard’ to protect the national representatives.
Although the majority in the assembly shared the Girondin dislikes, it refused to hand over their opponents. A third party therefore emerged. Subsequently labelled the Plain, to contrast it with the Mountain, or else castigated as the Marsh, it implicitly agreed with the thesis brilliantly propounded by Robespierre on November 5: certain results of August 10 were regrettable, but there could be no question of outlawing the men who had overthrown the king and nipped treason in the bud; by prosecuting those leaders the Convention would tacitly denounce the insurrection and destroy the assembly’s own basis of authority; furthermore, the deputies would place themselves at the mercy of the royalists if they employed force against the Parisian sans-culottes. The assembly, therefore, halted after expressing its contempt for Marat. Robespierre was not arraigned; having passed that test, he grew in stature and took over leadership of the Mountain. To avoid arousing the departments against the capital, the assembly cautiously limited itself to praise of departmental addresses favouring the Gironde and allowed the provinces to send a new throng of Fédérés to Paris.
Having failed to sway the Convention this time, the Girondins found their power on the wane: within the Council the ministers of war and navy, Pache and Monge, dissociated themselves from Roland. Since the Parisian bourgeoisie still refused to vote, the Jacobins gained control of the Paris departmental directory, and in the Commune a moderate mayor was flanked by Chaumette as procureur and Hébert as his assistant. Worse still, the embattled Montagnards answered their critics by accusing them of postponing the king’s trial.
This was in fact what the Brissotins hoped to do, since the orientation of their domestic policy inclined them to spare Louis. But Danton had already said to Lameth: ‘Can a king under indictment be saved? He’s as good as dead when he appears before his judges.’ And in reality the Convention had to declare him guilty if it wanted to avoid damning August 10, its own existence, and the proclamation of the Republic— as Robespierre reminded it, with irrefutable logic, in an address delivered on December 2: ‘If the king is not guilty, then those who have dethroned him are . . . The Constitution prohibited everything you have done . . . Prostrate yourselves before Louis to invoke his clemency.’ Once the Convention recognized Louis’s guilt it could hardly refuse to pronounce the death penalty against a person who had summoned the aid of foreign powers and whom the sans-culottes considered responsible for the ambush at the Tuileries. To save the king they would have to avoid asking the question of his deserved punishment—in other words, he could not be put on trial. The Girondins wished to follow this course, but in trying to outlaw the Mountain they could not prevent the Montagnards from speaking. The king’s head was at stake for each party.
Debate on Louis’s trial did not begin until November, after undistinguished reports had been delivered by Valazé and Mailhe, and it was still dragging along when on November 20 an iron chest was discovered at the Tuileries. Roland committed the signal mistake of being the first to examine its compromising papers with no witnesses present. Trial was now inevitable. On December 11 Louis was brought before the Assembly. After either denying the charges or taking refuge behind the constitution, he was authorized to consult Tronchet and Malesherbes. On December 26 the lawyer Sèze gave the defence: he denied that treason had been committed, but devoted his argument to challenging the Convention’s competence to try the king and invoking royal inviolability. As to the first point, the Convention was invested with full powers as a constituent assembly, and the majority had no doubts concerning its own legality. As to the second, after Varennes, Brissot and Robespierre agreed that the king’s inviolability applied only to his constitutional acts countersigned by a minister. On July 3, 1792, Vergniaud had protested that the constitution’s respectful silence on treason could be ridiculously interpreted as granting Louis immunity. But the Girondins resorted to obstruction. They asked that all Bourbons be banished, charging that those who wanted to do away with Louis intended to replace him with the duc d’Orléans, who was now a deputy from Paris and called Philippe Égalité— a change of position which forced the Mountain to defend him and in turn allowed it to be accused of royalism. Then the Girondins maintained that determination of the king’s fate had to be ratified by the people. Barère rebutted that claim in the most distinguished of his speeches, that delivered on January 4, 1793. Surrendering hope of a legal case for acquittal, they ended by pointing out that regicide would rouse a general coalition against the Republic and would again endanger its life, This was a telling argument for avoiding the trial in the first place, but was no longer valid. Besides, it seemed to represent quibbling from the Girondins, who in November had demanded war to the finish.
