There was, however, small probability that a European congress would meet; still less that the nation would, without resistance, submit to foreign interference. Europe was in a disturbed condition. The great powers had no confidence in one another, nor were they desirous of acting in union. The empire of which the Queen’s brother was the head was composed of more than 300 states, greatly varying in size. The Peace of Westphalia, concluded at the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648), had assured the princes all the rights of independent and absolute rulers. Imperial institutions were in decay. The military organisation of the empire was very defective and inefficient for its defence. The Diet consisted merely of a few diplomatists, sitting permanently at Ratisbon, who were representatives of the larger states, and whom the smaller entrusted with their votes. Under Frederick the Great (1740–1786) Prussia had developed into a strong power, which acted as a rival to Austria within the empire. On all important occasions the larger states followed the lead either of the Emperor or of the King of Prussia, and between the cabinets of Vienna and Berlin a bitter antagonism existed. Russia was another state which, during the past hundred years, had risen into prominence. The Empress Catherine II. was an able and ambitious woman, who had made use of the rivalry existing between Prussia and Austria to interfere with effect in the affairs of Central Europe. Throughout the century, all the great powers, influenced by ambition and a desire for strengthening their frontiers, had pursued a policy of territorial aggrandisement. Louis XIV. had taken from the empire Alsace and Lorraine; Frederick the Great had torn Silesia from Austria; in 1772, Catherine II., Frederick the Great, and Maria Theresa together had deprived Poland of some of her provinces; more recently the Emperor Joseph II., son of Maria Theresa, had sought to incorporate Bavaria with the Austrian dominions, and had formed an alliance with Catherine for the spoliation of Turkey. In 1783 Catherine obtained the Crimea, thus extending her dominions to the Black Sea. Under this condition of things, the main security of the weaker states was found in the jealousy existing between the more powerful. The principle of the balance of power required that no large alterations should be made in the map of Europe, and that no one power should make territorial acquisitions unless others obtained an equivalent. Thus the opposition of Frederick the Great had foiled Joseph’s project of incorporating Bavaria. It was the traditional policy of France to support Sweden, Poland, and Turkey against aggression, and the readiness with which the first partition of Poland was carried out in 1772 was wholly owing to the decadence into which the French monarchy had fallen under Louis XV.
Europe and the revolution.
In 1789, when the States-General met, Joseph and Catherine were engaged in hostilities with Turkey, while England, Holland, and Prussia threatened to take part in the conflict on behalf of the Porte. This war in the east, and the possibility of a European conflict diverted attention from affairs in France. In February 1790, however, the enterprising and ambitious Joseph II. died; and his brother and successor, Leopold II., a prince of cool and cautious temperament, made it his chief object to restore order within his own dominions, more especially in Hungary and Belgium, which were still in a disturbed state owing to Joseph’s reforms. To insure Austria against being attacked by Prussia, he made, in July 1790, a treaty with Frederick William II., nephew of Frederick the Great, at Reichenbach, and, to free his hands more completely, entered into negotiations with Turkey. He had no disposition to attempt the restoration of absolute monarchy in France. It was the belief of continental statesmen that where, as in Poland or in England, a constitutional form of monarchy existed, the executive was necessarily weak and precluded from acting with vigour or decision in foreign affairs. Hence neither Leopold nor his chancellor, Kaunitz, took exception to the establishment of constitutional monarchy in France, which indeed they regarded as a pure gain to Austria. But after the flight of the royal family to Varennes, and the manifestation of republican opinions in Paris, foreign princes began to look on Louis’s cause as the cause of kings, and to dread lest revolutionary principles, spreading beyond France, should render their own thrones insecure. Leopold, desirous to aid his sister, sought the alliance of Frederick William, and made peace with the Porte at Sistova. A meeting was held between the two allied princes at Pilnitz, where they signed a declaration expressing their readiness to undertake armed intervention in French affairs, if other European powers would unite with them (August 27). Practically this declaration was no more than a threat. Neither Leopold nor Frederick William contemplated immediate resource to arms. The English cabinet, directed by Pitt, had already refused to take part in common action. The alliance between Austria and Prussia was as yet but loosely knit and was regarded with distrust by the old school of both Austrian and Prussian statesmen. Affairs in the east, moreover, called for unremitting attention. Poland, situated between three powerful and grasping neighbours, was a prey to perpetual anarchy. The monarchy was elective, and the king was kept in check by the fierce and seditious nobility by whose votes he was placed on the throne. The peasantry were downtrodden serfs, and the middle class without political rights; king and nobles struggling for power invited foreign interference, and Russia and