The Oxford History of the French Revolution

by William Doyle

  8

  The Republican Revolution, October 1791–January 1793

  The character of the Legislative Assembly which met for the first time on 1 October 1791 was very different from that of the Constituent which had decreed its existence. Gone were the clerics and nobles who had made up half the deputies elected in 1789; only a handful of either stood for election in 1791 or were returned. All the 745 new deputies were comfortably off, having been elected while the silver-mark requirement was still in force; but very few had owed their enrichment to trade or industry. Mostly they were men of property, and above all lawyers. To the departing constituents who had deliberately debarred themselves from election to the new body, they seemed obscure, inexperienced, and (given the relative youth of most of them) callow. In fact they were none of these things. Few, certainly, were nationally known, although the journalist Brissot and the mathematician and publicist Condorcet were men of reputation. But most of the new deputies owed their election to prominence in their home localities, a prominence won in the new circumstances of revolutionary politics since 1789. In the National Guard, in the Jacobin clubs, and above all in the innumerable elective offices in the judiciary or the administration which the new constitution had spawned, they had acquired a range of practical experience in making the Revolution’s reforms work that was denied even to those who had devised and decreed them, They had also learned who the Revolution’s domestic enemies were. Ever since the beginning of the year Jacobins, National Guards, and elected local officials had been grappling with the problem of refractory priests. Over the summer a quarter of the departments had called for new legislation to authorize closer supervision of refractories who had been deprived of their benefices. In areas of widespread refusal of the oath, such as Brittany and the southern Massif Central, they often introduced their own policy of exiling or imprisoning notorious refractories. Measures of this sort were intensified after Varennes, and the elections took place against their background. So it was scarcely surprising that the deputies who convened on 1 October regarded the nonjurors as the most urgent priority confronting them. The issue was first raised on 7 October by Couthon, a crippled deputy from the Auvergne; and two days later the Assembly heard reports of massive resistance to the new ecclesiastical order in the department of the Vendée, where more than nine-tenths of parish priests had rejected the oath.

  The other problem obsessing the new national representatives was that of the émigrés. The Declaration of Pillnitz was still fresh in their minds when they assembled, and few émigrés had taken advantage of the general amnesty declared to mark the promulgation of the constitution by returning. Quite the reverse; the outflow seemed to be increasing. ‘There seem to be fewer carriages and fewer fine people about this year than there were last’, noted an English visitor. ‘ … Since the passage has been left open the emigrations have been amazing.’1 On 15 October the king issued a formal appeal to those who had gone to return and help make the constitution work; and for once there was no reason to doubt his sincerity. The queen hated and distrusted her scheming brothers-in-law; and the drillings and marchings of professed counter-revolutionaries just across the frontier, people who claimed to understand the king’s true interests better than he did himself, helped to perpetuate suspicions which he was trying hard to shake off. By ordering a general illumination of the Tuileries and paying for fireworks to mark the start of constitutional life he had begun to recover popularity, and after some initial misunderstandings he was getting on well with the Assembly. His stand on the émigrés maintained this momentum. It also pleased the Feuillant leaders who had remained in Paris after the end of the Constituent, flattered by the royal family’s apparent willingness to take their advice and promote reconciliation. Excluded from the Assembly, as former constituents they were also barred from ministerial office for two years; but Barnave and Duport in particular hoped to influence policy privately, and the king and queen encouraged their hopes. Also encouraging was the fact that 345 of the new deputies joined the Feuillant Club, as opposed to only 135 gravitating towards the Jacobins.

