Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

Completion of the Constitution.

The sequel to the Manifesto of Padua was a conference at Pilnitz between the Emperor Leopold and King Frederick William II. of Prussia, accompanied by their ministers, in August 1791. At this conference the King’s brothers, Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII., who had escaped from France at the time of the flight to Varennes, and the Comte d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., who had fled in July 1789, at the epoch of the capture of the Bastille, were present. They had their own aims to serve. They were disgusted at the weak conduct, as they termed it, of Louis XVI. in yielding so far as he had done to the popular wishes; they desired to undo the whole effect of the Revolution and to restore the Bourbon monarchy in its ancient authority by the arms of the monarchs of Europe. But Leopold did not care about the French princes or the Bourbon monarchy. He cared rather for the safety of his sister, Marie Antoinette, and the maintenance through her of the Franco-Austrian alliance. In the Declaration of Pilnitz, which was signed by the Emperor and the King of Prussia on 27th August 1791, the two sovereigns declared that the situation of the King of France was an object of interest common to all European monarchs, and that they hoped other monarchs would use with them the most efficacious means to put the King of France in a position to lay in perfect liberty the bases of a monarchical government, suited alike to the rights of sovereigns and the happiness of the French nation. Provided that other powers would co-operate with them they were willing to act promptly, and had therefore placed their armies on foot. These threats exasperated but did not terrify the French people. Leopold had no intention of entering upon hostilities, and found a loophole by which to escape from declaring war in the acceptance by Louis XVI. of the completed Constitution on 21st September 1791. He then solemnly withdrew his pretensions to interfere in the internal affairs of France.

The Polish Constitution. 3d May 1791.

While the first Constitution of France, sanctioning the representative principle and the rights of the people, was being slowly built up in the midst of troubles and intrigues in Paris, a not less remarkable constitution was promulgated in Poland, manifesting the same ideas. The partition of Poland in 1773 had proved to all patriotic Poles that their independence as a nation was in the utmost peril. A serious effort was therefore made to organise the country, and to place the government on a settled and logical basis. The army was made national instead of feudal; an attempt was made to establish a national system of finance, and a scheme of national education was propounded and partly carried into effect. But these measures were but steps in the work of making Poland a nation, instead of a loose confederation of nobles; the final decision was taken in 1788, when the Polish Diet elected a Committee to draw up a new Constitution, raised the national army to 60,000 men, and decreed regular taxes in order to replenish the national treasury. This consciousness of nationality enabled Stanislas Poniatowski, King of Poland, to negotiate as an independent and powerful sovereign with Prussia in 1789, and to send his envoys to Reichenbach in 1790 to act with the envoys of the other powers. The leading member of the Polish Constitutional Committee was Kollontai, a most remarkable man, and a Catholic priest, who had done good service as Rector of the University of Cracow, which he reorganised, and who had been made Vice-Grand-Chancellor of the kingdom. He was the principal author of the Polish Constitution, which was accepted by the Diet of Warsaw on 3d May 1791. This Constitution was noteworthy in what it abolished and what it created. It abolished the elective monarchy, the source of so many evils and intrigues, and declared the throne of Poland hereditary in the House of Saxony in succession to Stanislas Poniatowski, and it also abolished the liberum veto, which had enabled one member of the Diet to thwart the wishes of the majority. It created a regular government, conferring the legislative power on the King, the Senate, and an elected Chamber, and the executive power on the King, aided by six ministers responsible to the Legislature. The cities were permitted to elect their judges and deputies to the Diet; but the plague-spot of serfdom was too delicate to touch, and the Diet only declared its willingness to sanction all arrangements made between a lord and his serfs for the benefit of the latter. In some respects this Constitution compares favourably with that of France drawn up at the same time; if it does not proclaim so firmly the liberty of man, it at any rate is free from the lamentable fear of the power of the executive, which vitiated the work of the French reformers. France feared its executive after a long course of despotic monarchy; Poland felt the need of a strong executive after a long history of anarchy. Both countries, trying to be free, were affected in different ways, and with very different results, by the intervention of foreign powers.

The Legislative Assembly.

The acceptance of the completed French Constitution was the signal for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. It was at once succeeded by the Legislative Assembly, elected under the provisions of the new Constitution. The new Assembly consisted, owing to a self-denying ordinance passed in May 1791, on the proposition of Robespierre, forbidding the election of deputies sitting in the Constituent Assembly to its successor, of none but untried men, who had no experience of politics. They were mostly young men who had learned to talk in their local popular societies, and who at once joined the mother of such societies, the Jacobin Club at Paris. They were forbidden by a clause in the Constitution of 1791 to interfere with constitutional questions, which could only be touched by a Convention summoned for the purpose, and so could only interfere in current politics and matters of administration. In such interference they were justified by the position of powerlessness into which the executive authority, the King and his ministers, were reduced by the Constitution. The two burning questions which first came before them were, the treatment of the clergy who had not taken the oath to observe the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and of the émigrés. Both questions gave plenty of opportunity for the display of fervid revolutionary and patriotic eloquence, for the priests, who had not taken the oath, were undisguisedly stirring up opposition to the Revolution in the provinces, and the émigrés were forming an army on the French frontier. And the Legislative Assembly was in a greater degree than either its predecessor, the Constituent, or its successor, the Convention, liable to be swayed by oratory. The deputies liked to listen to glowing words and patriotic sentiments, and were largely influenced by the speeches of three great orators, Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Guadet, who all came from Bordeaux, the capital of the department of the Gironde, and to whose supporters posterity has given the name of Girondins. But these orators were in their turn influenced by a Norman deputy, Brissot. This veteran pamphleteer was a sincere republican; he also, having long been a journalist, believed himself a master of foreign politics. He desired to bring about a war between France and Austria. He believed that such a war would either cause the King to throw in his lot heartily with the Revolution, or, what was more likely, would make him declare himself openly against it, and would thus enable the advanced democratic party to call him a traitor, and by rousing all France against him, pave the way for his overthrow and the establishment of a republic. The first step was taken to make Louis XVI. appear the opponent of the Revolution by passing a decree against the priests, who had not taken the oath, which his conscience would not permit him to sign; the second by passing a decree against the émigrés, who were led by his own brothers, and an instruction that he should ask the Emperor and the German princes on the Rhine to prevent the émigrés from forming an army, and to expel them if they did so.

