Revolution, a History of England, Volume 4

by Peter Ackroyd

  The politicians at Westminster were not about to let this singular method of association go unchallenged and, in March 1792, a group of young Whig members of parliament established an Association of the Friends of the People which would be concerned with the possibilities of parliamentary reform. They in fact provoked embarrassment among their Whig colleagues who believed that the growing agitation for parliamentary reform was misdirected and even dangerous; yet at the same time the young men alienated the more radical reformers by refusing to subscribe to universal male suffrage and annual parliaments. They were marooned in the middle and, having provoked the suspicions and antipathies of both sides, were devoid of influence.

  It was a hot spring – the temperature had reached 82 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of March – and in that unseasonable warmth there was a kind of fever or madness in the air. The wheat crop was not successful, and the torrential rains of August and September spelled more trouble for the farmers. The state of the land always had a direct effect upon the state of the nation; in a sense it was the nation in living and visible form. The general prosperity of the previous few years now seemed in jeopardy, and there was fear of economic collapse.

  This was exacerbated by news of European turmoil. It was reported in July that the forces of Prussia and Austria were advancing on Paris under the command of the duke of Brunswick; this was meant to be the counter-revolution of the older European aristocracies. The men and youths of France were called out, many of them streaming into the capital, and on 10 August the National Assembly determined on the deposition of the king on the grounds that he had been collaborating with the enemy. When important fortresses on the French frontier were surrendered to the invading armies, the panic and suspicion were redoubled. No one was safe. In the events known as the ‘September massacres’, the priests and aristocrats – many already herded into prisons – were murdered. The Jacobins now ruled Paris and, under the command of rulers such as Robespierre and Marat, thousands of other citizens were thrown into prison before being judicially murdered. The guillotine was the new king.

  The invasion of the duke of Brunswick and his forces was not necessarily welcomed by William Pitt and his colleagues. A revolutionary France, albeit one not under immediate control, would be preferable to a country in the grip of Austria and of Prussia. The French were in any case provoked to fury, and the violent republicans of a newly established National Convention now pressed for immediate war.

  It was considered that the well-trained forces of the duke of Brunswick would make short work of the ill-disciplined and badly armed citizens of the revolution. But with all the fury of their revolutionary zeal the citoyens resisted; they would not surrender to the enemies of their goddess liberty and, with new-found inspiration, the national defences were prepared and organized. At Valmy in north-eastern France, on 20 September, the armies of the Austrians and Prussians were thwarted. There had been no set battle. In truth the duke of Brunswick had lost his nerve; he was faced with thousands of French soldiers, albeit in not very prosperous condition, chanting the ‘Marseillaise’ and screaming ‘Vive le nation!’ It was not an army he had ever faced before, and he ordered his troops to retire. Valmy was not a very significant encounter in the history of warfare but, in the history of the world, it was one of the most notable. The well-trained and well-equipped forces of the old wars had given way to – what? A rabble? A group of amateur soldiers? Goethe was at the time in the Prussian camp and predicted that ‘from this day forth begins a new era in the history of the world’. A Prussian colonel offered similar sentiments. ‘We have lost more than a battle. Our credibility is gone. The 20th of September has given the world a new shape. It is the most important day of the century.’ On the following day the first French republic was proclaimed, and Valmy itself was the harbinger of a war that lasted for a generation.

  The enthusiasm and joy of victory were palpable throughout France. Now was the time to press forward in pursuit of the dream of a universal republic in which all the people of Europe would be free. The French said that they had come to remove tyrants and pull down palaces, to extirpate the power of the clergy, to confiscate the property of Church and State in order to reduce the taxes on the poor. By the beginning of November the French army had entered Mons and Brussels; Savoy and Nice had been annexed, Italy and Spain threatened. ‘We must break with all the cabinets of Europe’, said the revolutionary Brissot. ‘We must set fire to the four corners of Europe.’ A new order of things was being born.

  Pitt and his colleagues were now thoroughly alarmed by the miraculous resurgence of France. If the French should incorporate the Austrian Netherlands [Belgium] and should stir the United Provinces [the Netherlands] against the house of Orange, they would at once become a mighty sea power threatening the very frontiers of England.

  The resurgent calls for liberty after the duke of Brunswick’s retreat excited the political reformers in England to the extent that The Times in October wrote that ‘the police should look to those Revolution mongers who are pasting up bills with a view to incite a mob to rise’. Yet Pitt’s ministry seemed strangely enervated and cautious. It was considered that the military did not have the strength to quell any uprising in the towns and cities. The government seemed also unwilling to declare war against France itself, for fear that the people would not tolerate such a conflict against the new republic. By November warnings were reaching the Home Office from all parts of the country; it was reported that the ‘lower orders’ were in active cabal and that weapons were being furnished and concealed in certain quarters. When the ministry did determine to call out the militia in certain parts of the country, Fox and his colleagues were furious. ‘I fairly own’, Fox wrote, ‘that if they have done this I shall grow savage and not think a French Lanterne too bad for them.’ The lamp-post was used to string up the victims of the Terror. In December Thomas Paine was convicted in his absence of seditious libel for the publication of the second part of The Rights of Man.