  But the Feuillants met in private, excluding spectators. There were no oratorical reputations to be made there. Even the founders of the club stayed away, anxious not to be seen too openly politicking. So men of ambition naturally preferred the public sessions of the Jacobins, where they could win applause and acquire demagogic experience and skills valuable in the Legislative Assembly itself. At the Jacobins, too, they could rub shoulders with politicians of established reputation, untainted by the shabby compromises of the summer—men like Robespierre, Pétion, and Brissot. All three had now reaped the rewards of their popularity. Robespierre had been elected public accuser of the Paris criminal court; Brissot had at last been elected to something; and Pétion on 13 November was chosen to succeed Bailly (who had resigned) as mayor of Paris, with almost twice the votes of his only serious rival, Lafayette. The Feuillants could offer no such stars and by early December their membership was melting away. Desperate to revive their support, at last they opened their sittings to the public, only to find their deliberations drowned by heckling from the galleries. The uproar was such that radicals in the Assembly next door were able to complain that the work of the nation’s legislators was being interrupted. The club was expelled from the precincts, and not until weeks later was a new, and more distant, meeting place found. By then it was clear that nothing of importance was decided at the Feuillants; whereas at the Jacobins national figures were debating nightly on issues crucial to the whole future of the Revolution.

  The pace was made by Brissot, whose first speech in the Assembly on 20 October dealt with the émigrés. He proposed confiscating the property of their leaders, including the king’s brothers; but if that did not work, then France should strike at those who harboured them. The final solution to the émigré problem might have to be war. Though many deputies found such suggestions premature, they were nevertheless determined to confront the émigrés. On 9 November they passed a sweeping decree which followed Brissot’s suggestion and sequestered the revenues of the princes and all other public officials who were abroad without good cause. All French citizens gathered abroad were declared suspected of plotting against their country; and those who had not returned by 1 January 1792 were to be deemed guilty of a capital crime. The king was requested to sanction this decree at once. But on 11 November he refused.

  So ended the honeymoon between Louis XVI and the Legislative. The deputies had to recognize that under the constitution the king had a perfect right to his veto. Arguably, even, his motives were respectable, and in a proclamation distributed throughout Paris he set them out. Feuillants had drafted it, and it extolled the virtues of persuasion and gentleness, appealing to the patriotism of the émigrés to persuade them to return. The king’s very freedom to veto the law showed that he was not the helpless captive they alleged. But to Brissot and his friends royal actions spoke louder than words. Ever since Varennes it had been rumoured that policy was being directed by a secret ‘Austrian committee’ co-ordinated by the queen, in league with both the émigrés and foreign powers to subvert the new order in France by force. Here was concrete evidence of its work! There certainly was plenty of secret correspondence between the queen and her brother in Vienna—but confrontation rather than conciliation was her objective, and shielding the émigrés from vindictive laws had no part to play. Yet why else, deputies asked themselves, should the king wish to protect the Revolution’s sworn enemies? Their suspicions were only deepened by the stand he took when they turned to the question of the non-juring priests.

  The debate began on 21 October as news came in of massacres in Avignon. When opponents of French annexation lynched an official of the new municipality, annexationists retorted on 16 October by murdering papal supporters incarcerated in the old palace of the popes. Sixty prisoners were reported killed in the massacre of La Glacière. And stories of nonjuror defiance in the provinces poured in throughout the discussions
. ‘I maintain’, declared the Provençal deputy Isnard on 14 November, ‘that as regards refractory priests, there is only one certain course, which is to exile them from the kingdom … Do you not see that the priest must be cut off from the people he leads astray?’2 Eventually, on 29 November, it was decreed that all nonjurors should take a new civic oath, and those who refused should lose the pensions they had been granted on refusing the previous year’s oath. Henceforth such double refractories were to be regarded as suspects, and subjected to careful official surveillance. Those resident in places marked by religious disturbances could be exiled; and they were now denied the use of redundant churches for their services. Louis XVI took longer to respond to this decree, and on 5 December, from the unexpected quarter of the directory of the department of Paris, he was urged to veto it. On 19 December he did so.

