A history of England

by Charles Oman

The democratic National Convention, which now superseded the Assembly, proclaimed a Republic, after the populace had massacred many hundreds of persons who were rightly or wrongly supposed to be the king's friends (September 2, 1792). The Convention gave its tacit sanction to these atrocities, in which some of its more violent members were personally implicated.

Attitude of Pitt.

The news of the September massacres and the proclamation of the Republic cleared up for ever the doubts of the English people as to the character of the French Revolution. Pitt's judicial attitude towards the movement had at last changed. In 1790 he had doubted whether it were good or bad; by 1792 he was convinced that it was dangerous, anarchic, and detestable, but still hoped to avoid coming into actual conflict with it. He was in his heart a peace-minister, and it was circumstances, not his own will, which were to make him the fomenter of leagues and confederacies against France for nine long years of war. When Austria and Prussia invited him to join them in their attack, he had at first refused. But he was much disturbed by the bombastic "Edict of Fraternity," which the Convention published, appealing to all the nations of Europe. "All governments are our enemies, all peoples our friends," said this document, and the multitude in every land were invited to overthrow kings and ministers, and receive the aid which France would give. Pitt looked upon this as an appeal to anarchy addressed to the discontented classes in England, and was much disturbed when he found that it was welcomed by some of the Whigs of the more popular and democratic section. A small but compact body of these extreme politicians were doing their best to frighten England into a frenzy of reaction by their unwise and unpatriotic conduct. Two clubs called the Corresponding Society and the Constitutional Society were founded in London for the propagation of revolutionary doctrines. They were composed of men of no weight or importance, visionary politicians with a craze for republicanism, men of disappointed ambitions who longed for a political crisis to bring them into notice, mob-orators, and such like. These bodies deserved contempt rather than notice, but in view of the doings over seas, they attracted attention, and their noisy declamations in favour of the wilder doctrines of the French Revolution frightened the public. Especially was an outcry raised by the books and pamphlets of the celebrated free-thinker and republican writer, Tom Paine, the most blatant apologist of the atrocities in Paris.

Panic in England.—Repressive legislation.

The average Englishman was sufficiently disgusted by the language of these home-grown revolutionaries from the first, but when more and more blood was shed in France, a measure of alarm was mixed with his dislike of the noisy clubs. Men began to remember the permanent existence in London of a large body of the dangerous classes; it was easy to assume a connection between the French government, the English revolutionary societies, and the dregs of the London streets. And indeed a few wild spirits do seem to have talked to French agents of foolish plans for starting riots, setting fire to the capital, and seizing the Tower arsenal, in order to arm the mobs who, as they thought, would follow them. But the thousands of rioters and anarchists had no existence save in the brains of the French government and the alarmed and indignant English Tories. Their supposed designs, however, led to an unhappy panic in English legislation; the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, the right of free meeting restricted, even free speech in a measure fettered, by a wholly unnecessary series of Government measures, which were in reality directed against a few hundred silly but noisy fanatics. It was like using a sledge-hammer to crush a wasp.

The moderate Whigs join Pitt.

Unfortunately, the ultimate effects of this scare were destined to endure throughout the twenty-two years of the coming war, and even after its end. The atrocities committed by the French revolutionists, and the foolish talk of their English admirers, were the cause of the cessation of liberal legislation in England for a quarter of a century. Pitt himself, who had hitherto led the party of reform, felt the revulsion. His long series of wise and enlightened bills ceases in 1791, and his name becomes, unhappily, connected with stern and repressive laws of unnecessary severity. But it was not to be wondered at that he should act so, when we find that the larger half of the Whigs, the professors of an exaggerated zeal for liberty and popular government, now joined the Tories. After a continuous existence of a century, the Whig party suffered complete shipwreck. The majority of its members followed Burke in concluding an alliance with Pitt. Only a minority remained in opposition with Fox. In a party division, taken before the actual commencement of the French war, Fox was followed by only 50 of his own party when he attempted to oppose a warlike address to the Crown. It may be worth noting that this wave of revulsion against the French revolution is reflected in the English literature of the times. The younger authors of the day, such as Wordsworth and Southey, are liberal, and even republican, when they begin to write; but after the worse side of the French movement developed, they rapidly slide into enthusiastic patriotism, and denunciations of French anarchy and wickedness.

Lewis XVI. executed.—France declares war on England.

When this was the state of English public feeling, two events conspired to urge the nation into the war for which men had gradually been preparing themselves. The first was the trial and execution of the unfortunate king of France. The "Jacobin" party, the followers of the bloodthirsty Marat, the blatant Danton, and the coldly ferocious Robespierre, were now swaying the Convention. They impeached Lewis, not so much for any definite acts of his, as to show that they were determined to be rid of monarchy. "The coalized kings of Europe threaten us," said Danton; "let us hurl at their feet as a gage the head of a king." Lewis was sent to the guillotine on the most empty and frivolous charges (January 21, 1793). His unfortunate wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, followed him thither a few months after. Pitt immediately withdrew the English ambassador from Paris, and began to prepare for war. But the actual casus belli was the determination of the French, who had now overrun Belgium, to open the Scheldt, and make Antwerp a great naval arsenal. When Pitt protested, the Convention declared war on George III., under the vain belief that the English people would take their side, and overturn Pitt and his master. "The king and his Parliament mean to make war on us," wrote a French minister, "but the Republicans of England will not permit it. Already these freemen show their discontent, and refuse to bear arms against their brethren. We will fly to their succour. We will lodge 50,000 caps of liberty in England; and when we stretch out our arm to these Republicans, the tyranny of their monarchy will be overthrown."

So, on February 8, 1793, began the great war, which was to last, with two short intervals, till July 7, 1815. If England and France alone had been engaged in the struggle, the famous saying about the impossibility of a duel between the whale and the elephant might have been applicable. France, with her new levies just rushing into the field, had an army of something like 500,000 men. The English regular troops, available for war over-seas, were, in 1792, about 30,000 strong. On the other hand, the English fleet had 153 line-of-battle ships, the French only 86. The one nation was almost as superior by sea as the other by land. It was evident that we could only attack the French by land if we had continental allies, while France could not harm us by sea until she had secured assistance from other powers to increase her navy. But if with our limited army we could not hope to equal in the field the legions of France, we had one means of attacking her on land—the use of our power as the richest nation in Europe. Austria, Prussia, and the German states had large armies, but little money; England had much money, if few men. Accordingly, it was by liberal subsidies to the military powers of the continent that we from first to last fought France on land. History records nine separate coalitions which Pitt and his successors drew together and cemented with English gold, in order to stay the progress, first of the French Republic, then of the great man who inherited its position.