  Fox had said that the ministry was helping to revive the memories of civil war, and indeed the country ran the risk of serious division. Where there were reformers there were also loyalists, who could be subtly encouraged by magistrates and police to assert themselves. In November 1792, for example, a meeting at the Crown & Anchor Tavern in London established an ‘Association for Preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers’. The most arresting incidents were those of ‘Paine burning’ where an effigy of the author was consumed in flames. In November a crowd of loyalists burned his image in Chelmsford, Essex, where a local newspaper reported:

  [T]he effigy of that infamous incendiary, Tom Paine, was exhibited in this town, seated in a chair, and borne on four men’s shoulders – in one hand he had ‘The Rights of Man’ and under the other arm he bore a pair of stays [in recognition of his former employment as a corset-maker]; upon his head a mock resemblance of the Cap of Liberty, and a halter round his neck. On a banner carried before him, was written: ‘Behold a Traitor! Who, for the base purposes of Envy, Interest and Ambition, would have deluged this Happy Country in BLOOD!’

  It is reported that there were over 400 such conflagrations in all parts of the country.

  The temperature was raised in the same month when the National Convention in Paris declared that the French government and people pledged ‘fraternity’ to all ‘subject peoples’ with the declaration that ‘all governments are our enemies, all people our friends’. This was an open invitation to reformers or democrats to rise in all of the European countries, most notably in England and her allies. Pitt began to make cautious preparations. The militia were moved closer to London, and the Tower was more safely secured. Radical clubs were more closely watched, and foreigners supervised under the aegis of an ‘Aliens Office’ staffed by graduates from Christ Church, Oxford. The secret service of Francis Walsingham, in the reign of Elizabeth, and of John Thurloe, under the rule of Cromwell, was becoming more professional.

  The harshest news
came with the execution of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793; when his head came off, 80,000 armed men erupted in cheers, and curious bystanders closer to the event dipped their fingers or handkerchiefs in his blood. ‘It is well salted!’ one called out. Gouverneur Morris, the American minister in Paris, predicted to Thomas Jefferson that ‘the English will be wound up to a pitch of enthusiastic horror against France which their cool and steady temper seems to be scarcely susceptible of’. The London theatres were closed, and all who could afford black went into mourning. Even Fox, the born Francophile, declared it to be a ‘revolting act of cruelty and injustice’. The escalating accounts of murders and outrages were shouted out on every street corner; when the English king drove out, he was surrounded by cries of ‘War with France!’ It was reported that Paris was ruled by tigers.

  The wish was father to the deed. On 1 February 1793 the National Convention declared war on England; war was also to be waged against Holland, and an immediate invasion of that country was ordered. Pitt entered the conflict with strictly limited aims, and he believed that any struggle would be a short one. His purpose was to finance his allies in the European theatre while his own navy could concentrate on stripping France of its colonial possessions; it was widely believed that Pitt’s purpose was to annex the French West Indies. By the summer of 1793 the first minister was sending funds to Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sardinia and other interested parties. It was important that no one country should dominate the continent, so he ringed northern France with a circle of arms and men. This might be called ‘the balance of power’. Hessian mercenaries were recruited into the English forces, but the national dislike of a standing army limited their deployment. Yet the question of national purpose remained. Was Pitt intent upon subjugating France in Europe, or upon stripping that country of its overseas wealth? Nobody seemed to be sure.

  The costs of the war, including the subvention of allies, were already provoking consternation, and in the early months of 1793 a sudden collapse of credit was the consequence. There was a run on the banks by those who wished to put their money in safer keeping, and the number of bankruptcies doubled in a year. One industrialist, Stephen Barber of Walsall, asked for a bill to be speedily paid in ready money ‘as we are so circumstanced in this country [county] we have not cash to go on with’. Coincidentally, perhaps, Pitt was believed to be drinking more heavily than usual.

  Yet his political situation was now more than ever assured. The more moderate, or less radical, Whigs felt obliged to part company with Charles James Fox and his particularly vociferous support of the French cause. It was deemed to be unpatriotic at time of war. At the beginning of 1793 one of the Whig grandees, William Windham, announced the formation of a ‘third party’ that might find a middle path between Pitt and Fox while supporting the war against France. It was no coincidence that the rise of a ‘political middle’ comprising what the Cambridge Intelligencer called ‘the middle ranks of men cooperating with the declared and active advocates of moderate reform’ should be accompanied by praise of a new ‘middle class’ or ‘middle rank’.

  The war seemed to be going well. The Austrian Netherlands were released from threat of French invasion, largely by the strength of the Hessian mercenaries, and the English navy retained its control of the seas and was even then planning to move against the French colonies. In the summer of 1793 a group of counter-revolutionaries based in Toulon captured the port and handed it over to the English. But the sheer stamina and ferocity of the French had been underestimated. Toulon was back in their hands by the end of the year, while Holland and Belgium were still under threat. Even the naval expedition to the French West Indies was crippled by dysentery and epidemic disease. The French technique of levée en masse, when the whole population might be thrown at the enemy, signalled a new form of warfare. The French hurled their men forward, however terrible the casualties, and lived off the land rather than maintaining supply lines; they were more flexible and far more fierce. The English and their allies seemed close to victory on many occasions but then in the face of the enemy began a protracted and sometimes wearying retreat. That could have been their catchphrase: not defeat, but retreat. At the battle of Hondschoote in September 1793 the duke of York attempted the siege of Dunkirk; but he was heavily outnumbered and his men were constantly assailed by a reviving enemy. He was eventually forced to withdraw, but the French were in no position to strike at his demoralized army. It might be an emblem of the continental war itself.

