French History, Vol. 25, No. 2 (2011)
doi:10.1093/fh/crr030
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
THE BRUNSWICK MANIFESTO AND THE
RADICALIZATION OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION
ELIZABETH CROSS*
The war of 1792 between the French Revolutionary armies and the Prussian and
Austrian coalition forces is often given a critical role in the radicalization of the
political situation in France, setting the stage for the calamities of 1793. An
important event in this narrative is the issuing of a proclamation on 25 July 1792
known to history as the ‘Brunswick Manifesto’. Circulated on the eve of the
invasion by the Duke of Brunswick, the commander of the coalition armies, this
document was intended to frighten the French into submission. While
pretending to have no desire to interfere with the French government, the
Manifesto accused France of having unjustly suppressed the feudal rights of
German princes in the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and stated the allies’ goal
of restoring order, on behalf of the ‘sane portion of the French nation’, to a
country driven into anarchy by factions.1 Declaring the King alone to be the
* The author is a doctoral student at Harvard University and may be contacted at ecross@fas.
harvard.edu. She would like to thank Paul Cheney and Patrick Houlihan at the University of Chicago, Patrice Higonnet and the members of the Center for History and Economics workshop at
Harvard, and the readers for French History—Sophie Wahnich, Marc Belissa, and two anonymous
readers—for their invaluable criticisms, help and guidance during the various stages of this article.
She would also like to thank the Square-D Foundation for the generous grant that facilitated research for this article in France.
1 Archives Parlementaires de 1787 à 1860, recueil complet des débats législatifs & politiques
des chambres françaises, First Series, 1789-1799, vol. 47, eds M. J. Mavidal and M. E. Laurent (Paris,
1896), 372. All translations mine, unless otherwise noted.
© The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of French History.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract—This paper investigates the French response to the Brunswick Manifesto of July
1792. This event has often been seen as a radical turning point, accelerating the events of 10
August and fueling resentment against foreign and internal enemies. This paper will show that
the response was more varied than previously thought, ranging from ridicule to an absence of
commentary among the extreme left, who have so often been charged with using such
‘circumstances’ as instruments of political radicalization. Moreover, it prompted a response
that invoked the law of war and rejected the Manifesto as unlawful. This essay thus wishes not
only to investigate the problematic role of the Brunswick Manifesto in the events of 1792, but
also re-evaluate whether radical views of the foreign enemy, and of the war more broadly,
were held at this time.
ELIZABETH CROSS
189
2
Ibid., 373.
Ibid.
4 A. Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution Française, vol. 2 (Paris, 1887), 510.
5 L. A. Thiers, The History of the French Revolution: 1789-1800, vol. 1, trans. F. Shoberl (Philadelphia, 1894), 300: it produced ‘an extraordinary effect. Promises poured in from all quarters to
resist an enemy whose language was so haughty and whose threats were so terrible.’ F.-A.-M.-A.
Mignet, Histoire de la Révolution française, vol. 1 (Paris, 1880), 269: it produced a unified reaction
‘from one end of France to the other’; all those who did not share in the fury were seen as traitors.
A. Mathiez, Le Dix Aout (Paris, 1931) does not emphasize the importance of the Manifesto in mobilization for 10 August; in The French Revolution, trans. C. A. Phillips (New York, 1929), 156, he calls
it the cause of the court’s ruin. R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: a Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, vol. 2 (Princeton, NJ, 1964), 38, suggests that the Manifesto led ‘within a week to the attack on the Tuileries which it so explicitly forbade’. J. M. Thompson,
The French Revolution (Stroud, 2001), 284, argued that it solidified public opinion and ‘acted as
counter-irritant to the party quarrels and suspicions which were paralysing the national defence.’ M.
Reinhard, La Chute de la Royauté: 10 Août 1792 (Paris, 1969), 375, 377, argues that it ‘offended the
patriotism of Frenchmen, compromised the king and his family further, served the Jacobins and thoroughly justified the declaration of the Patrie en danger’. Jacques Godechot, La Révolution Française:
chronologie commentée 1787-1799 (Paris, 1988), 108-9, wrote that ‘this manifesto, of unprecedented violence, unleashed Parisian anger and provoked a psychosis of fear and the desire for vengeance. It was in large part responsible for the collapse of the monarchy and for the first terror.’
6 D. Andress, ‘Horrible plots and infernal treasons: conspiracy and the urban landscape in the
early Revolution’, in Conspiracy in the French Revolution, eds P. R. Campbell, T. E. Kaiser, and M.
Linton, 85-105 (Manchester, 2007), 101: ‘the decision of the sans-culotte leadership, a week after
[the Manifesto] was published in Paris, to launch an assault on the Tuileries can be seen in this light
as their own desperate attempt to escape the closing jaws of an internal and external conspiratorial
trap.’ S. Schama, Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution (New York, 1989), 612, suggests
it was instrumental in the ‘kill or be killed’ mentality which would come to have such damaging
repercussions. A. Mayer, The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions
(Princeton, NJ, 2000), 556, claims that the rage it provoked ‘triggered and focalized’ the events of
10 August and ‘radicalized the radicals’ by proving a link between external and internal enemies.
J.-C. Martin, Contre-Révolution, Révolution et Nation en France: 1789-1799 (Paris, 1998), 134-5:
3
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legitimate sovereign of France, the Manifesto threatened that any civilian or
soldier who dared to resist the just invaders would ‘be punished sur-le-champ
following the severity of the law of war, and their houses shall be demolished
or burnt’.2 Special mention was reserved for Paris itself, as Brunswick promised
‘an exemplary and ever-memorable vengeance. . . military execution and total
destruction’ for the city and its inhabitants should the royal family be harmed.3 The
menacing nature of this document secured its place in the narrative of that summer’s
events; it has been seen as a breaking point that unified the people and drove them
to overthrow their king on 10 August, propelling the Revolution into its more
radical phase. Brunswick himself harboured no doubts regarding the consequences
of his Manifesto; he later declared he would give his life to take it back.4
The Brunswick Manifesto has frequently been viewed by historians as the
spark that lit the powder keg. In the ‘circumstances’ interpretation of the
French Revolution, the Brunswick Manifesto has been presented as making
urgent the overthrow of the king, thus radicalizing public opinion against both
internal and external enemies.5 Although the thèse des circonstances has been
largely defeated, this view of the Brunswick Manifesto as a critical moment in
1792 has persisted in the writings of Arno Mayer, David Jordan, Simon Schama,
Jean-Clément Martin, David Andress, and D. M. G. Sutherland.6 As a cogent
190
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
‘Brunswick’s proclamation. . . confirmed the justness of their cries of alarm, pushed the sansculottes to call for the deposition of the king and discredited the moderates.’ D. P. Jordan, The King’s
Trial: The French Revolution vs. Louis XVI (Berkeley, 1979), 41, and The Revolutionary Career of
Maximilien Robespierre (Chicago, 1985), 120, incorrectly places the Brunswick Manifesto as
reaching Paris on 30 August, after the overthrow of the monarchy, falsely linking it to the September Massacres. D. M. G. Sutherland, The French Revolution and Empire: the Quest for a Civic
Order (Malden, MA, 2003), 135: the arrival of the Brunswick Manifesto in Paris made ‘failure to act
[look] like calculated treason’.
7 G. Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, trans. R. R. Palmer (Princeton, 1947), 121-2.
8 Campbell et al, (eds), Conspiracy in the French Revolution,11.
9 H. Taine, The French Revolution, vol. 2, trans. John Durand (Indianapolis, 2002), 635, claims it
produced no real public response. Coincidentally enough, Taine is the only historian to cite primary
sources as evidence on this point; he cites the letters of Mallet du Pan. J. Jaurès, Histoire Socialiste
de la Révolution française, ed. A. Soboul, vol. 2 (Paris, 1970), 683, argues that, in terms of its role
in the overthrow of the monarchy, it did little more than contribute to sentiments that already existed. F. Furet, The French Revolution: 1770-1814, trans. Antonia Nevill (Oxford, 1992), 109, limits
its significance to an ‘involuntary contribution’ to the events of 10 August. H. A. Barton, ‘The
Origins of the Brunswick Manifesto,’ Fr Hist St 5 (1967), 146, explicitly avoids discussion of its repercussions – they ‘can easily be exaggerated and is at best problematical.’ F. A. Braesch, La Commune du dix août 1792; étude sur l’histoire de Paris du 20 juin au 2 décembre 1792 (Paris,
1911), 145 devotes little time to the effects of the Manifesto, suggesting only that it ‘wounded [Parisians’] native pride’.