Balloting on separate issues began on January 14, 1793. Each deputy explained his vote at the rostrum. The vote against the king was unanimous. There was to be no popular referendum. The fatal vote started on January 16, and continued until the next day. Of the 721 deputies present, 387 declared themselves for the death penalty, 334 were against. But 26 supporters of the penalty had proposed that an examination be opened to determine whether a case for granting reprieve existed. This skilful manoeuvre originated with Mailhe, the first to vote. If the 26 votes were taken to be contingent upon a new examination the margin was reduced to very little. The 26 had to be forced to take sides. It was then agreed to take a final vote on the sole question of reprieve: 380 votes were cast against; 310 for. Each time the Girondins had split.
Agitation by the sections had occurred during the trial, and charges have been made that the Convention was swayed by fear in its balloting. The only victim of violence, however, was a Montagnard, Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau, assassinated by a royalist on January 20. On the other hand, bribery helped swell the minority in favour of reprieve: not content to use official channels, Ocariz, the Spanish chargé d’affaires, distributed two million livres advanced by the banker Le Couteulx. Until the last hour royalists had continued to hope. The final result took them by surprise.
On the morning of January 21 the Convention ordered the entire National Guard to line both sides of the route taken by the king to the scaffold. Louis was beheaded at the Place de la Révolution. With few exceptions the French people accepted the deed in silence, but it made a profound impression. Its effects will long be debated. Execution of the king aroused pity and exalted royalist convictions, yet it seems undeniable that monarchical sentiment was dealt a severe blow—a king had been put to death like any ordinary man; royalty lost, never to recover, the supernatural quality that even the Revolution had not yet eradicated. At the time, however, dismay seized many Frenchmen when they realized the implications of what had been done: within the nation, ‘voters’ and ‘appellants’ swore undying hatred of each other; abroad, the rest of Europe decreed a war of extermination against regicides. Fundamentally the king’s trial opposed those who, in the interest of peace, were more or less consciously inclined to compromise with counter-revolution, against those who, remaining intransigent, gave the nation no hope of salvation save through total victory.
The Girondin policy of warding off dictatorship and sparing the king required peace. Yet theirs was, and remained, the war party, more so now than ever, because to win back the sans-culottes they rashly invoked the vision of France as liberator of the world. They were not inspired solely by party ambition, for the romantic dream of liberation dazzled them. Nevertheless, impulse served them well—a war of propaganda lay close to the hearts of the revolutionary populace, and indeed of many Montagnards; the people criticized the Gironde not for having launched the war but for having waged it poorly.
The Convention still held back, even though it was pressed from all sides to answer urgent problems with solutions binding on the future. Certainly the occupied countries aspired to be delivered from the Old Regime, but should they be left to accomplish this alone? Or should their desires be anticipated by ‘municipalizing’ them immediately? And should France liberate them at its own expense, exporting its currency to pay the costs? Or should it supply its troops by requisitioning materials and demanding war contributions? The refugees in France were agitating, and Clavière, one of them who was now a minister, had Montesquiou deprived of command when he treated the Genevese aristocracy too lightly. In November the inhabitants of Nice, Savoy, and the Rhineland raised a new issue by asking that their territories be annexed to France. The generals had received no instructions and were proceeding to act on their own initiative. At Nice, Anselme replaced existing authorities, ‘municipalizing’ the town; on the other hand, Montesquiou, in Savoy, limited his activity to allowing the formation of new clubs and the convocation, on October 20, of a ‘national assembly of Allobrogians’. In the Rhineland Custine organized clubs, best-known of which is that of Mainz, and wanted to abolish the feudal system. Later Dumouriez, who hoped to rule an independent Belgium, acted with the Vonckists in authorizing provincial assemblies to be elected in place of the Estates. This was enough to provoke a quarrel with the Statist party. Meanwhile he was unable to prevent anti-clerical democrats from triumphing at Liége and from starting troublesome clubs everywhere else, which immediately aroused strong opposition from the Church. Financial policies adopted by the military commanders were equally varied: Anselme, Montesquiou, and Dumouriez exacted as little as possible from the people—Dumouriez tried to obtain a loan from the clergy, and his contractors paid for their purchases in currency. But in the Rhineland Custine lived off the country by exacting money from privileged groups, usually members of the bourgeoisie, such as bankers in Frankfurt. Up to the middle of November the Convention had taken no definite stand.
