The International Response

The outbreak of revolution in France produced great excitement and a sharp division of opinion in Europe and the United States. On the one hand, liberals and radicals saw a mighty triumph of liberty over despotism. On the other hand, conservative leaders such as British statesman Edmund Burke (1729–1797) were intensely troubled. In 1790 Burke published Reflections on the Revolution in France, in which he defended inherited privileges. He glorified Britain’s unrepresentative Parliament and predicted that reform like that occurring in France would lead only to chaos and tyranny.

One passionate rebuttal came from a young writer in London, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). Incensed by Burke’s book, Wollstonecraft (WOOL-stuhn-kraft) wrote a blistering attack, A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790). Two years later, she published her masterpiece, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Like de Gouges in France, Wollstonecraft demanded equal rights for women. She also advocated coeducation out of the belief that it would make women better wives and mothers, good citizens, and economically independent. Considered very radical for the time, the book became a founding text of the feminist movement.

The kings and nobles of continental Europe, who had at first welcomed the Revolution in France as weakening a competing power, now feared its impact. In June 1791 the royal family was arrested after a failed attempt to escape France. To supporters of the Revolution, the attempted flight was proof that the king was treacherously seeking foreign support for an invasion of France. To the monarchs of Austria and Prussia, the arrest of a crowned monarch was unacceptable. Two months later they issued the Declaration of Pillnitz, proclaiming their willingness to intervene in France to restore Louis XVI’s rule if necessary. But the crowned heads of Europe misjudged the situation. The new French representative body, called the Legislative Assembly, that convened in October 1791 had new delegates and a different character. Although the delegates were still prosperous, well-educated middle-class men, they were younger and less cautious than their predecessors. Since the National Assembly had declared sitting deputies ineligible for re-election, none of them had previously served as national representatives. Many of them belonged to the political Jacobin Club. Such clubs had proliferated in Parisian neighborhoods since the beginning of the Revolution, drawing men and women to debate the political issues of the day.

The French Revolution

National Assembly (1789–1791)
May 5, 1789 Estates General meets at Versailles
June 17, 1789 Third estate declares itself the National Assembly
June 20, 1789 Tennis Court Oath
July 14, 1789 Storming of the Bastille
July–August 1789 Great Fear
August 4, 1789 Abolishment of feudal privileges
August 27, 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
October 5, 1789 Women march on Versailles; royal family returns to Paris
November 1789 National Assembly confiscates church land
July 1790 Civil Constitution of the Clergy establishes a national church; Louis XVI agrees to constitutional monarchy
June 1791 Royal family arrested while fleeing France
August 1791 Declaration of Pillnitz
Legislative Assembly (1791–1792)
April 1792 France declares war on Austria
August 1792 Mob attacks the palace, and Legislative Assembly takes Louis XVI prisoner
National Convention (1792–1795)
September 1792 September Massacres; National Convention abolishes monarchy and declares France a republic
January 1793 Louis XVI executed
February 1793 France declares war on Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Spain; revolts take place in some provinces
March 1793 Struggle between Girondists and the Mountain
April 1793 Creation of the Committee of Public Safety
June 1793 Arrest of Girondist leaders
September 1793 Price controls instituted
October 1793 National Convention bans women’s political societies
1793–1794 Reign of Terror
Spring 1794 French armies victorious on all fronts
July 1794 Robespierre executed; Thermidorian reaction begins
The Directory (1795–1799)
1795 Economic controls abolished; suppression of the sans-culottes begins
1799 Napoleon seizes power

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Jacobins and other deputies reacted with patriotic fury to the Declaration of Pillnitz. They said that if the kings of Europe were attempting to incite war against France, then “we will incite a war of people against kings. . . . Ten million Frenchmen, kindled by the fire of liberty, armed with the sword, with reason, with eloquence would be able to change the face of the world and make the tyrants tremble on their thrones.”3 In April 1792 France declared war on Francis II of Austria, the Habsburg monarch.

France’s crusade against tyranny went poorly at first. Prussia joined Austria against the French, who broke and fled at their first military encounter with this First Coalition of foreign powers united against the Revolution. On behalf of the crowns of Austria and Prussia, the duke of Brunswick, commander of the coalition armies, issued a declaration threatening to destroy Paris if harm came to the royal family. The Legislative Assembly declared the country in danger, and volunteers rallied to the capital. The Brunswick manifesto heightened suspicion of treason on the part of the French king and queen. On August 10, 1792, a revolutionary crowd attacked the royal palace at the Tuileries (TWEE-luh-reez), while the royal family fled to the Legislative Assembly. Rather than offering refuge, the Assembly suspended the king from all his functions, imprisoned him, and called for a constitutional assembly to be elected by universal male suffrage.