10 M. Winock, L’Échec au Roi: 1791-1792 (Paris, 1991), 264.
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expression of the counter-revolutionary mission, the Brunswick Manifesto fits
into the many conspiracy-based models of radicalization, most notably the
‘aristocratic plot’ theory of Georges Lefebvre. This model posited that revolutionary
violence occurred whenever fear of an ‘aristocratic plot’ surfaced, such as in the
Great Fear of 1789 and then again in 1792 ‘with the Prussians and the émigrés
marching on the soil of France’.7 This explanation is thus reliant on ‘circumstances’
that incited fears of conspiracy among internal and foreign enemies.
The Brunswick Manifesto is often read as both a symbol and substantial proof
of this international conspiracy. Recent work by Peter R. Campbell, Thomas E.
Kaiser and Marisa Linton similarly argued that conspiracies were ‘integral to
every phase of the Revolution’, and that these claims did have some ‘basis in
reality, for there were very real plots to undermine the Revolution’.8 Yet there
is ample reason to be sceptical about the Manifesto’s importance in these
radicalization narratives. Mobilization, both in the foreign war and of opinion
against the King, began long before the Manifesto was issued. Many historians,
from Hippolyte Taine to Jean Jaurès to François Furet, have thus challenged the
view that the reaction to the Brunswick Manifesto incited fresh animosities.9
Michel Winock has categorically denied its role in instigating the coup of 10
August, because so much of the work in preparing the insurrection had already
happened before it was known in Paris.10
While this essay shall engage this causality debate by examining the Manifesto’s
political impact, the very question might be rather outmoded; the thèse des
circonstances has been decidedly on the retreat for some years. Perhaps a more
relevant point would be to examine what the nature of the response – or lack
thereof – can explain about political priorities and views on the war more
broadly among the factions in 1792. After all, these ‘conspiracy’ narratives were
ELIZABETH CROSS
191
11
F. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg Forster (Cambridge, 1981), 55.
D. A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as we know it
(Boston, 2007), 50-1.
13 Ibid., 8.
14 D. Edelstein, ‘War and Terror: The Law of Nations from Grotius to the French Revolution,’
French Historical Studies 31 (2008), 231; idem, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the
Cult of Nature & the French Revolution (Chicago, 2009), 40.
15 Bell, Total War, 15; C. Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the
Concept of the Political, trans. G. L. Ulmen (New York, 2007), 89.
12
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fundamentally tied to the complicated idea of a ‘foreign enemy’. Much has been
made about the role of enemies – real or imagined – in French Revolutionary
political discourse. François Furet proposed that the Revolution consistently
defined itself against a succession of unreal enemies, both internal and external,
that were no more than ‘constantly renewed incarnations of its anti-values’.11
David A. Bell draws on Carl Schmitt to suggest that the idea of the ‘enemy’ is an
important element of our understanding of the modern ‘total’ warfare that
emerged in the French Revolutionary period. Before the French Revolution, in
Bell’s view, warfare was codified, moderate, and aristocratic, and these values
were epitomized by eighteenth-century military and diplomatic codes such as
the ‘law of nations’ [droit des gens], as articulated by theorists such as Emer
de Vattel.12 However, in spite of early pacifist overtones, the revolutionaries
increasingly viewed war as an ‘unfathomable extreme, set outside the ordinary
bounds of social existence, that could only end in total victory or total defeat’.13
In a slightly different vein, Dan Edelstein invokes the idea of ‘loopholes’ in the
seemingly moderate droit des gens, suggesting, in contrast to Bell, that Vattel’s
theory implicitly contained a radical jurisprudence that permitted warring
nations to treat their opponent as an ‘enemy of the human race’ [hostis humani
generis] if the opponent violated this code.14 In Edelstein’s conception, reprisals
could escalate into a total conflict. Bell asserts the importance of Schmitt’s
concept of ‘absolute enmity’ – the total demonization and dehumanization of
the adversary – to this view.15 Although Bell does not examine the response to
the Brunswick Manifesto, as it was an object that was explicitly designed by the
counter-revolution to inspire fear, and is frequently alleged to have incited rage
and enmity, it is a relevant point upon which to test this thesis about increasingly
radicalized views of war.
Through an examination of pamphlet satires, cartoons, parliamentary and
club minutes, statements by the Paris Sections, and above all, newspapers, this
essay shall examine the official and popular responses to the Brunswick
Manifesto. These responses are extremely varied, as opinion on the Manifesto
was considerably more complicated and divided than one is often led to believe.
Some published responses predictably attempted to associate the Manifesto
with the King. Yet this conspiratorial link between internal and external
enemies is not as apparent as has been argued by scholars such as Mayer and
Andress; rather, internal and external enemies were generally treated with
192
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
I
It was clear by the early summer of 1792 that Paris was preparing for a fight.
Though public opinion had been mobilizing against the King since the flight to
Varennes a year earlier, when Brissot first called for a Republic, it had reached
fever pitch by the summer of 1792.16 The Tuileries had already been attacked
on 20 June, the anniversary of the flight, and in the wake of the King’s
controversial use of his veto power. With his credibility undermined and the
foreign situation worsening, the Assembly passed the decree of the patrie en
danger on 11 July, an emergency measure amounting to ‘de facto abandonment
of constitutionality’, permitting the Assembly to override the veto in the event
of crisis.17 At the same time, the mobilized fédéré soldiers were arriving in Paris
and applying political pressure of their own. They addressed the assembly on
17 and 23 July to demand the overthrow of the King.18 The address of 17 July
also informed the Assembly of their intent to stay in Paris instead of heading to
the front:
16 A. Mathiez, Dix Août, 27; P. Gueniffey, ‘Brissot,’ in La Gironde et les Girondins, eds F. Furet
and M. Ozouf (Paris, 1991), 450.
17 D. Andress, The Terror: the Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France (New York,
2005), 80.
18 L. Whaley, ‘Political factions and the second Revolution: the insurrection of 10 August’, French
History 7 (1993), 214.
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different language and in different sources. For instance, the radical left was
virtually silent on the Brunswick Manifesto, suggesting that, despite the danger
posed by Brunswick and the advancing Prussian forces, the internal enemy was
their sole priority. On the other hand, ridicule was another common response
to the Manifesto: the author and the pretentious document itself were mocked
through the use of both satire and crude humour.
Furthermore, some revolutionaries, primarily Feuillants and Girondins,
questioned its authenticity. It was often claimed that the Manifesto was a
violation of international law, which may seem surprising given both Edelstein’s
argument about the implicitly radical nature of the normative droit des gens,
and Bell’s theory that the French Revolutionaries were espousing a totalized
view of warfare in which conduct of the nature threatened by Brunswick was
the norm, not the exception. Rather, these sources exalt the French response
to Brunswick’s insulting conduct as restrained, honourable, and worthy of
revolutionary principles. While aware that they had the right to reprisal due
these unjust threats, these writers postulated that the Revolution should not
engage in demeaning and violent responses and instead advocated the exercise
of restraint and moderation. This essay thus seeks to investigate the problematic
role of the Brunswick Manifesto in the events of 1792, and to ask afresh whether
radical views of the foreign enemy, and of the war more broadly, were held at
this time.
ELIZABETH CROSS
193
We want to triumph or die for liberty, but we do not wish to fight
under courtesans and the accomplices of tyrants. We are told to
fight Austria, but Austria is in our camps and in the King’s council,
and Austria is at the head of our armies. It is not enough that the
French nation is debased to making war on traitors; she is still led
and betrayed by them. It is their brothers, their allies who make up
most of our armies.19
19
Archives Parlementaires, vol. 46, 560.
Reinhard, Chute de la Royauté, 367-8.
Braesch, Commune du dix août, 145. The Manifesto was published in the Courier du BasRhin in Cleves on 28 July, and in Paris in the royalist Journal général de M. Fontenai on 31 July.