Then came Jemappes, after which confidence and enthusiasm knew no bounds. The Montagnards exulted along with the rest and this time Robespierre did not try to resist the wave of popular opinion. No one took time to reflect. On November 19 Rühl informed the Convention that the Mainz club feared for its existence and wanted French protection; La Revellière-Lépeaux promptly proposed the famous decree offering ‘fraternity and assistance’ to all peoples who wished to regain their liberty. The decree was immediately voted, and the die was cast. Revolution in France donned warrior’s garb to challenge the world. On November 27, while an English delegation was congratulating the young republic, Grégoire rose to salute another republic soon to emerge on the banks of the Thames. Brissot tried his utmost to force a complete break with Spain: ‘Our liberty will never rest quietly as long as a Bourbon is enthroned. There can be no peace with Bourbons; with that understood, we must consider an expedition into Spain.’ He demanded that Dumouriez send back his lieutenant, Miranda, to stir up Latin America. Nor were Germany and Italy ignored. ‘We cannot be calm,’ wrote Brissot on November 26, ‘until Europe, all Europe, is in flames.’ Ten days earlier Chaumette had prophesied that soon Europe would be municipalized as far as the borders of Russia. Refugees, first among them Clootz, pressed energetically for a crusade into Europe. Dutchmen asked that Dumouriez invade their country; at Bayonne Marcheña and Hévia arranged for propaganda to cover Spain.
The most practical course was first to decide the future of occupied lands, and as their boundaries reached the crest of the Alps and the banks of the Rhine, voices rose to demand that French expansion should be bounded by ‘natural frontiers’. In the years to follow many historians were to defend this same doctrine, which would continue to attract partisans, on the grounds that France’s natural borders constituted a monarchical legacy and a national tradition. There is in fact little evidence that the kings of France thought in terms of any such doctrine. Several of them pushed into the Low Countries, where until the sixteenth century the count of Flanders, as one of the French king’s great vassals, ruled over a land whose border lay too close to Paris for safety. But in the eighteenth century Louis XV did not follow their example. It was chance that led Henry II into the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and Richelieu into Alsace. Farther north, French diplomacy sought only to secure dependent territories on the left bank of the Rhine.
Was it, then, the romantic excitement of Victory which led Frenchmen to maintain that nature had providentially framed the nation? The romantic element undeniably had influence, but it seems plausible to conclude that there had been ample preparation for the idea. The concept of natural limits dated back at least to certain writers who provided Richelieu with rationale for his policy; Mézeray, a historian whose works were honoured as classics in the eighteenth century, formulated it in clear terms. And there probably were other sources, such as the schoolbooks containing Caesar’s Commentaries, which assigned to Gaul the same limits claimed by the revolutionaries. At any rate, Brissot wrote in November: ‘The French Republic’s only border should be the Rhine,’ and on November 16 the Executive Council opened the Scheldt estuary to shipping in a gesture aimed to persuade the citizens of Antwerp that Belgium already belonged to France. The Council’s act violated the treaties of Westphalia, which stipulated that the river should remain closed. Liberation therefore risked turning into conquest, and the pressures of setbacks to propaganda and military necessity hastened that development. Only a few more weeks were needed.
