The French Revolution, due to the aggressive nationalism of many of its proponents and the subsequent European war that followed, was far more than a cataclysm confined to the boundaries of the Rhine and the Pyrennes. The influence of the French Revolution could be seen in countries around the world, and the actions which those countries took in regards to the Revolution heavily influenced the course of events in France. Therefore, it is important to understand the ambiance of the late eighteenth century in the United States of America, England, Russia, Spain, Prussia and the Hapsburg Empire.
The United States of America, which had officially gained independence from Great Britain in 1783 after a seven-year war where combined French and American forces had vanquished their British enemies, was a tottering little nation at best. From 1783 to 1789, the Articles of Confederation had loosely held the thirteen new states together with everyone being so paranoid about a strong executive that the central government was given a laughable amount of power. Deciding that something stronger was needed, the "Founding Fathers" or, better put, the new nation's "well-fed, well-bread, well-read" had drawn up a new Constitution which created a three-branch republican government. The first president, George Washington, was sworn in 1789.
And there was to be a lot more swearing in the years to come....Washington, and the poor fellow, probably believed he was lucky at the time, appointed Thomas Jefferson, recently arrived from his post as Ambassador to France, as his Secretary of State and Alexander Hamilton, a scrappy, brilliant little ex-aide-de-camp, as his Secretary of the Treasury. These two had Washington wishing Aspirin had been invented in a matter of months. They were not exactly the Brady Bunch. Hamilton accused Jefferson of having a "womanish attachment to France", while Jefferson said that Hamilton "was not only a monarchist but for a monarchy founded on corruption." Hamilton, meanwhile, was having to deal with the fact that the nation was basically bankrupt and that the "Continental" was as worthless as a......well...Continental. Hamilton dealt with all of this by creating a national bank and paying back the Continental IOUs at their face value. Jefferson glared at him and called him the nastiest Greco-Roman allusions he could think of. These were the beginning of political parties. Hamilton's rich, conservative, Northern merchant group were the Federalists, while Jefferson's exactly opposite group were the Republicans (or Democratic-Republicans, but it wasn't considered tactful to call yourself "democratic" at this point)
When the French Revolution erupted, Hamilton and Jefferson....surprise! surprise!...didn't agree. Hamilton sided with Britain, Jefferson with France, and Washington with early retirement. Citizen Genet, a Girondin, came over in 1792 and caused quite an embarrasment for the administration. Hamilton wanted to declare war. Hamilton had some major testosterone problems. Hamilton kept trying to get a war going, as he was bored having been forced out of the Treasury in 1793 when he was caught in an affair with a certain Mrs. Reynolds (things haven't really changed, have they?). Washington tried very hard to maintain neutrality and must have been overjoyed when he retired in 1797, leaving the office to John Adams. Hamilton didn't like Adams (there were a lot of people he didn't like) and liked to make fun of him with the inevitable bad Greco-Roman slurs. ("The President is a disimilating pusillaminous Catiline, a ferocious Sulla, and much more like Nero than Marcus Gracchi!"-yeah, I just made that up) There was an undeclared naval war with France in 1798 after the XYZ affair (when the French government got caught with it's zipper down ;)) when Talleyrand refused to talk to three American diplomats unless they gave him a handsome bribe. We were shocked about this then. Gosh, we were young and innocent! By 1800, and through Hamilton's help no less, Jefferson was elected President
While Jefferson and Hamilton were fueling Washington's need for Tylenol in America, William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox were doing much the same thing to King George III in Britain. George III, who had a truly Robespierrian sense of right and wrong, ("I desire what is right. Therefore all those who oppose me are traitors."), was still a little sore about having lost a certain large chunk of land in North America because of those damned Froggies intervening. George's retaliation was to be stubborn and bull-headed about all reforms. The remarkably corrupt election practices with "rotten boroughs" all over the place, the slave trade, emancipation for Irish Catholics...anything that struck George III as being slightly progressive was out of the question.
Therefore, it is somewhat surprising that in 1783, having dismissed Lord North and several shaky ministries, he appointed the twenty-four-year-old son of one of George III's powerful opponents in Parliament to be his Prime Minister. William Pitt was a political prodigy with an downright Calvinistic work ethic, a penchant for Port, and a truly Robespierrist complete absence of social life. His opponents in Parliaments, led by Charles James Fox, a lazy, brilliant, liberal man, laughed at him saying "A sight to make surrounding nations stare; a kingdom trusted to schoolboy's care." The schoolboy was to rule uninterrupted for 18 years....and then again for three more.