22 Archives Parlementaires, vol. 47, 423.
23 Ibid., 426; Reinhard, Chute de la Royauté, 372; Winock, Échec au Roi, 265.
24 Archives Parlementaires, vol. 47, 458.
25 Sutherland, French Revolution, 135.
26 Archives Parlementaires, vol. 47, 473.
20
21
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The arrival of the Breton and especially the Marseillais fédérés on 25 and 30 July
continued to increase the pressure being placed on the Assembly. The presence
of the radical fédérés helped secure for the sections the right to remain in
permanent session, and their petitions began to flood the Assembly, demanding
the immediate suspension of the Monarchy. 20
In the midst of this tumult, news of the Brunswick Manifesto first broke in
Paris between 28 July and 1 August.21 The King disavowed the piece in a letter
to the Assembly on 3 August, arguing that the document presented none of the
characteristics necessary to guarantee its authenticity.22 This seems best
regarded as a self-distancing manoeuvre. Immediately following the reading of
the King’s letter, the mayor of Paris, Jérôme Pétion, was given the tribune and
demanded the déchéance of the King on behalf of 47 of the 48 sections.
However, while he acknowledged the circulation of a ‘manifesto as insolent as
it is absurd’, the decision to give this speech and the coalescing of the sections
around this message of déchéance began on 26 July, before the Manifesto was
known in Paris.23
The sections continued their petitions to the Assembly in the following days.
Without mentioning the Brunswick Manifesto, the Mauconseil section reminded
the Assembly on 4 August that ‘the enemy approaches, and soon Louis XVI will
deliver our cities over to the bloodied blades of European despots’.24 While
Mauconseil clearly connected foreign and internal enemies, the speech of the
Gravilliers later that day has been incorrectly cited as an example of the rage
fuelled by the Manifesto, as proof of collusion between internal and foreign
enemies.25 The speaker from Gravilliers did not cite the Manifesto as grounds
for overthrowing the King. The King was compromising France’s war effort,
because he continued to give his ‘chosen generals the necessary orders to
perfect the empire’s ruin’, supporting the machinations of his brothers abroad.26
Overthrowing the King would resolve everything:
194
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
in an instant, all of our fatal divisions shall end, public spirit and
good morals shall develop, the ill-willers within will die of starvation.
Our enemies from without will feel the heaviness of our arms. Our
brave defenders. . . will no longer fear the treason ordered by those
contagious with the vices of aristocracy. Within three months, the
cap of liberty will cover every head in Europe.27
27
Ibid., 474.
Adresse de la Section Mirabeau à l’Assemblée Nationale, présentée le 5 août 1792, l’an 4e.
de la Liberté (Paris, 1792), 1.
29 Révolutions de Paris, dédiées à la nation et au district des Petits-Augustins, no. 160, 28
July-4 Aug. 1792, 181.
30 La Sentinelle, 43, 4 Aug. 1792.
31 L’Ami du Peuple, ou le Publiciste Parisien, no. 677, 7 Aug. 1792, 5.
32 Ibid., 6.
28
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On the other hand, the Mirabeau section went to the Assembly on 5 August
to declare that the ‘proud, atrocious’ Brunswick Manifesto had motivated ‘thirtyeight young men, full of ardour’ from their ranks to join fellow citizens on the
front lines to fight Brunswick and ‘the cruel tyrants he serves’.28 The address of
the Section Mirabeau was, in this matter, notable in that it spoke only of
Brunswick and the honour of these young soldiers, and not about overthrowing
the King.
Predictably, some sources expressed — correctly, it might be added — the
culpability of the King with regards to the Manifesto. Louis-Marie Prudhomme’s
Révolutions de Paris recorded that ‘at first, most people thought this
régiocomique piece was written at the Tuileries’.29 Louvet’s La Sentinelle
suggested that the occupants of the Tuileries had conspired with Brunswick,
having done everything in their power to make ‘the path from Berlin to Paris
nothing more than a promenade for the Prussians’, and thus the executive
power ought to be ‘provisionally suspended’.30 Jean-Paul Marat, of L’Ami du
Peuple, continued his agitation against the King at this time as well. His paper
did not appear between 22 July and 7 August, and the news of the Brunswick
Manifesto did not draw him out of his silence. When L’Ami du Peuple returned
on 7 August, Marat analysed the King’s denial of its authenticity. He wrote: ‘He
[the King] is not lying, because [the Manifesto] was fabricated during a secret
meeting in the Thuilleries[sic], by [the King’s ministers and the moderates].’31
He then denounced the King as the leader of the entire counter-revolution,
having organized the war himself by buying off the Girondins who publically
advocated for it.32
Jacques-Réné Hébert, by contrast, published nothing at all about the Manifesto
in Le Père Duchesne. Neither did Robespierre in his Le Défenseur de la
Constitution, despite being famed for his strong opposition to the war. Similarly,
the Journal des départements méridionaux from Marseille, which published
the minutes of the meetings of the Marseille Jacobins’ Club, reveals no discussion
whatsoever of the Manifesto. This is perhaps a surprise given that the Marseille
Jacobins were aggressive and radical enough to provoke a violent Federalist
ELIZABETH CROSS
195
The declaration of the Duke of Brunswyck[sic], as menacing &
malicious as it is to national independence, has made no lively
impression. Our personal disputes absorb all attention, & while the
enemy is at our doors, it is M. la Fayette, or those who care about
constitutional liberty, that the people are being turned against.39
The following day, the paper published another statement reasserting the
authenticity and importance of the Manifesto, explaining the official means by
which it was issued in Coblentz and conveyed to Paris.40 Because the
declaration’s authorship was so frequently in doubt, establishing its authenticity
was necessarily the first step of proving that it was politically relevant at all. Yet
33 C. Walton, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: the Culture of Calumny and
the Problem of Free Speech (New York, 2009), 171.
34 Journal de Lyon, ou Moniteur du département de Rhône-et-Loire, no. 100, 13 Sept. 1792, 429.
35 Ibid., no. 71, 4 Aug. 1792, 286.
36 G. G. Leveson-Gower Sutherland, The Despatches of Earl Gower, English Ambassador at
Paris from June 1790 to August 1792, ed. Oscar Browning (Cambridge, 1885), 206.
37 Barton, ‘Brunswick Manifesto,’ 159, 164. Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had full knowledge
of the project as it was being written. Mallet du Pan’s early draft was more diplomatic in tone than
the final text composed by Geoffrey de Limon. Reinhard, Chute de la Royauté, 374-6.
38 J. Mallet du Pan, Memoirs and Correspondence of Mallet du Pan, Illustrative of the History
of the French Revolution, vol. 1, ed. A. Sayous, trans. unknown (London, 1852), 332-3.
39 Gazette Universelle, ou Papier-nouvelles de tous les pays et de tous les jours, no. 215, 2 Aug.
1792, 858.
40 Ibid., no. 216, 3 Aug. 1792, 862.
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revolt in 1793. A more wary Jacobin club might have been more diligent about
concealing their antipathy for counter-revolutionaries. The journal of another
future Federalist city, Lyon, was quite similar. Skimming the pages of the Journal
de Lyon, one finds the paper full of frequently incomprehensible diatribes,
written as if in a stream of consciousness.33 The editor publishes on the war more
than the other papers: ‘Brunsvvick[sic], who hasn’t heard of the sovereignty of
peoples,’ was occasionally mentioned throughout the invasion.34 The Manifesto
received a brief treatment: the editor stated that it was only being printed in
‘aristocratic papers.’35
Contemporaries perceived this relative silence as well. The correspondents
of both Jacques Mallet du Pan and the English ambassador, Earl Gower, lamented
that the Manifesto had failed to produce the intended reaction because of
revolutionary confidence. However, both sets of correspondence reveal that, in
many cases, there was almost no response. Gower was informed that the
Manifesto ‘has produced very little sensation’.36 Mallet du Pan had considerable
stakes in the matter, as he was one of the emissaries sent by Louis XVI to
Coblentz to help draft the manifesto earlier that year.37 His correspondent
confirmed this lack of a public response: ‘The threats which it contains do not
disturb the progress of intrigues of constitutional or Jacobinical proceedings.’38
The nature of these ‘intrigues’ dominating public opinion was explored
further in the Feuillant Gazette Universelle, which gave the most stunning
analysis of this stinted public reaction:
196
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
41
Ibid.
Ibid., no. 215, 2 Aug. 1792, 858.