The Convention, like the Gironde, would have liked to see France surrounded by sister republics. But it soon became obvious that most of their neighbours were either opposed to the idea or kept silent out of caution. Occupation everywhere brought its own evils or else provoked a nuisance that they wished to avoid. Only Savoy stated its position clearly by abolishing the Old Regime and requesting annexation. On the other hand, Belgium reacted by sending a delegation to ask the Convention, on December 4, to recognize its independence: the delegates themselves did not intend to adopt full revolutionary reforms, out of fear of the Church. A similar attitude prevailed in the Rhineland. In sum, the inhabitants were either incapable of freeing themselves or did not wish to be liberated. The republicans bridled. ‘Just as it is our duty to give freedom to other peoples,’ Danton had stated on September 28, ‘I declare that we also have the right to tell them “you will have no more kings”.’ Foreigners friendly to the Revolution replied that independence as much as victory of the coalition would deliver them into the hands of their enemies. The citizens of Nice voiced this opinion on November 4. At Mainz the club found itself isolated and Forster finally proposed union.
On November 27 the Convention took the initiative and annexed Savoy. Grégoire justified the decree by invoking national sovereignty, the geographical reasons that made Savoy part of France, and the common interests they shared. If these were the conditions for annexation, then each occupied country would have to be considered individually; but the army’s needs and those of the treasury made an immediate decision urgent.
At the height of a campaign led by Dumouriez and the contractors against the purchasing directory, which they accused of seriously cutting army supplies, the Convention had dispatched special commissioners to Belgium on November 30. Camus returned to report that the troops did lack the essentials, which was why Dumouriez was given a free hand despite Cambon’s objections. But Camus also told the committee that there would not be enough creditors to cover Dumouriez’s expenses, meaning that the Republic would have to bear the financial burden. Cambon replied that war could not continue under such conditions and that revolutionary steps had to be taken: property belonging to the Belgian clergy, the prince, and ‘abettors and willing satellites’ should be sequestered to guarantee assignats, which could be introduced into occupied countries to relieve France of the need to export its own currency. The tithe and manorial rights should be suppressed, and old duties replaced with taxes on the rich. New officials would carry out reforms: electors and candidates would be limited to those willing to swear an oath to liberty and to renounce all privileges. Thus would popular masses realize the tangible benefits of revolution—‘ war for châteaux; peace for cottages’. This famous decree, voted with acclamation on December 15, instituted the dictatorship of revolutionary minorities under the protection of French bayonets, and undertook to secure the fortunes of other peoples without consulting them, at their expense. This time Dumouriez was the loser. Not content to make himself financially independent, he tried to treat the Belgians with care to pave the way for his candidacy should they obtain an independent government. Here the war was less than a year old, and already a Bonaparte was knocking at the door. With his plans endangered, Dumouriez hurried back to Paris on January 1; but he obtained nothing.
The result—already predicted by Robespierre—was calamitous. The Belgian populace itself rejected the gifts, which it considered quite worthless when priced in assignats. Thirty commissioners went to Belgium and forcibly applied the decree. Cambon congratulated himself on February 1 for having already obtained 64 million livres from the country, but by taking Church property the French had alienated the people much as Joseph had done. On the 17th the commissioners stated plainly that the populace would revolt at the first military setback the French received. The same was true elsewhere: disaffection spread even to Savoy. It seemed obvious that only annexation could stave off counter-revolution in the occupied countries. Nice was consequently annexed on January 31, and on the same day Danton requested a similar measure for Belgium. He also formulated, with expressive brevity, the doctrine subsequently followed by the Convention: the Republic was to expand within its limits ‘as defined by nature’. On February 14 Carnot completed the declaration by an appeal to history, stating that within the natural domain ‘the parts detached have been taken by usurpation’. The republicans did not dare summon a Belgian assembly: in elections supervised by French agents and those friendly to them, each province in turn voted on its own annexation. In the Rhineland a single assembly, similarly elected, consented on March 17 to union with France. The Convention approved annexation within the month. The bishopric of Basel, which had been made the Republic of Rauracia in November of 1792, became the department of Mont-Terrible on March 23, 1793.
The army of the Republic was the only instrument that could enforce this policy, but by now the coalition was ready to act and had already delivered its first blows against French forces. After six months of discussion the Convention chose its course just when military defeat began.