England was a prosperous nation under Pitt's prime ministry. Unfortunately, Pitt was not so good with the war. In fact, not to mince words.....he couldn't run a war government worth squat. It didn't help that George III was beginning to lap into bouts of porphyria, which at the time were mistaken for insanity, in which he spoke to trees as Prussian monarchs, nor that Prince Regent was always conspiring with his friend Fox to wrestle the crown away from daddy. For a time, Jacobinism was very popular in England. Paine, Priestly, Fox and other liberal Englishmen loudly hailed events in France and this provoked a reign of terror in England against radicals. Habeas corpus was suspended and very few reforms were accomplished in Pitt's 21 years in office. (Pitt died after hearing of Napoleon's victory at Auschwitz. "Role up that map, it will not be needed these ten years" he said---predicting to a year Napoleon's demise)
Anyone who has seen Francisco de Goya's picture of Charles IV (left)and his family can guess that Spain probably had some problems around this time. And it did. Spain's population was only 9 million (compared to France's 26 million) and though Charles III, who died in 1788, tried to bring Spain up to Enlightenment standards by attempting to break the power of the Catholic Church (yeah, you can guess how successful that was) Spain suffered from centuries of poor investment strategies.
And then along came Charles IV, described by disinterested observes, as "an idiot" and by his most adamant admirers as "slow." Charles IV's wife, understandably was somewhat bored, and took to sleeping with the Prime Minister, Godoy, nicknamed "The Prince of Peace" (although he bore absolutely no resemblance to the other Being who was called that).
Yes, Spain had problems.
Russia at this time was ruled by Czarina Catherine the Great, a woman whose appetite for power equaled her appetite for well....you know. She was equally talented at getting both of them. Catherine was bent on the territorial and political expansion of Russia, which she promoted by way of "enlightened despotism"...or, in Catherine's way of things, gaining power and winning praise from the likes of Voltaire. Catherine was especially fond of Poland, a country she had received her first piece of in 1772 and just couldn't wait to go back for a second helping. This she was able to do with Austria and Prussia during the French Revolution, which was great for the French as it certainly distracted Russia from helping the Coalition forces.
Although Russia supported a large, but not dense, population of 26 million, it remained mostly in the backwaters of European civilization. Ninety-five percent of its population was agriculatural, which Catherine had tried to change by opening up trade and commerce as professions for the nobility (before that they just sat around wearing funny hats....you think I'm kidding...)but actually she helped encourage agrarian fuedalism more by her land deals, which spread serfdom throughout the country.
After the death of Marie Antoinette's mother, Maria Theresa, in 1781, Marie Antoinette's brother Joseph II came to rule over the vast and cumbersome Holy Roman Empire which at the time included Austria, Hungary and part of modern-day Germany and the Balkans. Joseph II was a very energetic, idealistic Emperor inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment. As soon as he came to power, he was just itching to put these ideas into practice. First, he unified the language, making German the official language for all his vast and varied subjects. He abolished forced labor for the peasantry making life a lot more pleasant for the poor people. He was an avid musician, paying Mozart as a composer, and he loved introducing new farming techniques to his people. Sometimes, however, you had to wonder if his zeal went a little too far. For example, one of his reforms was that people should be buried in mass graves rather than in coffins as it seemed that they took up too much space under ground. For some reason, Joseph was convinced that the Empire was running out of room for its dead. (This, by the way, is the reason Mozart was buried in a communal grave....not that he was too poor or that nobody liked him or what not)
Something of the Emperor's zeal for Enlightenment thought died when the Revolution broke out in France with his sister caught in the middle of the cataclysm. Joseph did not have much time to react to this though, as he himself died in 1790. He was followed by an Emperor of a much different sort---Leopold, his brother, (there were a lot of Maria Theresa's children to go around-17 to be exact--so we're not going to run out anytime soon)Leopold had no obsessions with communal graves and was quite reactionary. He died in 1792, right before he could declare war on France. His successor, Francis II, who was to be the last Holy Roman Emperor, declared war on France shortly thereafter.
Proving itself to be the true core of the Germany of the 20th century, Prussia was the feisty, upstart child always ready to start a fight. Prussia had risen to greatness under Frederick II (the Great) who died in 1786, but left his equally bellicose successor Frederick William a stable economy, agricultural boom and willingness to pick fights with Poland and Austria. It was little wonder that Prussia would respond so eagerly to France's desire to have a war in 1792.