  Parliament reassembled on 21 January 1794 and the ministers accentuated the positive. Dunkirk had not been taken by the duke of York but the Austrian Netherlands were still free. The West Indies had not been occupied but Tobago had been captured. Sardinia and Spain were co-operating. The British navy was still in control of the seas, and French trading vessels were constantly under attack. Austria and Prussia were not providing all the military resources expected of them and they were, in any case, in a constant state of mutual suspicion. Still, this was for the future.

  The members turned their attention to domestic affairs. On 12 May Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke and twelve others were arrested and tried for high treason; Hardy had first organized the London Corresponding Society in the Bell Tavern, while Tooke had helped to organize the radical societies in a national movement. Hardy was taken at his shoemaker’s shop in Piccadilly, while all the papers of the various London reform societies were seized. A report by a new Committee for Secrecy, established by parliament, concluded on 16 May that all such parties ‘must be considered as a Traitorous Conspiracy for the Subversion of the established Laws and Constitution, and the Introduction of that System of Anarchy and Confusion which has fatally prevailed in France’. Two days later the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended so that political prisoners could be held without trial. The measure was excused on the grounds that it would prevent outrages similar to those of Paris.

  The trial of Hardy and others for high treason began on 25 September at the Old Bailey, with much technical discussion on the nature of the charge. Hardy was the first to be acquitted for absence of evidence, and was carried in triumph by a cheering throng from the court. The proceedings were followed by great crowds outside in the street, and by excited spectators within. Tooke was the next in the dock, and was acquitted after eight minutes. John Thelwall, one of the most radical orators and lecturers, was the third to be found not guilty. The government then dropped the other cases, to the joy of the multitude who still filled the London streets; the accused had been found innocent of treason simply because there was not enough evidence to support a high crime that merited hanging.

  Despite the failure of the prosecution, some of the spirit left the supporters of reform. The war with France, now of course deemed to be the enemy, and the sanguinary events in Paris helped to diminish the enthusiasm for the cause. The threat of treason, although lifted, was still potent. The Society for Constitutional Information no longer met in London, for example, and Horne Tooke withdrew from political activity.

  The period has been described as the beginning of Pitt’s ‘reign of terror’, culminating four years later with many more arrests of reformers, and has sometimes been compared with that unleashed on Paris by Marat and Robespierre; yet, if it were so, it was singularly weak in inspiration and execution. It is true that the prolonged series of assaults upon the members of the societies had effectively silenced some of them. But it has been estimated that there were only 200 prosecutions over ten years and some, like those of Tooke and Thelwall, ended in acquittal. This does not sound like a revolutionary situation.

  The temper of the nation was better expressed on the occasion of the defeat of the French fleet in the Atlantic by Admiral Howe in the early summer of 1794, which became known as the ‘Glorious First of June’. When news of the victory reached London the performance at the Opera House was suspended, while the auditorium rang with ‘Rule Britannia’ and the national anthem. The city was illuminated and the king travelled to Portsmouth with his consort t
o greet the returning ships.

  In the following month the more conservative and loyalist Whigs, having already abandoned the leadership of Fox and Sheridan, agreed to join the administration of ‘Pitt the patriot’ as he was sometimes known. He never called himself a Tory but always an ‘independent Whig’; nevertheless here were the makings of the nineteenth-century Tory Party. At this stage, however, it might be described as a powerful administration for national unity, its cohesion materially increased by a coup d’état in Paris on 27 July when Robespierre and the instigators of the Jacobin ‘terror’ were summarily dispatched by ‘Madame Guillotine’ or ‘The National Razor’. This by no means implied that the military threat from France was arrested. Brigadier-General Buonaparte was already considered to be indispensable for the disposition of the war.

  That conflict had already entered a stage of frustration and indecision when it became clear that England and its allies on land were not so capable as England on the high seas. The English forces were themselves overstretched, and their supposed allies had begun to plot one against another. The Prussians mistrusted the Austrians while the English berated the Dutch even as the French army approached the borders of Holland. While the allies had the habit of dispersing their armies to confront various contingencies, the French forces just grew bigger; it could be said that they were winning through size of numbers rather than revolutionary fervour.

  In England itself dearth was causing unprecedented misery. This was the largest cause of unrest. Thomas Fuller had already published his Gnomologia in which he recorded contemporary proverbs. ‘Where bad’s the best, bad must be the choice.’ ‘All’s good in a famine.’ ‘Hunger finds no fault with the cookery.’ ‘Hungry dogs will eat dirty puddings.’ Hungry men, women and children will of course eat almost anything. By the end of 1795 prices had risen some 30 per cent from 1790.