43 Ibid., no. 221, 8 Aug. 1792, 883.
44 Journal des départements méridionaux et des débats des amis de la Constitution de Marseille, no. 71, 16 Aug. 1792, 290.
45 Ibid., no. 69, 11 Aug. 1792, 282.
46 Journal de Lyon, no. 75, 9 Aug. 1792, 301 for ‘overthrow’; no. 78, 12 Aug. 1792, 311 for
Gazette.
42
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the Gazette did not stop there. Internal political disputes were not just obscuring
the importance of the Brunswick Manifesto and the critical danger posed by the
invasion, but ruining the state itself. On 3 August, the editors stated that the
political strife was due to the ‘projects invented everyday by la rage des
factieux, to reverse the constitution and ensure France’s defeat, dragging the
people towards regicide.’41 This paper provided a striking window onto the
political realities of the day by asserting that the source of France’s problems
was fragmentation from within. The Gazette also expressed the fear that
factionalization was hurting the war effort. While observing the words of
Maréchal Luckner — ‘Everything is lost, if instead of reinforcing our armies we
tear ourselves up from within’ — the editors noted that it is preposterous that
the fédérés be kept in Paris, as soldiers so brave would better serve their country
at the front.42 More ominously, in their issue of 8 August , the editors worried
about a massacre in Marseille, in which ‘two hundred victims were sacrificed to
political fanaticism’.43
Upon re-examination of some of the left wing sources previously mentioned,
it becomes clear that the observations of the Gazette Universelle were quite
accurate. Even when Marat reported the Manifesto, he diverted his focus to
internal enemies immediately by reporting only the text of the King’s denial.
For Marat, the Manifesto was not even the product of the foreign enemy; it was
written by the King, the ministers, and the moderates, who were the main
target of his report. Throughout his publications in the summer of 1792, Marat
saw the war as a secondary concern to that of internal enemies; the same held
for Robespierre. The provincial left-wing journals revealed a similar story. The
Journal des départements méridionaux raged against the multitude of ‘infernal
plots’ brewing in Marseille.44 The internal counter-revolution was blamed for
having created the politically divisive atmosphere that has ‘made [one] forget
that la patrie est en danger’.45 Similarly, the editor of the Journal de Lyon
complained that the officials of the department of Rhône-et-Loire were too slow
in pressing for the overthrow of the king; he railed against the insincerity of his
rival papers in Lyon and against the Gazette Universelle itself.46 Like Marat, this
paper’s commentary on the Brunswick Manifesto was also directed in such a
way that it turns the subject immediately towards internal enemies by insinuating
that only ‘aristocrats’ are worrying about the Manifesto.
Hébert’s Père Duchesne, however, was the most explicit in stating the
prioritization of internal threats over external ones. While this journal’s issues
were undated, the pamphlets which would have appeared around the time of
ELIZABETH CROSS
197
the Brunswick Manifesto were similar in content to those of Marat and
Robespierre. Hébert raged against the Assembly for putting ‘traitors’ in charge
of the army, railed against the authors of the Gazette Universelle and the
Journal de Paris, and criticized the ‘valets of Madame VETO’ for offending the
fédérés and ‘wanting to incite civil war in Paris’.47 He admitted that these
internal problems were more important than the war effort:
Go to the front, we are told, yes foutre, I want to go there. . . But
foutre, all the houlans[a play on the word for Austrian cavalryman48]
are not at the front. The worst live amongst us. Yes, the royalist
houlans, the Feuillant houlans harm us a thousand times more than
the Austrian houlans. They divide us, they turn us against each
other. . . It was not enough foutre to tell us the nation was in danger;
it was necessary to tell us how and from whom.49
II
However, when revolutionaries did respond to the Brunswick Manifesto, they
frequently did so to laugh at it. Courier Français, a Girondin paper which often
featured Vergniaud, Condorcet and Brissot as commentators, mocked Brunswick
as an ‘inconsequential’ pawn, the ‘current lapdog’ of the King of Prussia and the
Emperor, and nothing more than a ‘little soldier [with] the audacity to dictate
47 Le Père Duchesne; Je suis le veritable père Duchesne, foutre!, no. 158, 1 for ‘traitors’; no. 159,
4 for Gazette; no. 159, 1 for ‘valets.’
48 Dictionnaires d’autrefois: French dictionaries of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries (The
ARTFL Project: The University of Chicago and Laboratoire ATILF), http://lib.uchicago.edu/efts/A
RTFL/projects/dicos/ (for word ‘houlan’ or ‘uhlan’; accessed 7 Apr., 2009).
49 Père Duchesne, no. 159, 2.
50 Ibid., 3.
51 M. Ozouf, ‘War and Terror in French revolutionary discourse (1792-1794),’ in The Rise and
Fall of the French Revolution, ed. T. C. W. Blanning (Chicago, 1996), 266.
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He suggested that if the revolutionaries simply ‘exterminated’ all royalists and
Feuillants, the foreign enemies would be forced to retreat in the face of a united
nation.50 Hébert, like the fédérés before the Assembly, argued the opposite of
the Gazette Universelle: internal struggles were the core problem; winning the
foreign war depended on winning the internal conflict. Perhaps in light of this
evidence, one can lend credence to Mona Ozouf’s depressing observation that
‘when the French go off to war, they do so with greater hate for each other than
for the enemy’.51
Among the radical left, the Manifesto did not succeed in mobilizing opinion
against the foreign enemy; the internal enemy was seen as the more dangerous.
The assumption was that even if there was a conspiracy, internal enemies — the
King or the enemy factions — were at its head; if they were destroyed, the
foreign enemies would fall away. Thus, particularly for the radical left, the
Brunswick Manifesto was largely a non-issue, which in many cases did not even
merit publication. The radicals were, for the most part, silent.
198
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
laws to the most powerful nation in the world’.52 Political cartoonists favoured
a pejorative image of Brunswick as a buffoon, and they often rendered this
result by employing all of the popularizing scatological tools of their trade. The
cartoon ‘La Grande Foire remportée par Brunswick en France’ (Figure 1) shows
the Manifesto scrawled with the words ‘Poor Manifesto, you will not go to la
Beurière, all Frenchmen use you to wipe their behinds’ while Brunswick is
shown simultaneously defecating and attempting to ride a dead horse. In view
of the pretentions of his Manifesto, Brunswick was thus belittled by satirists
through the reductive force of scatological humour. Another cartoon, ‘Rentrée
joyeuse et triomphant des Don-Quichottes prussiens en Allemagne’ (Figure 2),
printed by the Cercle Social, and a nearly identical ‘Retraite des héros de
Pilnitz[sic]’ (Figure 3) showed the buffoon-like Prussians on the retreat, riding
their horses backwards, with nothing but the Manifesto and ‘1792 cheese’ in
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Figure 1 ‘La Grande Foire Remporté par Brunswick en France [The Great Diarrhea
won by Brunswick in France.’ Publisher unknown. Courtesy of the Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Paris.
52
Courier Français, no. 214, 1 Aug. 1792, 263.
ELIZABETH CROSS
199
tow. The use of the term ‘Don Quixote’ certainly implies just how delusional
the Prussians were seen to be, although it seems likely that the latter two
cartoons were published after Valmy, with the retreat of the Prussians already
under way.
One of Hébert’s rival papers, La Trompette du Père Duchêne, which appealed
to the same sans-culotte audience, also painted the Brunswick Manifesto in
comical terms. The gruff Père Duchêne wrote crudely about the prospective
arrival of the Duke of Brunswick in Paris:
How he plays the braggart, this duke, and how funny he is for
dictating laws before conquering! He is as afraid of war as he is of
chamber-pots [which Parisians could empty] from their windows. . .
onto the intrepid Prussians. . . But, the capons say, we will not throw
anything out of our windows at them, on the contrary, we will come
down politely, bringing hens, good wine and bread. . . But there is
one problem with all this, and that is, foutre, that sans-culottes
usually live on the roofs, and will have all the tiles at their disposal. . .
and will rain down a hail of bricks and filth on their triumphant
majesties, who will definitely burn down the houses from whence
these clouds of broken pots, stones, and gunshots came.53
53
La Trompette du Père Duchêne, no. 78, 3 Aug. 1792, 2, 4-5.
