TIM BLANNING

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TIM BLANNING

• THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
• AND
• EUROPE

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The frontier between France and Germany in 1793
by Goethe
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T.C.W. Blanning, The French Revolution and
Europe', Rewriting the French Revolution, ed.
Colin Lucas (Oxford, 1991), pp. 183-206If
you would like a copy of this as a Word
document, send me an email tcb1000

• Final chapter
• Occupation and Resistance in Europe

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Charles James Fox on the French Revolution30
July 1789How much the greatest event it is
that ever happened in the world! And how much the
best!
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William Wordsworth, The French Revolution as It
Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement   
  Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!   
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood 
  Upon our side, we who were strong in love!   
 Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,     But
to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,     In
which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways     Of
custom, law, and statute, took at once     The
attraction of a country in romance!     When
Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,   
 When most intent on making of herself     A
prime Enchantress--to assist the work     Which
then was going forward in her name!
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August Ludwig Schlözer 1789How wonderful that
one of the greatest nations in the world, and
unquestionably the most cultured, has thrown off
the yoke of tyranny. Gods angels in Heaven must,
for a certainty, have sounded off a Te Deum in
jubilation
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Every honourable German writer will agree that
the Revolution has done good to the whole race.
It has taught in practice what we Germans have
long known in theory, that the Sovereign is
responsible to his people. They will also agree
that it was a necessity for France, where the
government possessed no ears for the Rights of
Man or the voice of the age and further that no
such Revolution is in store for Germany. Abuses
will be abolished by reasonable inquiries, not by
gunpowder. Mild governments, aided by a free
press, should bring us the same results piecemeal.
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Leopold von RankeThe international relations
of the period should not be seen as part of the
French Revolution, rather it should be the other
way round
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Europe in 1789
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JOSEPH II to Count Trauttmansdorff 10 August
1789 rejecting a request from the French émigrés
for assistance It is in my interest to be
perfectly neutral in all this business, no matter
what happens to the King and Queen, and I shall
certainly not interfere.
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EDMUND BURKE in the House of Commons 5 February
1790 The French had shown themselves the ablest
architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in
the world. In that very short space of time, they
had completely pulled down to the ground their
church, their nobility, their law, their revenue,
their army, their navy, their commerce, their
arts and their manufactures. They had done their
business for us as rivals, in a way which twenty
Ramilies or Blenheims could never have done.
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THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY on 22 May 1790 declares
that The French nation renounces the
undertaking of any war with a view to making
conquests and that it will never use its power
against the liberty of any other people.
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Alsace 1789
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Assemblée Nationale Constituante(17 June 1789
30 September 1791) Assemblée National
Législative(1 October 1791 20 September
1792)National Convention(20 September 1792
26 October 1795)
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Merlin de Douai to the National Assembly, 28
October 1790There is no legitimate title of
union binding you and your brothers of Alsace
other than the social compact formed between all
Frenchmen in this self-same Assembly last year...
Treaties made without the consent of the people
of Alsace could not bestow legality on rights to
which they had not given their consent... In
short, it is not the treaties of princes which
regulate the rights of nations.
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Jacques Pierre Brissot
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The arguments employed by Brissot

• There is a great conspiracy against the
  Revolution
• The Court is conspiring with the émigrés and
  foreign powers to restore the old regime
• The Revolution must avenge its honour
• war is needed to restore financial stability
• war is needed to put an end to civil disorders
• The oppressed people of Europe are longing for
  liberation and will rise in support of French
  armies
• The rank-and-file of enemy armies will mutiny and
  fraternise with French liberators
• the war will be quick and easy because free
  soldiers are invincible and our enemies are
  divided

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The end of pluralism and the criminalisation of
dissentArmand Gensonné in the National
Assembly, 26 December 1791In the good old days
of 1789, it was possible for men of good faith to
join all manner of partiesbut no more. Now there
can be only two parties for the Revolution, and
against it, right and wrong.
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Marguerite-Elie Guadet in the National
Assembly24 January 1792 Gentlemen, let us
make known to all these German princes that the
French nation has decided to maintain its
constitution in its entirety we shall die
here. (Yes! Yes! Animated applause)
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At these words, all the members of the
Assembly, inspired by the same emotion, rise and
cry - Yes, we swear it! Their impulse of
enthusiasm spreads to everyone present and
inflames their hearts. The ministers of justice
and of foreign affairs, the ushers, the members
of the public attending the session, join in with
the deputies of the people, rise, wave their
hats, stretch out their arms towards the
President's dais, and take the same oath. They
shout We shall live in freedom or we shall die,
the constitution or death!. The hall resounds to
applause. GUADET concludes In a word, let us
mark out in advance a place for traitors, and
that place will be on the scaffold (Bravo! Bravo!
Animated applause).
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The Battle of Valmy, 20 September 1792
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Goethe to a group of Prussian officers sitting
round a camp-fire the night after the battle of
ValmyHere and today a new epoch in the
history of the world has begun, and you can say
that you were there
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19 Nov 1792The National Convention declares, in
the name of the French nation, that it will grant
fraternity and assistance to all peoples who wish
to recover their liberty.
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Regime changePierre Joseph Cambon 15 December
1792, to the National Convention on behalf of the
committees of finance, war and foreign
affairsOur war aims are the destruction of
all privileges. War to the châteaux, peace to the
cottages. But if the people do not have the
means to carry out the Revolution by their own
efforts, then it will be necessary for their
liberators to supplement them and to act in their
own best interests by exercising temporarily the
revolutionary power.


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Frankfurt am Main, 2 December 1792
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1793

• 21 January Louis XVI guillotined
• 1 February the National Convention declares war
  on Great Britain and the Dutch Republic
• 23 February the National Convention orders the
  conscription of 300,000 men
• 7 March the National Convention declares war on
  Spain
• 11 March counter-revolutionary rising in the
  Vendée begins
• 16 March the Austrians win the battle of
  Neerwinden and prepare to invade France
• 1 April General Dumouriez defects to the
  Austrians
• 6 April the Committee of Public Safety is set up

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• Revolution in One Country
• Danton to the National Convention, 13 April 1793
• It is high time, citizens, that the National
  Convention makes known to Europe that it knows
  how to ally policy to the republican virtues. We
  have reached a stage where it is necessary to
  disengage liberty, in order to protect it better
  against all these enthusiasms Above all we need
  to look to the preservation of our own body
  politic and to lay the foundations of French
  greatness. (Applause.)

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THE NATIONAL CONVENTION decrees on 23 August
1793From this moment until that in which our
enemies shall have been driven from the territory
of the Republic, all Frenchmen are permanently
requisitioned for service in the armies.
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Joseph Goebbels in the Sportpalast, Berlin, 18
February 1943I ask you Do you want total war?
If necessary, do you want a war more total and
radical than anything that we can even imagine
today?
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Guerre aux châteaux, paix aux chaumières War
to the châteaux, peace to the cottages
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Sambre et Meuse90,000 (1794)

• Rhin et Moselle
• 96,000 (1794)

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The reality of French liberation

• levies
• requisitions
• hostage-taking
• forced labour
• rape
• murder

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Robespierre to the National Assembly 1791

• Liberty cannot be exported on the points of
  bayonets
• No one loves armed missionaries

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THE ENDMy next lecture in this
courseWednesday, 28 January The Napoleonic
Empire
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1,400,000
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Germany in 1789
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Germany in 1815
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Germany in 1871
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Dream is not so different from deed as many
believe. All activity of men begins as dream and
later becomes dream once more

• Theodor Herzl
• 1860-1904