Approach of War between France and the Emperor.

The question of the expediency of war with Austria was soon taken up in France, and not only the Legislative Assembly but the popular clubs busied themselves in discussing it. The Declaration of Pilnitz exasperated the whole nation, which resented dictation or interference in the internal affairs of France, and the warlike and menacing attitude of the army of émigrés, which had been formed by the Prince de Condé on the French frontier at Worms, increased the universal wrath. Louis XVI., whose ministers had been but feeble figure-heads during the Constituent Assembly, at this juncture appointed the Comte de Narbonne, a young man of distinguished ability, to be Minister for War. Narbonne grasped the situation. He saw the people wished for war, and he therefore declared that the King was as patriotic as his subjects, and was also ready for war if satisfaction were not given to France. Three large armies were formed and placed upon the frontiers under the command of Generals Rochambeau, Lückner, and Lafayette, of whom the two former were created Marshals of France. By this policy Narbonne took the wind out of the sails of Brissot and the Girondins; he hoped that if the Austrian war was successful the King would be sufficiently strengthened in popularity to regain his authority as head of the executive; while, if it failed, the nation in its extremity would turn to its legitimate sovereign and invest him with dictatorial power. The leaders of the democratic party in Paris, which had been scattered by Lafayette in July 1791, saw this equally clearly with Narbonne, and therefore opposed the war with all their might. The Jacobin Club had become their headquarters; most of the deputies who came up from the provinces joined the mother society in Paris, and it soon became more powerful than ever in creating public opinion. The effect of the secession and consequent formation of the Club of 1789 only made the Jacobins more frankly democratic, while the presence of many of its members in the Legislative Assembly strengthened the influence of the Jacobin Club. It was in the Jacobin Club during the debates on the war that the difference between what were to be the Girondin and the Mountain parties in the Convention first appeared. Brissot and the Girondin orators argued in favour of war; while Marat, Danton, and still more Robespierre, whose career in the Constituent Assembly had made him exceedingly popular, opposed it. The last-mentioned orator was indeed the chief opponent of the war; he saw through Narbonne’s schemes, and hinted that the projected war was merely a court intrigue to promote the power of the King. The political strife became personal, and Robespierre, Marat, and Danton became the sworn foes of Brissot and the Girondins.

Causes of war between France and the Emperor.

The main causes of the war were the questions of the rights of the Princes of the Empire in Alsace and of the émigrés. The defence of the former rights as rights of the Empire had been pressed upon Leopold at the time of his election as Emperor, and on 26th April 1791 the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, as Imperial Commissary, summoned the Diet to meet. It assembled, and after a long discussion a conclusum was arrived at, that the Empire maintained the Treaties of Westphalia and of the eighteenth century now violated by France, and requested the Emperor to take severe measures against the revolutionary propaganda. The Emperor Leopold, as sovereign of Austria, had withdrawn from the position he had taken up at Pilnitz, but as Emperor he was obliged to submit this conclusum of the Diet to the King of France, which he did in a strongly-worded despatch drawn up by the Chancellor Kaunitz, which was laid before the Legislative Assembly on 3d December 1791. It was as Emperor also that Leopold defended the conduct of the border princes of the Empire, notably the Elector-Archbishops of Trèves, Cologne, and Mayence, and the Bishops of Spires and Worms, in sheltering French émigrés. On 29th November 1791 the Assembly had desired the King to write to the Emperor and to these border princes protesting against the enlistment of troops by the émigrés, and the Emperor’s answer defending the conduct of the princes concerned was read to the Assembly on 14th December. The replies of Leopold were referred to the Diplomatic Committee, and on its report, the Assembly resolved on 25th January 1792 that the Emperor should be requested to explain his attitude towards France and to promise to undertake nothing against her independence in forming her own constitution and settling her own mode of government before 1st March 1792, and that an evasive or unsatisfactory reply should be considered as annulling the Treaty of 1756 and as an act of hostility. The answer to this demand, which was drafted by Kaunitz, was read to the Assembly on 1st March; it censured the course which was being taken by France, stigmatised the Revolution and accused the Jacobins of fomenting anarchy, and its first results were the dismissal of Narbonne, the impeachment of De Lessart, the Foreign Minister, and the formation of a Girondin ministry.