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Figure 2 ‘Rentré Joyeuse et Triomphant des Don-Quichottes Prussiens en Allemagne
[The Joyous and Triumphant Reentry into Germany by the Prussian Don Quixotes].’
Printed by the Girondin ‘Imprimerie du Cercle Social.’ Courtesy of the Bibliothèque
nationale de France, Paris.
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THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
‘Retraite des Heros de Pilnitz[sic] [The Retreat of the Heroes of Pilnitz]’
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
The Père Duchêne proceeds to recount that despite the wishes of Brunswick
and his compatriots ‘to see the entire National Assembly. . . go belly up in their
shoes upon sight of this devastating piece. . . [the Assembly] decreed that all
citizens. . . wipe their behinds with the sublime declaration’.54 The article
nonetheless ended on a serious note, as the editor addressed Brunswick himself:
‘If you have houses to burn, we have our precious LIBERTY to protect. . . and
we have sworn to obey only those [laws] to which all consent’.55 We shall
return to this idea that Brunswick’s actions were petty and criminal in nature,
in view of the right of the French to obey laws of their own making.
The Jacobin Club of Paris also joined in the ridicule. The club minutes reveal
their strange reaction to hearing the Manifesto read aloud by one of their
compatriots:
This reading, frequently interrupted by fits of laughter which the
platitude and stupidity of the piece elicited, could not, despite all
the efforts of every member to keep silence, drag along just until the
end, in the middle of all the pitiful exclamations which this piece
aroused, which seems to have at least ten centuries of nobility for
the ignorance and foolishness which characterize it.56
54
Ibid., 1-2.
Ibid., 5.
56 F. A. Aulard, (ed)., La Société des Jacobins: recueil de documents pour l’histoire du Club des
Jacobins de Paris, vol. 4 (Paris, 1892), 160.
55
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Figure 3
ELIZABETH CROSS
201
57
58
59
60
61
62
Archives Parlementaires, vol. 47, 344.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Mallet du Pan, Memoirs, 332-3.
Sutherland, Despatches, 214.
Barton, ‘Brunswick Manifesto,’ 168-9.
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The Assembly’s response was quite similar. The Manifesto was received via
official correspondence on 1 August, and it was never even read, as too many
deputies shouted that the Assembly should passe à l’ordre du jour, which they
did, after hearing only two remarks on the Manifesto.57 The first to speak,
Lejosne, a Feuillant, said that given the atrocious nature of the declaration, he
was certain that it was a Parisian forgery and demanded that the matter be
investigated further.58 The floor was then taken by Dubois de Bellegarde, a leftwing deputy, who said that he was ‘stunned at the anxiety this declaration
causes to M. Lejosne’ and demanded that the papers ‘be made into cartridges to
use against the Austrians’, upon which the Assembly erupted into laughter.59
A possible explanation for this bizarre reaction was illuminated, once again,
in the correspondence of Mallet du Pan. One of his correspondents wrote
despondently that the Manifesto ‘is laughed at. . . I do not know on what this
may depend. . . Perhaps — and indeed that is most probable — [the French]
reckon on the very considerable force which the revolution commands, and
which becomes more fully organized every day from a military point of view’.60
The correspondence of Earl Gower equally affirmed that ‘the approach of the
Duke of Brunswick does not excite that alarm which might be expected. . .
nothing can exceed the unanimity and confidence which prevails through the
country.’61 Therefore, one can read this laughter not only as ridicule, but as
genuine confidence. From this standpoint, the comic irony of the Manifesto lay
in the fact that Brunswick took such a haughty tone against the French despite
their certainty that the Revolution would triumph.
It is perhaps not difficult to see how, menacing as it might be, a statement as
high-handed and extravagant as the Brunswick Manifesto could be seen as
funny, provoking reactions in which the pretentious Brunswick was humbled
by being portrayed more as an incontinent buffoon than as an enemy. On the
other hand, laughter perhaps represented the confidence the French had in
their success. The Manifesto did not produce fear, as the powers and the
émigrés wanted, nor anxiety. The Brunswick Manifesto did not incite the
revolutionary leadership to action by placing them in a desperate situation from
which they saw no other alternative. As Barton has explained, the idea of a
threatening manifesto was based on a ‘fundamental misconception of the
Revolution in France’: the revolutionaries could not so easily be frightened ‘into
docility’.62 Despite Brunswick’s imperious threats and superior armies, the
revolutionaries were confident.
When blame for the Manifesto was doled out by men on the radical left such
as Marat, it was the King and other internal enemies, not the foreign enemy,
202
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
who were seen as culpable and the more dangerous. The last section of this
article will examine the extent to which the response to the Manifesto reveals
Revolutionary views of the foreign enemy and war itself.
III
63
Barton, ‘Brunswick Manifesto,’ 146.
M. Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes: an Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution
(Princeton, 2008), 353.
65 Journal de Paris, 215, 2 Aug. 1792, 868.
66 Ibid.
67 Gazette Universelle, no. 213, 31 July 1792, 849.
64
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Barton argues that ‘nothing could have been more likely than for the courts of
Vienna and Berlin to turn to the idea of making a declaration to the French
people’ during the course of the war of 1792.63 Manifestoes were an integral
part of war and international relations in the eighteenth century. The protocols
for their issuing were described at length in Vattel’s monumental The Law of
Nations (Le Droit des Gens). As a tactic, there was nothing exceptional about
the Brunswick Manifesto. What of its content, however? Were the threats and
orders it contained considered legal by eighteenth-century standards? Many
Revolutionary sources argued no. Reactions to the Brunswick Manifesto in the
press frequently invoked the law of war, arguing that it was inappropriate and
illegal to threaten such violence before a victory had actually been achieved.
Thus the Manifesto was frequently described as unlawful and offensive to
national sovereignty.
This perception of the Manifesto’s illegality was often expressed by
questioning whether it was authentic. While the King himself, in a self-distancing
gesture, argued that it was a forgery, there were other reasons for doubting the
Manifesto’s authenticity. The Feuillant Journal de Paris, a long-standing Parisian
institution, doubted the Manifesto’s authenticity by claiming that a piece written
with such disregard for the law of war could not possibly have been authored
by the coalition powers.64 The editors condemned it as an affront to a nation as
powerful as France and rejected it as an insult because of its violations of ‘the
first principles of the rights of man, and all conventions established between
the Nations’.65 The editors concluded with the hope that this outrage against
legality and decency would inspire the French to fight on for their honour
against Brunswick’s threats.66 While the Gazette Universelle insisted upon its
authenticity, as has been observed, it also posited that the Manifesto contained
‘principles contrary to the law of every independent nation’, although the
editors admitted that the coalition powers would never have ‘troubled
themselves with forms or principles’.67
Girondin responses were similar. Like the Journal de Paris, Louvet’s La
Sentinelle observed that ‘one can suspect the authenticity [of the manifesto],
ELIZABETH CROSS
203
because it is so ridiculously insolent’.68 The Marquis de Condorcet’s paper,
Chronique de Paris, did not print the text of the Manifesto; he too argued that
it could not be accepted as authentic due to the ‘principles contrary to the most
sacred maxims of public law’ presented therein.69 He nonetheless refuted the
Manifesto point by point:
The threat of punishment by death made to the French citizens who
defend their territory against a foreign invasion is a direct violation
of the law of war, recognized by all lawful nations. The threats made
to French citizens who do not recognize the so-called legitimate
authority of the king is an attack on the independence of the nation,
a usurpation of the sovereignty of French lands. . . If [this Manifesto]
contained the new principles of law adopted by the coalition
powers, [it] would excite the indignation of all Europe. . .70
68
La Sentinelle, no. 43, 4 Aug. 1792.
Chronique de Paris, no. 226, 2 Aug. 1792, 858.
70 Ibid., 858-9.
71 Journal de Rouen et du département de la Seine-Inférieure, 3 Aug. 1792, 169.
72 Chronique de Paris, no. 226, 2 Aug. 1792, 859.
73 Journal de la Correspondence de Paris à Nantes, et du département de la Loire Inférieure,
no. 25, 10 Aug. 1792, 389.