Events took Pitt by surprise. While defending his budget on February 17, 1792, he confidently predicted that England could expect fifteen years of peace, and proceeded to reduce the country’s armed forces by 2,000 sailors and more than 5,000 soldiers. When war broke out on the continent he maintained strict neutrality, probably thinking, along with everyone else, that the Revolution would quickly be crushed. And he was delighted at the prospect, for revolutionary defeat could be expected to stem agitation in the United Kingdom.
Democratic propaganda had been gaining ground. In April several Whig leaders formed a new Society of the Friends of the People. But radicals of this stripe found themselves outflanked: as in the case of their French brethren, English democrats were led by natural inclination to formulate a social programme. In February, Paine published the second part of his Rights of Man, which vigorously attacked the British aristocracy and proposed a severely graduated income tax that would take all income above 23,000 pounds. Godwin’s Human Justice, bordering on utopian communism, appeared in 1793. At the end of 1791 a poor London cobbler named Thomas Hardy formed a labouring group, which held its meetings in a local tavern. On January 25, 1792, they founded the London Corresponding Society, consisting of eight members and requiring dues of one penny per week. At the same time five or six workers in Sheffield formed a similar group. This participation of the artisan class, if not of the proletariat, in public life was a development important because it revealed that the social question had become a political reality. ‘By our labour are the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the clergy supported,’ the Stockport club was soon to state; ‘we are not the swinish multitude described by Mr. Burke.’ The Scots poet Burns expressed popular sentiment more bluntly. Newcomers infused the democratic movement with fresh vitality. On March 24 club delegates, in a meeting at Norwich, expressed hope that all friends of liberty would form a general union, an idea which suggested a popular convention and terrorized the aristocrats, who believed that the seventeenth-century Levellers had reappeared.
As in France, propaganda drew its effect from economic circumstances. The year 1791 brought heavier Corn Law duties and ended wheat exports from England. During the winter bread prices rose. The harvest of 1792 promised no relief. In May riots broke out and strikes spread. The soldiers, who had to live off their pay and were not quartered in barracks, suffered from rising prices. Clubs proselytized among them and gained their signatures on a number of petitions. Military discipline weakened. In Ireland the situation seemed no better: agrarian disturbances again shook the country, persuading the Catholic ‘Defenders’ and the Protestant ‘Peep of Day Boys’ to make common cause with political groups. Societies—the non-sectarian United Irishmen organized by Wolfe Tone at the end of 1791, and the Catholic Committee, which in February of 1792 called a meeting of all affiliated members—joined in demanding that Catholics be given the right to vote and that the Test Act be abolished. Grattan defended their programme before Parliament, although he also criticized agitation. The Catholics reached their goal shortly before war with France broke out, but the other demands failed.
Until May of 1792 Pitt evidently was not alarmed. In that month he allowed Fox’s bill for jury trial of libel cases to pass, although he rejected a new motion from Grey favouring electoral reform, On May 21, however, a royal edict suddenly denounced inflammatory publications and ordered legal action against them. The government simultaneously began to subsidize conservative propaganda. In June, having got rid of his long-time opponent, Lord Chancellor Thurlow, Pitt opened discussions with the Whig right wing, led by Portland, in hopes of setting up a union cabinet. If the king had not objected, Pitt would have brought in Fox; without him the attempt fell through.
The triumph of French democrats made the situation worse. This time Pitt and Grenville made no secret of their personal opinions, which had always coincided with those of George III and the ruling groups. The ambassador to Paris, Lord Gower, was recalled and all official contact with Chauvelin was abruptly broken off. Pitt’s icy reserve and Grenville’s haughty arrogance made it difficult to carry on official conversations—especially since the French asked that their new government be recognized before talks proceeded. Besides, Chauvelin was accused of encouraging the Whig opposition and even of directing and financing democratic propaganda. The September massacres and the wave of émigrés—3,772, numbering among them 2,000 priests— inflamed public opinion. It was said that the Parisian Jacobins ate an hors d’oeuvre ground from human flesh. Those well disposed towards the Revolution, Bishop Watson among others, grew alarmed; some began to recant. In the course of September, Noël, Danton’s envoy, did not disguise the fact that the situation was becoming dangerous.