Prussia by turns exercised ascendancy at Warsaw. In May 1791, a patriotic party, eager to secure national independence by the establishment of a strong government, obtained the adoption of a new constitution, curtailing the privileges of the nobles and making the crown hereditary. This measure at once excited the hostility of Catherine. She gave support to its opponents, and in order that she might carry out her designs in Poland undisturbed made peace with Turkey, and sought to stir up a European war in the west, encouraging the French emigrants, and instigating the German powers to interfere in their behalf. Catherine’s zeal, however, rendered Leopold the less willing to involve himself in hostilities, since events on the Vistula were of much more moment to him than the details of the French constitution. When, therefore, in September, Louis agreed to rule in accordance with the constitution, he affected to regard him as a free agent, and in the hope that the constitutional party would maintain the upper hand, turned a deaf ear to his sister’s entreaties that he would obtain the meeting of a European congress. The King of Prussia entertained a violent hatred of the principles of the revolution, but Polish affairs and distrust of Austria restrained him from coming forward as a champion of Louis’s cause. Thus, while continental princes agreed that the revolutionary tide must be stayed, nothing was settled as to time and means.
The new Legislature.
In such a state of foreign affairs the new Legislative Assembly met (October 1), the only one which ever came together in accordance with that constitution which had cost so much labour to build up. It consisted of 740 deputies, who represented exclusively revolutionary France. There were in it no partisans of the old rule, and no reformers with aristocratic tendencies. The right side was now composed of constitutionalists, who held that only by close adherence to the constitution could the country be safely guided between the double perils of reaction and anarchy. Though without confidence in the King, they regarded him as much less powerful for harm than the leaders of the Parisian populace, and sought on all occasions to maintain him in the unrestrained exercise of his constitutional prerogatives. The left of the Assembly, though avowedly constitutionalist, at heart cherished a desire for the establishment of a more democratic government, and the abolition of monarchy. A group of men, remarkable for youth, talent, and eloquence, sat on this side of the house. They were called Girondists, because their chief orators—Vergniaud, Gensonné, Guadet, and others who formerly belonged to the bar of Bordeaux—had been returned by the department of the Gironde. These men were fervent democrats and republicans, and at the same time defenders of the principle of individual liberty. They were also sceptics and theists, inheritors of Voltaire’s passionate scorn and hatred of Catholicism. Brissot, who now had a seat in the house, belonged to them, and his journal became the recognised organ of their party. Their policy was mainly dictated by a theoretic aversion to monarchical government, and nervous apprehension of the consequences of Louis’s treachery. Alive, however, to the fact that public opinion was in favour of the constitution, they formed no definite plans for its destruction, but endeavoured to obtain the adoption of measures calculated to reveal the King’s duplicity, and so to weaken the hold that the throne had upon the affection of the nation. The body of deputies forming the centre of the Assembly sincerely desired the maintenance of the constitution, but had no reliance on the good faith of Louis, and hence oscillated between the right and the left, being desirous of maintaining the throne, and yet being afraid to give to the executive a hearty support or to take strong measures for the suppression of insurrectionary movements.
Ecclesiastical policy.
Important questions pressed upon the Legislature for solution. The ecclesiastical settlement attempted by the constituent Assembly was being daily proved impracticable. In many cases the administrative bodies strove hard to preserve the peace and to keep the Churches open, both to the nonjurors and their rivals; but their efforts were hopeless. Without a military force always at command it was practically impossible to maintain both parties in their legal rights. In some departments the nonjurors set themselves at the head of insurgent peasants. In others they were subjected to insult and outrage. At Paris they could celebrate mass only under the protection of national guards. During the summer of 1791 many administrative bodies, on the plea that by no other means could order be preserved, prohibited nonjurors from officiating in parish churches, and required them to reside in the chief town of the department, away from their former parishioners. The Legislature had no choice but either to abandon the imposition of the oath or to follow it out to its logical consequences, and to regard those who refused to take it as enemies to the existing order. The last course accorded best with the prejudices of the majority, who accused the nonjurors of being the sole authors of troubles to which the situation itself could not fail to give rise. Some on the left proposed to exile them in a body. The Girondists detested them as the most bigoted of Catholics. The right weakly sought, on the ground of religious liberty, to leave matters as they were; but the centre here voted with the left, and a decree was passed depriving nonjurors of their pensions, and preventing their officiating in public (November 25). Louis, however, refused his sanction, and the situation remained unchanged.