69
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The Journal de Rouen expressed a similar hope that this ‘affront’ would
‘open the eyes of all of Europe’ to the dubious legality of Brunswick’s project.71
This notion of the Manifesto as provoking the indignation of the international
community was brilliantly illustrated in a political cartoon entitled ‘Cas du
manifeste du Duc de Brunswick’ (Figure 4), which demonstrated that sometimes
scatology went hand-in-hand with a deliberate legal message. This cartoon
showed figures representing foreign nations expressing vivid disapproval of the
Manifesto. The Russian Cossack is lighting his pipe with it, while another wipes
himself with it, as it appears the rest have already done. This cartoon clearly
plays quite graphically to the idea of the Manifesto as an insult not only to
France, but to the international community at large.
These responses, particularly Condorcet’s, demonstrate their authors’ recognition
of an accepted code of conduct for international relations, and more specifically
war, in which both were conducted with respect for the opponent’s national
sovereignty. In the eighteenth century, this was the ‘law of nations’. Brunswick was
accused of violating this code by ‘threatening with death those who love their
nation & their laws. . . of inciting civil war in the course of war with a foreign
power, in declaring oneself the judge of all nations, the arbiter of their
constitutions and their laws’.72 Under no circumstances should such terms be
dictated to an opponent in advance of actual victory. Condorcet also wrote
on the Manifesto in the form of a ‘Letter from a Parisian to the Duke of
Brunswick’. He stated that the French, in spite of their ‘politeness’, could not
possibly disguise how bizarre the Manifesto seemed to them.73 By claiming
204
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
Brunswick’s conduct was antithetical to that of the French, he made the case
that the Revolution had a higher regard for what was lawful than its adversaries.
Playing with this theme of violation of national sovereignty, one of the most
ingenious satires on the Brunswick Manifesto was an anonymous piece entitled
‘Supplement to the [Brunswick Manifesto], the Declaration of the Rights of Man
and the Citizen, reviewed, edited and augmented by S. A. S. Monseigneur the
Duke of Brunswick’. In this piece, the satirist, writing as Brunswick, reasserted
‘the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of priests, nobles and kings, the
only individuals worthy of the name of man’.74 With a stroke of ‘Brunswick’s’
pen, the most famous clauses of the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the
Citizen’ became:
Men are born and remain the free ones only in small number; all
others are serfs or slaves. . . Social distinctions can be based only
on the utility of a few privileged individuals. . . The purpose of every
political association is the conservation of prerogatives, which are
the natural and eternal rights of kings and their supporters, priests
and nobles. . . The liberty of the powerful and the rich consists in
74 Supplément au Manifeste des Princes, Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen, revue, corrigée et augmentée par S.A.S. Monseigneur le duc regnant de Brunswick, 3. Emphasis
original.
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Figure 4 ‘Cas du Manifeste du Duc de Brunswick [The Case of the Brunswick
Manifesto].’ Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The nations are
unidentified, but one can reasonably infer by their attire that they represent Russia,
Britain, the United States and Holland, with the French Republic overhead.
ELIZABETH CROSS
205
being able to freely do anything harmful to the small and helpless. . .
The law is the expression of the will of a single man, the King.75
The National Assembly wanted to respond in a manner becoming of
the French people it represents, and of the constitution it defends.
The law of war authorizes reprisals. An eye-for-an-eye is the law of
the army. [The assembly] could have declared that every enemy
would be treated by us as they would treat us. But we are more just;
the officers, the generals of the armies, the commanders alone are
responsible for the atrocities they order. The poor, ordinary soldiers
are constrained to commit them.80
75
76
77
237.
Ibid., 3-4.
Journal général du département de Pas-de-Calais, no. 11, 4 Aug. 1792, 90.
G. Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution, (Princeton, 1985),
78 M. Edelstein, ‘La Feuille villageoise and rural political modernization,’ in The Press and the
French Revolution, eds H. Chisick, I. Zinguer and O. Elyada (Oxford, 1991), 245.
79 La Feuille villageoise, adressée, chaque semaine, à tous les villages de France, no. 45, 9 Aug.
1792, 453.
80 Ibid. For the text of this decree of the Legislative Assembly: Archives Parlementaires, vol. 47,
359-60.
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Satirically rewriting the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen
symbolized the usurpation of national sovereignty that was seen implicit in the
Manifesto’s most controversial clauses. In other words, Brunswick was seen as
denying French citizens the rights of man. In order to refresh his memory about
the universality of these rights, the Parisian correspondent of the Journal
général du département de Pas-de-Calais wrote that Parisians planned to post
Brunswick a copy of the Declaration in response to his Manifesto.76
The most poignant and articulate defence of international law and the law of
war is to be found in La Feuille villageoise. At this time, while officially
unaffiliated with any particular faction, this paper was progressively leaning
towards the Gironde, eventually to be bought by the Cercle Social.77 However,
unlike the papers discussed thus far, this journal, which was published in Paris,
had a stated mission unlike any other: to educate provincial peasants about the
Revolution. Other revolutionary journals certainly had the same intent of
converting readers to their point of view, but La Feuille villageoise, by seeking
to engage the often neglected inhabitants of the countryside, provides a unique
perspective on how moderate revolutionaries wanted their Revolution to be
viewed by those who likely had formed no definitive political opinions.78
Like Condorcet, La Feuille villageoise condemned the Manifesto as an insult
and a violation of the right of national sovereignty. The editors wrote that if
Brunswick was truly in a position to dictate conventions of warfare, ‘war would
have no more laws, vengeance would have no limits.’79 However, what made
this journal stand out was its discussion of the manner in which the Legislative
Assembly responded to this insult.
206
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
One need not be a fine politician to see the aims of such a manifesto. . .
Give him the satisfaction of violent rioting; let yourselves feel the
anger it provokes, and you will see him, on the field, on the march
and carrying out the operations which this insolent declaration
announces to you. Scorn it, and that is all you have to do.83
Fréron’s measured call to his readership to stifle their resentment and turn
the other cheek seems surprising, for such an ultra left-wing journalist.
The nature of these reactions seems partly explicable because of the way
Prussia, and indeed Brunswick himself, were viewed by Revolutionary groups,
particularly the Girondins. Prussia had looked favorably upon the Revolution in
its early years, calculating that it could make international gains if the young
revolutionary state broke the Franco-Austrian alliance and left the Empire
isolated.84 Even after the Declaration of Pillnitz, at the height of the war debates,
the Brissotins were not only actively praising Prussia, but also remained
resolutely convinced that, if war was declared, Prussia would ally with France
rather than Austria.85 Even as late as 21 July, four days before the Manifesto was
issued at Coblentz, Jean-Louis Carra praised Brunswick as ‘the true restorer of
81
Ibid., 454.
Pétition de citoyens patriotes et constitutionnels (Paris, 1792), 1.
83 L’Orateur du Peuple, vol. 13, no. 41, 288.
84 C. Clark, Iron Kingdom: the Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947 (New York, 2006),
284-5. I am grateful to James R. Martin for providing insights on this point.
85 T. C. W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (New York, 1986), 109-10,
114, 120. The formal alliance of Austria and Prussia that formed the basis of the First Coalition was
not signed until 7 Feb. 1792. Clark, Iron Kingdom, 287.
82
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While Condorcet suggested that the French were surprised and confused by
Brunswick’s unjust conduct, La Feuille villageoise took this to a new level. The
editors argued that the French reaction to the Brunswick Manifesto was a
response worthy of the Revolution itself: anger had been tempered and common
sense had prevailed. The response was not only dignified, but demonstrated
how France had risen above international standards in her conduct. The
response of the Assembly would not only reiterate the revolutionary commitment
to justice, but ‘will mark a new era in history. . .[by] making the horrors of war
fall upon the heads of their true authors,’ establishing conventions of warfare
for years to come.81 The Revolution was thus the defender of justice and legality
as opposed to the allied powers, who sought to disregard both at their own
convenience.
This idea of a ‘worthy response’ to the Brunswick Manifesto reappears in
other sources as well. An anonymous Pétition de Citoyens Patriotes et
Constitutionnels writes that the Manifesto would have been ‘a monument of
vilification to the French name, if it had not been destroyed by a response
worthy of a great and generous nation.’82 This theme also reappeared in an
unlikely source: the radical leftist Louis Fréron’s L’Orateur du Peuple. Fréron
printed the entire text of the Manifesto and appended the following comment:
ELIZABETH CROSS
207
86 S. Lemny, Jean-Louis Carra (1742-1793): parcours d’un révolutionnaire (Paris, 2000), 245.
After the appearance of the Manifesto, Carra’s tune predictably changed, denouncing it as ‘such an
extravagant audacity, one could believe it is only a ploy to force us to change dynasties’. Ibid., 246.