  The moment was well chosen, for temporarily the king seemed to have regained the initiative. Disconcerted by his refusal to act against the émigrés, the Assembly decided that at least he could act against their protectors, and on 29 November a deputation urged him to demand that the electors of Trier and Mainz instantly expel the princes’ armies from their territory. ‘Say to them … that if German princes continue to favour preparations directed against the French, we shall carry to them, not fire and the sword, but freedom. It is for them to estimate what might follow from the awakening of nations.’3 In fact such a course appealed to the king. A war against German princelings might drag in the Emperor, whose seasoned troops were bound to brush aside the shambles which the French army had become. Rescue and reversal of the Revolution would follow. Military men also saw advantages in war: Lafayette, now searching for a new role, thought it would reinvigorate the army, which could then be deployed to restore domestic stability. His opinion was shared by the count de Narbonne, reputedly a bastard son of Louis XV, who was appointed minister of war early in December. And so there was widespread political support when, on 14 December, the king came to the Assembly and announced that he had issued an ultimatum to the elector of Trier. If, by 15 January, the prince-archbishop had not put a stop to all hostile émigré activity within his territories, France would declare war. The Assembly exploded with enthusiasm, and applauded the monarch for minutes on end. All sides were relieved that the time of decision seemed at hand, and only the waning Feuillants were consumed with foreboding.

  In these circumstances the king’s continuing prevarication over the nonjurors could be overlooked. Once war began, that issue would no doubt resolve itself, for then refractories could be regarded as traitors. Meanwhile Brissot and his most vocal supporters, who included a particularly eloquent group of deputies from Bordeaux (notably Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Guadet) looked forward to a military promenade that would regenerate the nation, restore its honour, discomfit plotters, and show Europe how formidable a free people could be. The king himself would be forced to take sides and reveal his true position, as Brissot declared at the Jacobins on 16 December. Meanwhile Narbonne set about mobilizing three armies, totalling 150,000 men, on the eastern frontier; while Clootz, now calling himself the ‘Orator of the Human race’ and parading ostentatiously around Paris in a scarlet Phrygian cap of liberty, whipped up war fever among the foreign exile communities by proclaiming that the liberation of all Europe was at hand. But that moment proved to be further off than everybody thought. As soon as he received the French ultimatum, the elector of Trier ordered the émigrés to disband and quit his territory. The elector of Mainz did the same. The reason for war was thereby removed, and as 1792 dawned it began to look as if France might have to solve her self-imposed problems by herself after all.

  Too many people in public life, however, had now committed themselves to war as a panacea. Early in December a fierce debate had begun at the Jacobin Club during which Robespierre pointed out all the dangers and uncertainties that war would bring. He feared a dictatorship of generals, particularly the unscrupulous and eternally ambitious Lafayette, if the French forces were successful. And if, as seemed only too likely given the state of the army, they were not, then the Court would call in foreign forces to overthrow the whole Revolution. In any case, the truly dangerous counter-revolutionaries were not the ridiculous, posturing émigrés: they were at home, within France, and should be dealt with there. But Robespierre found himself increasingly isolated. Night after night Brissot countered that war was a necessity in the consolidation of the Revolution; it would even serve to restore the flagging value of the assignats! A liberated people had nothing to fear from the despots and aristocrats of feudal Europe. They would be overwhelmed, and their groaning subjects incited to emulate the French example and claim their own liberty. In the Assembly itself, of course, there was no Robespierre to contradict Brissot’s optimism and plenty of other voices carried away with the same faith in the regenerative power of war. Moreover, although the Rhenish princes had hurried to comply with Louis XVI’s ultimatum, by the time they did so their suzerain in Vienna had decided to intervene on their behalf. Convinced that the Declaration of Pillnitz had resolved the crisis of the previous summer, diplomats in Vienna advised the Emperor Leopold that threats would defuse this one, too. On 21 December, accordingly, he announced that Austrian troops would march if the French followed up their threats against the Rhenish electors. He did not doubt, he added, that other monarchs would join him. When this news arrived in Paris on the last day of 1791, it seemed to confirm all that Brissot and his allies had been claiming about a league of despots determined to crush the Revolution. Advocates of war now forgot the craven electors of the Rhine. France should strike directly at her true enemies, and declare war on the Emperor. In vain Robespierre, from one end of the political spectrum, and the Feuillant leaders from the other, warned that this course was more dangerous than ever. In despair at the queen’s obvious indifference to his pacific urgings, in January Barnave went home to Dauphiné. The Assembly, meanwhile, produced scenes of patriotic enthusiasm unparalleled since 1789, with deputies and onlookers swearing to live free or die, in conscious re-enactment of the Tennis Court Oath. The émigré princes were now charged in their absence with high treason; and on 25 January the Assembly declared that the Emperor by his plottings with other monarchs had broken the alliance of 1756. The king was requested to demand that his brother-in-law renounce all treaties hostile to France and make public declaration of his peaceful intentions. If by 1 March he had offered no satisfaction, war would ensue. In fact, the king replied, he had already done this, since it was his constitutional prerogative, and not the Assembly’s, to conduct foreign policy. He was now awaiting the Austrian reply.