Yet democratic propaganda made rapid headway during the fall. The Revolution’s military victories gave new heart to its supporters in England as well as in France, and they rejoiced publicly. Hardy’s society sent a delegation to congratulate the Convention. Club representatives were summoned to a general assembly, scheduled for December 11. In Scotland, Thomas Muir set up a Society of the Constitution and of the People on October 3. Burns purchased cannons to send the French and on one occasion rose from a theatre seat to call for Ça ira. The manufacturing of arms drew denunciations; in December, Burke made accusations in the Commons, throwing a dagger to the floor as evidence. On November 24 Noël stated that a revolutionary movement was in the making.
These declarations were only flattery of the Convention’s delusions. There is no proof that the English societies planned to revolt; furthermore, the strong reaction of aristocrats and bourgeois who believed the societies had such intent indicated that Pitt would retain control. The historian John Reeves founded an ‘Anti-Leveller’ society, and general panic even caused numerous loyalist and French-hating groups to spring up. As soon as war entered the realm of possibility it became popular among the ruling classes: not only would it serve their interests and promise revenge against France overseas (as well as new colonies), but also would provide an opportunity to suppress the democrats at home. Domestic considerations made a breach with France appear desirable to Pitt and Grenville: if they declared the French decree of November 19, offering fraternity and assistance to all peoples, a casus belli, English democrats virtually faced charges of high treason for their activities. Paine sat in the French Convention as a deputy from Pas-de-Calais, but was tried in absentia; in January of 1793 proceedings were started against Muir, recently departed for Paris. War would also reinforce the cabinet’s position in Parliament by inducing a Whig faction to leave Fox and join the majority.
Yet, as it happened, Pitt decided to break with France only to safeguard Britain’s particular interests. As late as November 6 Grenville told Auckland, ambassador to The Hague, that he could see no advantage in abandoning neutrality. Although Pitt had written on October 16 that if France kept Savoy the face of things might change, it can legitimately be asked if annexation of Alpine or even of Rhineland regions would have provoked him to take up arms. That Dumouriez and the Convention imagined Pitt would let them annex or control Belgium, however, was an extraordinary misjudgment. At most England might have permitted them to carry the war into Belgian territory under condition of a formal promise not to take any measures concerning its status without British consent. In vain did Lebrun send Maret to assure Pitt that the Republic would not keep Belgium: opening up the Scheldt flatly contradicted his reassurances and signified to Pitt what could be expected from France. The decree of December 15 confirmed his suspicions. In addition, England was allied with Holland, which had a direct interest in keeping the Scheldt closed. When a French squadron forced its way into the harbour channels and pushed out the Dutch, the Stadholder concluded that invasion threatened and called for English aid. Pitt promptly answered in the affirmative.
In December the Girondins wavered: they had counted on England and Prussia; the bourgeois of Bordeaux and other large ports, already weakened by anarchy in the colonies, did not relish war on the seas. But ever since Jemappes, Dumouriez had been pressing for entry into Holland, and as Amsterdam was Europe’s largest banking centre some contended that carrying the war forward would make it ‘pay its own way’. On December 5, none the less, the Council put off decision on invasion of Holland. After that the king’s trial, as we have seen, led the Girondins to make much of the threat of danger from abroad, but on that issue, too, the party split. On January 1 Kersaint, a naval officer, listed the considerations that showed England vulnerable: a ‘modern Carthage’, whose power rested on credit, would collapse like a house of cards. The Montagnards raised no objection to any of the measures that would make extension of the war inevitable; several of them hailed the prospect. Robespierre kept silent. Disguising their own hesitation, the Girondins would quickly have risen to denounce any sign of resistance from their foes. Thus did antagonism between the two parties once more bear fruit. Dumouriez, back at Paris, obtained the Council’s consent on January 10, although it did not give the official order until the 31st. The Gironde had lost two months—two months in which Holland could have been occupied with no difficulty.