87 Le Moniteur; Réimpression de l’ancien Moniteur depuis la réunion des États-Généraux
jusqu’au Consulat (mai 1789-novembre 1799), vol. 13, 305.
88 E. de Vattel, The Law of Nations, or Principles of the Law of Nature applied to the Conduct
and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, with Three Early Essays on the Origin and Nature of Natural Law and on Luxury, eds B. Kapossy and R. Whatmore (Indianapolis, 2008), 506.
89 Ibid., 547.
90 Ibid., 289.
91 Ibid., 583.
92 Archives Parlementaires, vol. 47, 372.
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European liberty. If he comes to Paris. . . his first move will be to come to the
Jacobins and put on the bonnet rouge.’86 Brunswick himself was thus admired
as an enlightened and benevolent ruler. The Manifesto shattered this perception.
In receiving news of the Manifesto, the Moniteur had nothing but harsh words
for Brunswick, who had sold himself to the émigrés and foreign tyrants, saying
that ‘never has such a great man made himself the instrument of a faction (the
faction of kings).’87 It was frankly disappointing to the revolutionaries who had
admired him to see his signature on an illegal decree.
However, this suggestion that the Brunswick Manifesto was a violation of
accepted military and diplomatic norms merits closer analysis. On the most
basic level, these writers would appear quite right to decry it. Vattel’s Law of
Nations explained that ‘it may be unnecessary to observe, that. . . in
[manifestoes], it is proper to abstain from every opprobrious expression,
indicative of hatred, animosity and rage, and only calculated to excite similar
sentiments in the bosom of the enemy,’ standards which the indelicate tone of
the Brunswick Manifesto would not appear to uphold.88 Vattel also made a
similar remark about the use of threats in war and diplomatic relations,
suggesting that ‘the menace of an unjust punishment is unjust in itself: it is an
insult and an injury.’89 He equally asserted that sovereignty was ‘the most
precious’ right of any nation; other nations must constantly endeavour to
respect it.90 Furthermore, Vattel’s explanation of the conditions for inciting
civilians to surrender without resistance seems particularly relevant, as this was
perhaps the most controversial point in the Manifesto: ‘Seducing a subject to
betray his country. . . persuading [a governor] to deliver up the town intrusted
to his charge, is prompting such persons to commit detestable crimes. . . If such
practices are at all excusable, it can be only in a very just war.’91
The interpretation of ‘just war’ would thus seem to be the lynchpin in this
argument. As previously noted, Brunswick explained in the Manifesto that he
believed he was fighting a just war not only because his own princes had been
insulted, but that he believed that the ‘sane part of the French nation’ was
seeking liberation.92 Dan Edelstein has argued that Vattel’s doctrine cannot be
entirely regarded as the epitome of moderate ‘aristocratic warfare’ as other
scholars such as Bell would argue. Edelstein posits that the droit des gens
‘[contained] within it the seeds of its own destruction’ due to the fact that
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THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
nations could disobey the law to the extent that their opponents did.93 For
instance, Vattel defended the right to exact reprisal, suggesting that if a crime
was committed first by one party, it may be repeated by the other in continuing
retaliation ‘for the purpose of obliging him to observe the laws of war’.94 The
violation of the law of war by the opposing party automatically rendered one’s
own cause just, and in a just conflict, anything was permissible. ‘The whole is
to be deduced from a single principle – from the object of a just war,’ wrote
Vattel, ‘for, when the end is lawful, he who has a right to pursue that end, has,
of course, a right to employ all the means which are necessary for its
attainment.’95
However, Vattel took the contradictory approach of informing the reader
that basically anything was permitted in a just cause, while calling for moderation.
His discussion of another point relevant to the Brunswick Manifesto, the right
of pillage, reflects this dichotomy:
This is pertinent to the threat of the ‘military execution and total destruction’ of
Paris. Paris would have only received this fate had it harmed the royal family,
actions the coalition forces would have seen as ‘barbarous’, and therefore, their
reprisal would have been justified according to prevailing legal norms.
It would seem, therefore, that the threats made in the Brunswick Manifesto
were not necessarily outrageous by eighteenth-century standards. Thus the
outcry against the illegality of the Manifesto can be seen, on the one hand, as a
further attempt by the Girondins in particular to represent the war – a war in
large part of their own making – as just. In this respect, the Girondins did not
change their modus operandi at all, as Brissot and his allies had been calling the
war a just endeavour long before the first shots were fired. It could be argued
that they were setting up a dialogue for total war in the sense Edelstein sees
permissible according to the droit des gens. Declaring the Brunswick Manifesto
a violation of this code theoretically granted them the right of reprisal, and the
right to treat Brunswick as a hostis humani generis.97 This would appear to be
the view postulated in two versions of the same cartoon, entitled ‘Amende
Honorable’ (Figure 5) and ‘Amande[sic] Honorable du Prince de Brunswick, et
93
94
95
96
97
Edelstein, ‘War and Terror’, 231.
Ibid., 242; Vattel, Law of Nations, 545.
Vattel, Law of Nations, 541-2.
Ibid., 570-1.
Edelstein, Terror of Natural Right, 40.
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On certain occasions. . . a country is totally ravaged, towns and
villages are sacked, and delivered up a prey to fire and sword.
Dreadful extremities, even when we are forced into them! Savage
and monstrous excesses, when committed without necessity! [Yet,
they may be authorized through] the necessity of chastising an
unjust and barbarous nation, of checking her brutality, and
preserving ourselves from her depredations.96
ELIZABETH CROSS
‘Amende Honorable.’ Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France,
Paris.
brulure de son Manifeste’ (Figure 6), which showed, in one case, a particularly
ghoulish Brunswick being forced to submit to amende honorable and repent
for his crimes under the threat of violence. Prudhomme’s Révolutions de Paris
agreed with this view. In responding to the Manifesto, he asked his readers: ‘If
[the warring] armies come within our walls, onto our fields, do we not have the
obligation to exterminate their soldiers to the last man, unless they recognize
French sovereignty, & abandon the flags of their tyrants?’98 Thus, some
revolutionary sources clearly believed that the Manifesto authorized reprisals
against the foreign enemy.
Yet many sources explicitly rejected this right of reprisal. The ‘total war’
thesis does not account for the fact that these authors, while defending the
justice of their own cause, insisted instead upon adherence to principles of
moderation and restraint, a kind of revolutionary legality that posited that a
nation committed to justice should not stoop to the levels incited by an agitator
like Brunswick. They argued that his conduct should be ignored, and that the
Revolution should maintain the moral upper hand by behaving as Vattel said
98
Révolutions de Paris, no. 160, 28 July-4 Aug. 1792, 193.
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Figure 5
209
210
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
they should, rather than according to their declared rights. A similar example of
this Girondin attitude could be found in their argument (once again, with
Condorcet as a leading spokesperson) for giving Louis XVI a trial according to
recognizable procedures and law. Condorcet deliberately couched his argument
for a trial in terms not of what the Convention had the right to do, but of what
it should do: ‘You owe it to yourselves, you owe it to mankind, the first example
of the impartial trial of a king.’99 This abnegation of right in favor of principle
bore striking resemblance to the commentary of the Feuille villageoise and
other sources, not least because it also cast the behaviour of the Revolution in
an international light, outlining the basis for a legitimation of revolutionary
conduct within the international community.100
The Brunswick Manifesto was rebuked for its illegality, its disrespect for the
law of war, and its denial of national sovereignty. It was perceived as such an
99 M. Walzer, (ed.), Regicide and Revolution: Speeches at the Trial of Louis XVI, trans. M. Rothstein
(Cambridge, 1974), 156.
100 For an example of how the American revolutionaries tried to call the world to witness their
conduct: D. Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: a Global History (Cambridge, MA, 2007),
33, 66-7.
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Figure 6 ‘Amande[sic] honorable du Prince de Brunswick, et brulure de son
Manifeste [Amende honorable of the Prince of Brunswick, and burning of his
Manifesto.] Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
ELIZABETH CROSS
211
affront to established international law that it could not possibly be authentic.