  The royal note to Vienna was actually a good deal less peremptory than the Assembly would have liked. When it arrived it only confirmed the Austrians’ belief that their threats were working. Reassured by the signature of a formal defensive pact with Prussia on 7 February, they replied defiantly; when this exchange of notes was communicated to the deputies in Paris on 1 March there was uproar. Calls were now heard for the dismissal of Delessart, the foreign minister, and they rapidly developed into a general attack on the whole ministry, abetted from within by Narbonne. A royal attempt to resist the pressure by dismissing Narbonne backfired when the Assembly voted to impeach Delessart amid denunciations of treachery and intrigue at the palace. There was even talk of impeaching the queen and suspending the king. At this moment came the quite unexpected news that on 1 March the Emperor had died. Nobody could guess what policies his successor, an untried 24-year-old, might pursue; and in these circumstances the French Court thought it wisest to bow to the Assembly’s clamour. On 10 March the king dismissed the entire ministry. They were replaced by a team of outright warmongers, practically Brissot’s nominees. They included Clavière, an exiled Swiss financier, once Mirabeau’s familiar; Roland, an ageing, unemployed factory inspector, coming late into revolutionary politics with the support of his vivacious, ambitious wife, and now made interior minister; and above all, to replace Delessart at foreign
affairs, Dumouriez, a professional soldier who had hated the Austrians ever since the Seven Years War. Nothing now stood in the way of a formal declaration of war, and Dumouriez appeared at the Jacobins in a red liberty cap to keep patriotic enthusiasm on the boil. Robespierre and Pétion condemned such showy behaviour, but the fashion spread as a way of demonstrating the defiance of freed slaves in the face of threatening despots. These posturings did not prevent Dumouriez from trying to negotiate neutrality at the last minute with the Prussians, which postponed the final step yet again; but by mid-April the Austrians were mobilizing and time was running out. On the twentieth Louis XVI appeared at a delirious Assembly, with all his ministers, to announce that France was now at war with the king of Hungary and Bohemia—for Francis II had not yet been elected Emperor. Only seven deputies voted against the declaration.

  It would be, it said, a defensive war of a free people against an aggressive king. There would be no conquests, and French force would never be used against the liberty of any people. Only those guilty of forming a concert against France would suffer; and the French would neglect nothing to soften the impact of the war on the lives and properties of those with whom they had no quarrel. Every one of these pledges would be broken in the course of a war that was destined to end only with the Revolution itself, and engulf much of western Europe.

  The aims of the conflict now launched were manifold: to teach the Austrians a lesson and deter foreigners from interfering in France’s internal affairs; to destroy the émigrés, their bases, and their supporters; to flush out internal traitors and counter-revolutionaries by forcing them to declare themselves. The royal family, and the generals, had their own secret, and very different, hopes about what it would achieve. A further argument often heard in the debates of that winter was that war would heal internal divisions by turning the preoccupations of French citizens outwards, and their antagonisms against the enemy rather than each other; it would distract attention from domestic problems. This it had certainly done ever since the issue came to the fore late in October 1791; but by the time war broke out those problems were multiplying.