Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

Meanwhile the series of victories which had commenced during the rule of the Great Committee of Public Safety continued. Pichegru at the head of the Army of the North pursued the English and their Dutch and Hanoverian allies. On the 9th of October he took Nimeguen, and forcing his way across the frozen rivers drove the English through Holland. He occupied Amsterdam, and then with his hussars took the Dutch fleet, which was unable to leave its moorings in the Texel owing to the ice. By the end of January 1795 the whole of Holland was in the possession of the French. The Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange, fled to England, and the English troops were soon after withdrawn. The conquest of Holland was of the greatest service to the Thermidorians, for it enabled them, by drawing upon the wealth of that country, to relieve the financial distress of the French Republic. With regard to Belgium there was no difficulty in coming to a decision as to its future, for the Decree of Reunion passed in the days of Dumouriez’ success remained unrepealed, and the Austrian Netherlands were therefore organised as part of the French Republic. It was otherwise with regard to Holland. The Thermidorians did not desire to further aggravate the fears of Europe by annexing that country, but at the same time they were quite resolved that it should not again fall under the power of the English. Reubell and Sieyès, two ex-Constituants who had remained in obscurity during the Reign of Terror, were despatched to Holland to see what could be done. They found many Dutch admirers of the doctrines of the French Revolution, and speedily conciliated the burghers of the Dutch cities, who had always resented the power of the Stadtholder. With the help of these parties and of the Dutch patriots who had been exiled in 1787, and who now returned from France full of enthusiasm for democracy, they organised a Batavian Republic on the model of the French Republic, and in March 1795 a Treaty of Peace and Alliance was signed between the French and Batavian Republics. In other quarters the French Republic was likewise triumphant. Maestricht was taken by Kléber on the 4th of November 1794. Jourdan with the Army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, defeated the Austrians under Clerfayt at Aldenhoven on the 2d of October, and marching south occupied Aix-la-Chapelle, Bonn, Cologne, and Coblentz. Meanwhile the Army of the Moselle, under René Moreaux, finally drove the Prussians out of France and occupied the Palatinate and the whole of the Electorate of Trèves. On the southern frontier there were similar successes. The Army of the Eastern Pyrenees, which had invaded Catalonia, stormed the Spanish camp at Figueras on the 20th of November 1794, and took Rosas on the 3rd of February 1795. In the first of these actions the French General Dugommier was killed in action. Moncey, with the Army of the Western Pyrenees, took Bilbao, Vittoria, and San Sebastian. The Army of Italy won the victory of Loano on the 24th of November, which opened communication with Genoa. The Army of the Alps finally reached the summits of Mont Cenis and the Little St. Bernard, and drove the Piedmontese before it.

Poland. 1794–5.

While the French nation had thus after much suffering and long submission to the Reign of Terror secured its independence and made itself feared by Europe, a Polish insurrection had taken place which was not crowned with the same success. The second partition of Poland, which was consummated in 1793, has been described. But the Polish nation was not inclined to acknowledge its extinction without another blow. Many Polish exiles came to France, and the leader of the Polish patriots, Kosciuszko, received a flattering reception, though no promise of active help. On the 23d of March 1794 Kosciuszko entered Cracow and raised the standard of national independence. This news caused a general rising in Prussian Poland, where the new administrators of Prussia had behaved with extreme cruelty. Stanislas Poniatowski, King of Poland, acting under the influence of the Russian general commanding at Warsaw, Igelstrom, disavowed Kosciuszko and declared him a rebel. But the Polish people welcomed Kosciuszko as a liberator. He defeated the Russians at Raclawice on the 4th of April 1794, and after a further victory occupied Warsaw on the 19th. Both Russians and Prussians prepared to defend the provinces they had annexed in 1793, and laid siege to Warsaw in July 1794. By the beginning of September all Prussian Poland was in a flame of insurrection; Frederick William II., who was conducting the siege in person, rapidly retreated and summoned to his assistance a large proportion of the troops hitherto employed against France. But though the Prussians had temporarily retired, Catherine of Russia determined, at all hazards, to conquer the Poles. She gathered a great army from all parts of her empire, and placed it under the command of the most famous of the Russian generals, Suvórov. Caught between the army of Suvórov and the army of Fersen, who had succeeded Igelstrom in command of the Russians already in Poland, the Polish patriots were utterly defeated at Maciejowice on the 12th of October 1794, when Kosciuszko was wounded and taken prisoner. On the 4th of November, Praga, the suburb of Warsaw on the right bank of the Vistula, was stormed by Suvórov, and on the 9th of November the capital surrendered. Catherine determined to complete the work of the destruction of Poland. Stanislas Poniatowski was removed from Poland on the 7th of January 1795, and on the 25th of November 1795 he abdicated the throne.