Commentators similarly hailed the French reaction to this insult as worthy of a
great nation. Girondin sources in particular insisted that France’s conduct be
held up before the world as an example, setting new, more just norms of
international conduct. While these revolutionaries may have been outraged at
Brunswick’s illegal actions, few sources demanded the right to reprisal.
Brunswick may have insulted their dignity, but vengeance was not the order of
the day.
101
C. J. Mitchell, The French Legislative Assembly of 1791 (Leiden, 1988), 232.
F. Furet, ‘Les Girondins et la guerre: les débuts de l’Assemblée législative,’ in La Gironde et
les Girondins, eds F. Furet and M. Ozouf (Paris, 1991), 199-200.
102
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The Brunswick Manifesto has been often placed at the heart of a narrative
arguing that external forces radicalized the Revolution, in this case by driving
the desperate and fearful revolutionaries to overthrow the King. For the
‘circumstance historians’, this makes perfect sense. The Brunswick Manifesto
was the ideal ‘circumstance’: it was a deliberate threat from abroad and its
temporal position on the cusp of the journée of 10 August made it a credible
deus ex machina, as C. J. Mitchell has labeled it.101 In light of the evidence
presented here, however, the Brunswick Manifesto does not seem to have had
the historical significance often attributed to it, by ‘circumstance historians’ or
others. Public opinion on the Brunswick Manifesto was as divided as the political
arena of the day. The radicals who would lead the insurrection of 10 August and
carry the Revolution into its republican phase scarcely even wrote about the
Brunswick Manifesto, being overwhelmingly preoccupied with internal
struggles. In seeking to prove that the Revolution was driven to its extremes by
external forces, circumstances, if they did not already exist, had to be invented.
The Brunswick Manifesto has in a sense become a historiographical event rather
than a historical one.
The Brunswick Manifesto is supposed to have proved collusion between
foreign and internal enemies, and some of the sources examined here
corroborate that conclusion. Yet, even if there was collusion, there is scant
evidence to support the idea that external and internal enemies were treated on
the same ideological plane. The Gazette Universelle accused the far left of
paying too little attention to the war and the foreign enemy; Hébert’s Père
Duchesne fired back that the war was consuming the attention that was needed
to deal with internal enemies. The Gravilliers section demanded the décheance
of the King without mentioning the Brunswick Manifesto, and the Mirabeau
section asserted the patriotic willingness of its men to fight Brunswick and the
Prussians without saying a word about the King. A fundamental divide existed
between the mentalities of different revolutionary groups. Brissot asserted all
along that the foreign confict would resolve internal strife; as Furet noted, his
brilliance in the war debates lay in his raising of ‘the spectre of monarchical
Europe’ to overwhelm the squabbles of the far left.102 The radical left similarly
212
THE MYTH OF THE FOREIGN ENEMY?
103
104
105
S. Wahnich, La Liberté ou la Mort: essai sur la terreur et le terrorisme (Paris, 2003), 44.
Ozouf, ‘War and Terror,’ 284.
Schmitt, Partisan, 89; idem, The Concept of the Political, trans. G. Schwab, (Chicago, 2007),
36.
106
107
Le Père Duchesne, no. 159, 3.
Schmitt, Concept, 36.
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came to insist that resolving the internal conflict would resolve the foreign
conflict.
In radical left sources, the external enemy must therefore be seen as a
secondary priority, if a priority at all. A paradox remains, however. After all,
with the coalition forces closing in, this was probably the moment where the
‘foreign enemy’ did objectively pose the greatest threat to the revolution. And
yet, the solution to every problem facing the nation was, according to the
Gravilliers section, to overthrow the King. When that did not halt the invasion,
and the Prussians reached Verdun, it was decided that one more act of vengeance
needed to be struck against the internal enemies in order to present a united
front against the Prussians; hence the September Massacres.103 Perhaps then
the subsequent victory at Valmy was seen as confirmation of this phenomenon.
For success on the foreign front, the internal enemy had to be dealt with first.
It was almost as if the war and the war effort, at this point in the revolution,
were developing in spite of internal revolutionary dynamics for the radical left.
Mona Ozouf has cogently argued, using evidence from the Moniteur, that war
and terror were far less linked in contemporary political discourse than
historians believe.104 The evidence equally suggests that, at least in the case of
the Brunswick Manifesto, the vicissitudes of internal politics and the
circumstances of the war were largely separate in the eyes of the most radical
Revolutionary figures.
However, there is yet another distinction that stands to be made between the
ways internal and foreign enemies were portrayed. The idea of the enemy is an
alluring one, and it is easy to say that fear and hatred of enemies radicalizes
political discourse. Schmitt, the theorist of ‘absolute enmity’, wrote that the
state of total war, which Bell claims emerged at this time, occurs when ‘[the
war makes the enemy into] a monster that must not only be defeated but also
utterly destroyed. . .[he] no longer must be compelled to retreat into his borders
only.’105 Hébert, however, explicitly states that the left would be content with
the more moderate solution in the case of the foreign enemies; this contrasts
strikingly with his view on internal enemies, who must be ‘exterminated’.106
The foreign enemy was a passive figure who would fall away should the internal
be destroyed. Furthermore, the foreign enemy, except in a handful of sources,
was not really portrayed as an enemy in Schmittian terms of ‘absolute enmity’.
The Duke of Brunswick himself was not dehumanized in Schmitt’s sense of the
‘dehumanization’ of the enemy.107 Brunswick’s principles were rejected and
mocked, sometimes to the point of portraying Brunswick as a buffoon, but this
was not the language of ‘absolute enmity’.
ELIZABETH CROSS
213
108 Brissot, Speech at the Jacobin Club, 30 Dec. 1791, cited in A. Mathiez, La Révolution et les
étrangers: cosmopolitisme et défense nationale (Paris, 1918), 61; Bell, Total War, 116-7, 126.
109 Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, 74.
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Many responses to the Brunswick Manifesto invoked an understanding of
accepted conduct in diplomacy and warfare and criticized the Manifesto’s
contemptuous attitude to international law and national sovereignty. One way
of developing this criticism was to argue that it was too preposterous to be
authentic. By eighteenth-century standards, as set forth by Vattel, the threats in
the Brunswick Manifesto were not exceptional. Thus, in using the law of nations
to rebuke Brunswick for his actions, the Girondins and other revolutionary
writers attempted to express something else. It must be pointed out that the
war was almost entirely the Girondins’ project — cast, as Bell notes, in the
redemptive language of a ‘crusade of universal liberty’ — a fact that makes their
condemnation of the Brunswick Manifesto’s attitude to national sovereignty
particularly ironic.108 The Girondins can thus be seen as using the law of nations
to their own political gain; by claiming that Brunswick had already violated the
droit des gens, France’s war appeared justified, according to the terms laid out
by Vattel. It might be argued, using Edelstein’s radical reading of Vattel, that this
prepared the way for an ideology of total war: if Brunswick had violated the
law, he would now be outside of it and could be regarded as an inhuman enemy.
Several sources do support this conclusion.
Yet, this does not account for the ‘worthy response’ argument seen in the
other Girondin, Feuillant, and even some Montagnard sources. The Feuille
villageoise explicitly argued that revolutionaries were aware of their right to
reprisal under the droit des gens but had abdicated it out of a regard for a higher
justice. While Furet claimed that the ‘Revolution has no legality, only a
legitimacy’, in some degree it seems as if the Girondins in particular did articulate
a revolutionary conception of legality, founded upon principles of moderation
and restraint in the face of incitements to reprisal.109 In many ways, this would
be echoed by Condorcet’s call during the trial of the King to set vengeance
aside and uphold an example of justice for the world.
The foreign war has and always will form a key part of our understanding of
the revolutionary trajectory. However, even with the thèse des circonstances
decidedly on the retreat, its role in the events of the summer of 1792 continues
to be overestimated. The Brunswick Manifesto is but a single example, but there
is certainly evidence to suggest that radical attention at this time was so
exclusively focused on the elimination of internal threats that even the most
deliberate provocations from abroad could be, in large part, ignored, even by
those who could have further exploited this event for their own political
motives. Problematic as the role of the ‘foreign enemy’ may be, it of course
remains an important part of how we understand the course of the Revolution.
Nonetheless, following Hébert, we should think more carefully perhaps about
who exactly the revolutionaries had in mind when they proclaimed la patrie est
en danger.