Foreign policy.
A second and no less important question before the Assembly was the policy to be pursued in relation to the emigrants and to foreign powers. The Elector of Treves and other rulers of the small states, lay and ecclesiastical, on the Rhine, gave encouragement and aid to the emigrants in arming against France. These princes were eager to involve the larger states of the Empire in hostilities. Their territories were amongst the worst governed in Germany, and they feared lest revolutionary principles should prove contagious, and affect their own subjects. Many of them had, besides, a special ground of complaint. In Alsace and Lorraine they possessed rights as seigneurs, secured to them by the Treaty of Westphalia, and of which the decrees of August 4 (p. 50) had deprived them. This matter, however, might easily have been arranged between France and the Empire had there been a disposition on either side to maintain peace.
The principles of foreign policy pursued by the cabinets of Europe, and the theories promulgated by the revolutionists, were in direct opposition to one another. Statesmen took no account of national forces or aspirations, but, intent on territorial acquisitions, were ready to distribute populations of the same race and tongue among different masters as suited diplomatic combinations. On the contrary, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people involved a right to national independence. The constituent Assembly had publicly declared the aversion of the French nation to offensive wars, and had given proof of its pacific tendencies by limiting the army to 150,000 men. But the flight of the King and the drawing together of Austria and Prussia gave rise to great uneasiness as to the intentions of those powers, while the threat of interference in the Declaration of Pilnitz gave deep offence to the national pride. Measures were taken for increasing the army by an additional force of 97,000 volunteers. The Legislative, like the constituent Assembly, repudiated ideas of aggression and conquest, but became rapidly inflamed with warlike zeal. It gave expression to the intense feelings of hatred existing against the emigrants by a decree condemning to death as traitors all Frenchmen who, after the end of the year, should still be beyond the frontier in arms against their country (November 9). Louis refused to sanction the decree, and thus increased the suspicion resting on him of being the secret accomplice of those against whom it was aimed. The Girondists desired war with Austria. They were aware that there was no immediate danger of attack from the great powers, and that both the emigrants and the princes who abetted them, unless supported by the Emperor, were impotent; but they believed that, during war, the King’s duplicity would be clearly revealed, and judged it the wiser course, in place of waiting for attack, to begin hostilities, while Leopold still sought to avoid them. Enthusiastic confidence in the national spirit to fight to the last extremity in defence of its independence, and the expectation that the principles of the revolution would spread rapidly amongst other nations, and cause them to rise against their rulers, led the Girondists to entertain no doubt of the success of their arms. ‘Let us tell Europe,’ exclaimed a fiery orator, Isnard, ‘that if cabinets engage kings in a war against peoples, we will engage peoples in a war against kings.’ Of the constitutionalists few cared to avoid a rupture. The majority looked forward to war as a means of insuring the ascendancy of their own party, and of bringing into existence a powerful army under Lafayette’s command. There was no difficulty in finding a ground of quarrel with Leopold either as Emperor or as King of Hungary and Bohemia. The Assembly threatened to attack the empire unless the bands of emigrants on the frontier were dispersed. Afterwards, shifting its ground, it accused Leopold of having broken the treaty of 1756 between France and Austria, and declared that a refusal to renounce all treaties directed against the independence of the French nation—in other words, his understanding with the King of Prussia—would be held tantamount to a declaration of war (January 25, 1792). This hostile attitude of the Assembly hastened the conclusion of a defensive alliance between Austria and Prussia; after which Leopold, no longer caring to delay hostilities, added fuel to the flame by claiming a right of interference in the internal affairs of France, and by accusing the Assembly of being under the illegal ascendancy of republicans and Jacobins.