Extinction of Poland. 1795.

The division of the spoils caused much trouble to the allies. The Austrians, who had been left in the lurch at the second partition, claimed a share, and, like the Prussians, weakened their armies on the frontier of France in order to defend their claims on Poland. By the final partition, which was arranged between the powers in 1795, Prussia received Warsaw and the surrounding palatinates; Austria received Cracow and the rest of Galicia, and the Russians were content with rectifying their frontier from Grodno to Minsk. It is interesting to contrast the simultaneous failure of the Poles and success of the French. The cause lay in the fact that the great bulk of the Polish people were serfs, to whom it mattered little what master they served, whereas the French people had long thrown off the bonds of personal serfdom, and had just succeeded in getting rid of the last shackles of the privileged classes. The Polish Constitution of 1791 was the work of a few enlightened noblemen and priests, and was gladly accepted by the educated bourgeois of the cities, but the peasants were in too degraded a condition to understand what personal liberty meant. In France every peasant, every farmer had profited by the Revolution, and was wedded to its cause not only for political reasons, but because of the purchases of ecclesiastical property which he had made. The national feeling in France embraced the whole people, and made France successful against her foreign foes; the national feeling in Poland only existed among a minority of the population, and the result was that Kosciuszko was unable to attain the triumph which he so well merited.

Change in the attitude of Continental Powers.

The successes of the French Republic and the failure of the Polish national movement affected the attitude of the coalition both towards France and towards its own members. The Prussians, ever since the defeat of Brunswick in 1792, had openly expressed their belief that the Austrians were betraying them and using them as catspaws. Frederick William II. for a long time battled against these views, which were held by the chief Prussian statesmen, such as Haugwitz and Alvensleben, by the most respected Prussian generals such as Kalkreuth and Möllendorf, and by his own personal clique of favourites, headed by Lucchesini. In the year 1793 he had confined his operations against France to the siege of Mayence, while his best troops were directed on Poland, and in 1794 he had still further reduced the number of his soldiers upon the Rhine. England, which had paid large subsidies to the Prussian government, resented this conduct, and declared its intention of withdrawing all subsidies unless Prussia would do as she was directed. Frederick William II. declared that he would not receive the English subsidies on these terms; but the truth was, that his attention was far more occupied by the gains he hoped to get in Poland than with the prosecution of the war against France. Austria, also, where Thugut had in 1794 become the nominal as well as the real director of the foreign policy of the Emperor Francis, was getting tired of the war with France. Prussia’s conduct in making the second partition of Poland in 1793, and leaving the Emperor out, had sown the seeds of discontent. Thugut was determined that the same thing should not occur again, and, therefore, when the Polish insurrection broke out in 1794, Austria also denuded her armies upon the French frontier. This attitude of Prussia and Austria does not entirely account for the victories of the French republican armies, but it explains to some extent the ease with which those victories were obtained. Spain also was weary of the war. Godoy felt that his tenure of office was imperilled by the existence of two French armies in Spain which might easily march upon Madrid, and the Queen, and therefore the King, was entirely under the influence of Godoy. Many of the princes of the Holy Roman Empire likewise wished to see the war at an end, for it was their states upon the left bank of the Rhine which were occupied by the French armies; it was their states upon the right bank of the Rhine which would be invaded by the passage of that river, whereas the home dominions of Austria and Prussia were far to the east, and not likely to be reached by an invading army. England was the only power which seriously desired to prosecute the war, for in England a national feeling of repulsion against the French had arisen. The English government, however, was unable to strike any effective blow; Hoche destroyed a body of émigrés landed from English ships at Quiberon Bay in July 1794; the continental powers who received subsidies were not very earnest in doing the work for which they were paid; the French occupation of Holland had deprived England of the only base from which an army could act in Europe; and the English government had therefore to be contented with blockading the French ports and occupying the French West Indian Colonies.

The Rule of the Thermidorians. Second Phase.

Insurrection of 12th Germinal. 1st April 1795.

Insurrection of 1st Prairial. 20th May 1795.