Pitt and Grenville showed greater power of decision. On November 29 Grenville received Chauvelin to tell him that the edict of November 16 and the decree of the 19th must be revoked. On December 2 Pitt spoke to Maret in similar terms; the day before, he had called up the militia. On December 13 Parliament assembled. Almost to a man the Whigs voted to support the government. Fox, Lansdowne, and Sheridan criticized French moves but bravely spoke against war— qualifying their remarks, however, with the proviso that Holland be left untouched. Pitt easily carried the day. On December 20 he asked for 20,000 sailors; on the 31st he had the Alien Bill passed; in January he halted shipments of grain and raw materials to the Republic. The king’s execution brought matters to a climax. On January 24 Chauvelin was given his passport; Lebrun, anticipating the next step, recalled him the following day. When he arrived, on February 1, the Convention voted for a declaration of war against England. It was Brissot who had defended the motion before the assembly!
To England, Louis’s execution served as a pretext; to Spain it was the cause for war. After August 10 Aranda continued to deal with France on friendly terms and even took measures against refugee priests. Despite Brissot, Lebrun restrained the French ambassador, Bourgoing, and proposed that both nations agree to disarm, suggesting further that they sign a declaration of neutrality pending Spanish recognition of the Republic. But on November 15 a palace revolution replaced Aranda with Godoy, lover of Queen Maria Luisa. Soon Louis’s trial provoked demonstrations against France, and Godoy made neutrality dependent upon the verdict. After January 21, he turned down the French proposals. Bourgoing left Madrid on February 22; on March 7 the Convention declared war against Spain. England now had access to the Mediterranean, and the princes of Italy thought themselves free to turn against the Republic.
Rupture with Rome was already assured. The pope imprisoned two students from the French Academy, whom he released shortly afterwards; in return Mackau, the French representative at Naples, sent a secretary, Hugou de Bassville, who conspicuously wore the cockade and claimed the right to fly the tricolour. He was murdered in a riot on January 13. Madame Roland drafted a message from the Council denouncing the ‘insolent hypocrite of Rome’.
In December, Naples was threatened by a squadron led by Latouche-Trèville, and awaited the arrival of English ships. Ferdinand and his minister, Acton, joined the coalition. Tuscany and Venice had to break with France. Parma followed Spain; Modena, Austria. Choiseul-Gouffier, former French ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, had managed to make even the Grand Turk distrustful of the new envoy, Descorches. Except for Switzerland and the two Scandinavian countries, France found itself pitted against all Europe just when its army was dwindling with each day. Volunteers enlisted only for the length of the campaign; throughout the winter they returned to their homes, reassured that the fatherland no longer seemed in danger. The Gironde was no better prepared to fight than it had been the preceding spring.
The policy followed by the Gironde was a series of paradoxes. It tried to restore the liberal regime and spare the king, which presupposed peace, yet it provoked a general war. It could not spare Louis and conclude peace without the agreement of all republicans, yet by lashing out at the Montagnards and sans-culottes it killed any chance for unity. The coalition powers at first won a series of brilliant victories and thereby sealed the fate of this party which had failed to resolve any of its contradictions.
1 Between Girondins and Montagnards, Alphonse Aulard sees no difference beyond their idea of the role Paris should play in the political life of France (Histoire politique de la Révolution française [Paris, 1901, 5th ed., 1921], Part II, Chap. 7). Albert Mathiez sees in the Girondins representatives of the grand bourgeoisie and in the Montagnards representatives of the democracy of artisans, small rural landowners, and proletarians (‘De la véritable nature de l’opposition entre les Girondins et les Montagnards’, Annales révolution-naires, XV [1923], 177–97). They should not be considered as organized, well-defined parties, and, most important, they should not have attributed to them ideas representing consistent doctrine or crystallized thought. Circumstances and personal rivalries exerted decisive influence upon them.