The Influence of sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, vol I. Alfred Thayer Mahan
at nearly the very moment that the Eastern War was ending. This will be seen by bringing together the dates at which were happening these weighty events in the East and West.
It was on the 6th of October, 1789, that the king and royal family were brought from Versailles to Paris, unwilling but constrained. After this outbreak of popular feeling, comparative quiet continued through the last months of 1789 and all of 1790, during which were fought in the East the most important battles of the war, both in the Baltic and on the Danube, including the bloody assault of Ismail. During this time, however, Louis XVI. underwent many bitter mortifications, either intended as such, or else unavoidably humiliating to his sense of position. In June, 1791, he fled with his family from Paris to put himself in the care of part of the army stationed in eastern France under the Marquis de Bouillé and believed to be thoroughly trustworthy. Before reaching his destination he was recognized, and brought back to Paris a prisoner. The greeting of the royal family was significant of the change that had passed over the people within a few years, and which their unsuccessful flight had intensified. They were met by perfect silence, while some distance ahead of them rode an officer commanding the bystanders not to uncover. Despite the distrust it felt, the Constituent Assembly went on with the work of framing a constitution in which the king still had a recognized position, and which he formally accepted on the 14th of September, 1791. During that summer, peace was signed between Russia and Turkey, and a meeting was had at Pilnitz between the emperor and the king of Prussia, after which they put out their joint declaration that the situation in which the king of France found himself was an object of common concern to all the rulers of Europe; that "they hoped this common concern would lead them to employ, in conjunction with the two declaring sovereigns, the most efficacious means, relative to their forces, in order to enable the king of France to consolidate in the most perfect liberty, the basis of a monarchical government equally suitable to the rights of sovereigns and the welfare of the French nation." The two princes ended by stating their own readiness to join in such united action with the force necessary to obtain the common end proposed, and that they would, meanwhile, give orders to their troops to be ready to put themselves in a state of activity.
The close coincidence in date of the Declaration of Pilnitz, August 27, 1791, with the Peace of Galatz, signed August 11, is curious enough for passing remark; the one formally opening the new channel of European interest and action, while the other marked the close of the old. The Declaration, however, was in the same line of effort that the new emperor had for some time been following. It met with a somewhat hesitating response. Russia and Sweden agreed to raise an army, which Spain was to subsidize; but Great Britain, under Pitt, declined to meddle in the internal affairs of another state.
The first National or, as it is conveniently called, Constituent Assembly, dissolved after framing a Constitution; and the following day, October 1, 1791, the second Assembly, known as the Legislative, came together. The Declaration of Pilnitz had strongly moved the French people and increased, perhaps unjustly, their distrust of the king. This change of temper was reflected in the Assembly. Strong representations and arguments were exchanged between the ministers of foreign affairs in Austria and France, through the ambassadors at either court; but in truth there was no common ground of opinion on which the new republic and the old empires could meet. The movements on either side were viewed with studied suspicion, and war was finally declared by France against Austria, April 20, 1792. The first unimportant encounters were unfavorable to the French; but more serious danger than that which threatened from without was arising within France itself. The king and the Assembly came into collision through the use by the former of his constitutional power of Veto. The agitation spread to the streets. On the 20th of June a deputation from the mob of Paris appeared before the Assembly, and asked permission for the citizens outside to defile before it, as a demonstration of their support. The extraordinary request was granted; and an immense crowd pressed forward, of people of all ages, armed with weapons of every kind, among which appeared a pike carrying the heart of a bull labelled an "Aristocrat's heart." From the Assembly the crowd went to the Louvre, and thence forced their way through the palace gates into the king's presence. The unhappy Louis bore himself with calm courage, to which perhaps he, at the moment, owed his life; but he submitted to put on the symbolic red cap, and to drink to the nation from a bottle handed him by a drunken rioter.
Little was left in life for a king thus humbled, and his final humiliation was close at hand. Prussia had not long delayed to act in concert with the emperor, after France declared war. On July 26, a month after the strange scene in the Tuileries, was issued an exposition of her reasons for taking arms; and at the same time the Duke of Brunswick, commander-in-chief of the allied armies, put forth a proclamation to the French framed in such violent terms as to stir to the utmost the angry passions of a frantic and excitable race. On the 10th of August the Paris mob again stormed the Tuileries, the king and royal family fled for safety to the hall of the Legislature, the Swiss Guards were killed and the palace gutted. The Assembly then decreed the suspension of the king; and on the 13th of August the royal family was removed to the Temple, the last home on earth for several of them.
On the 2d of September occurred the butcheries known as the September Massacres. To this date and this act is to be referred the great change in British feeling toward the Revolution. On the 20th the battle of Valmy, by some thought decisive of the fate of the Revolution, was won by the French. Though being otherwise far from a battle of the first importance, it led to the retreat of the allied forces and destroyed for a time the hopes of the royalists. Two days after Valmy met the third Assembly, the National Convention of terrible memory. Its first act was to decree the abolition of royalty in France; but the power that swayed the country was passing more and more to the mob of Paris, expressing itself through the clubs of which the Jacobin is the best known. The violence and fanaticism of the extreme republicans and of the most brutal elements of the populace found ever louder voice. On the 19th of November the Convention passed a decree declaring, "in the name of the French nation, that they will grant fraternity and assistance to all people who wish to recover their liberty; and they charge the executive power to send the necessary orders to the generals to give assistance to such people, and to defend those citizens who have suffered, or may suffer, in the cause of liberty." It was denied by the French diplomatists that there was any intention of favoring insurrections or exciting disturbances in any friendly country; but such intention is nevertheless fairly deducible from the words, and when a motion was made to explain that they were not so meant, the Convention refused to consider it. Mr. Fox, the ardent champion of the Revolution in Parliament, spoke of this edict as an insult to the British people.
Meantime the battle of Valmy had been followed by that of Jemappes, fought November 6. On the 14th the French army entered Brussels, and the Austrian Netherlands were rapidly occupied. This was instantly succeeded by a decree, dated November 16, opening the Scheldt, upon the express ground of natural right; the boisterous young republic cutting at one blow the knot which had refused to be untied by the weak hands of Joseph II. Decided action followed, a French squadron entering the river from the sea and forcing its way up, despite the protests of the Dutch officers, in order to take part in the siege of Antwerp. This was a new offence to the British Sea Power, which was yet further angered by a decree of December 15, extending the French system to all countries occupied by their armies. The words of this proclamation were so sweeping that they could scarcely but seem, to those untouched with the fiery passion of the Revolution, to threaten the destruction of all existing social order. The British ministry on the last day of the year 1792 declared that "this government will never see with indifference that France shall make herself, directly or indirectly, sovereign of the Low Countries, or general arbitress of the rights and liberties of Europe." 11
While the Revolution was thus justifying the fears and accusations of those who foretold that it could not confine itself to the overturn of domestic institutions, but would seek to thrust its beliefs and principles forcibly upon other nations, the leaders were hurrying on the destruction of the king. Arraigned on the 11th of December, 1792, Louis XVI. was brought to trial on the 26th, sentenced to death January 16, and executed January 21, 1793. This deed brought to a decided issue the relations between France and Great Britain, which, from an uncertain and unsatisfactory condition, had become more and more embittered by the course of events ever since the November decree of fraternity. As far back as August 10, when the king was suspended, the British government
Annual Register, 1793; State Papers, p. 118.