The Revolutionary Wars

The revolutionary wars that were to transform the whole of Europe over the next twenty years broke out in 1792.

Their origins lay in the decisions of that August night of 1789. By those decisions the feudal privileges of German Imperial estates, which had large possessions in Alsace, were also removed at a stroke, although the injured Imperial estates could claim that their feudal rights had been guaranteed by international treaty at the time of France’s annexation of Alsace.

The French National Assembly, however, had no intention of acting provocatively. They could obviously not think of preserving for the German Junkers and priests what they had wrenched away from the French nobility and clergy, particularly since the very abolition of feudal dues, services and statute labour effectively welded Alsace to France. They declared themselves willing, however, to pay any financial compensation, so nothing could have been easier than to solve this international conflict. If this did not come about, it is entirely the fault of the German Imperial estates in Alsace, who insisted on the unrealizable claim that all their feudal rights should be restored.

They found ready helpers in the German dwarf despots, who now tried in their own way to kick against the pricks of the French revolution. In particular the ecclesiastical princes of the Rhineland, contrary to all international law, permitted the mob of emigrés that had fled from the revolution in France, to arm on German soil for a war against those who had expelled them. Even if these preparations were not dangerous, they still outraged French national feeling, all the more since the French King, and particularly the Queen, who was an Austrian Princess , tried through unpatriotic intrigues to incite foreign powers to an armed attack on France. So when, in the summer of 1791, the royal pair even made an unsuccessful attempt to escape, an elemental wave of agitation broke out in France. It was assumed, not incorrectly, that the King had intended to return to France at the head of a foreign army and restore the absolute monarchy. From then on he had to suffer the most painful humiliations.

Thus the great powers in Germany were mobilized, in their front rank the German Emperor, Leopold II, a brother of the French Queen. There was King Frederick William II of Prussia, too, who had at first flirted with the French revolution, and even formed secret links with the democratic party of the National Assembly through his ambassador in Paris – not out of enthusiasm for the aims of the revolution, but out of jealous and malicious pleasure at the misfortunes of the French monarchy, in the attempt to bring the pot of Hohenzollern dynastic policy to the boil on the fire of the revolution. But as soon as he saw that this fire permitted no liberties to be taken, he fell into the opposite mood and played the knight-errant, riding out with his rusty lance against the revolutionary dragon. Nevertheless, all the sabre-rattling with which the Austrian Emperor and the Prussian King entertained themselves had as yet no very serious intent. But now the lust for war also grew in the Paris National Assembly, which had been newly elected in the autumn of 1791 and was dominated by the Girondins, a republican bourgeois party whose main base was the trading towns of South Western France and which was very dissatisfied with the growing authority of the Parisian Jacobins. They stoked up the warlike mood that the German challenge had aroused in the French nation with the intention and hope of directing the most active elements of the petty-bourgeois and proletarian population away from the hot-bed of revolution into the war, and thus of getting rid of them. On March 1, 1792, they forced the King to declare war on the German Emperor.

The ultimate responsibility for the war lay neither upon the one side nor upon the other; the deepest origins of the revolutionary wars were rooted in the fact that a bourgeois and a feudal Europe could not exist side by side without at some time or another, for one reason or another, getting getting at cross purposes. As long as only the French monarchy was threatened, the other monarchies, above all the Prussian, looked on their hated rival’s difficulties with a certain malicious pleasure. But the ‘reactionary mass’ of them started to come together when the painful humiliations that the French King suffered because of his unpatriotic activities pointed to a danger that threatened all European thrones. At first the feudal powers had overwhelming superiority on their side, but, historically outmoded and rotten as they were, they were much too consumed by mutual hatred and envy to be able to close ranks and march against the common enemy. They were more interested in securing their share of the spoils of victory than in victory itself. They wanted to divide the bearskin among themselves before they had even killed the bear; so Prussia and Austria watched each other, growling softly like two suspicious carnivores, when, in July, they set about their first joint assault on revolutionary France.

This was immediately revealed for the wretched feudal adventure which it was when the Prussian army commander, the Duke of Brunswick, issued a war manifesto that promised to raze Paris to the ground. This brazen threat aroused a storm in the French nation down to the last man. In Strasburg the immortal strains of the Marseillaise rang out for the first time, calling all citizens to arms; before the Prussian army had reached the frontier of France, the French Monarchy was abolished on August 10, 1792, and the King and his family imprisoned. The Prussian army did actually penetrate into France, but hesitated and turned away when, at Valmy, it met forces able to offer serious resistance, although it was still far superior to them. It lost half its men to the deep mud of Champagne, to the harsh autumn weather and epidemics before it arrived back on the Rhine in complete disorganization.

In France, however, after the fall of the monarchy, the National Convention was elected. From then on it was the sole sovereign power, which with unparalleled energy, released all the resources of the nation to destroy the traitor within and the enemy without. It put the guilty King on trial and, on January 21, 1793, had him executed. By means of the Red Terror it held down all the reactionary feudal elements, and by means of mass conscription it held in check the hostile armies which, in 1793, almost the whole of Europe sent against the young republic. The feudal armies’ technical military superiority was balanced by new tactics developed by the French volunteers. They were workers, peasants and craftsmen fighting for their own vital interests who, unlike the mercenary armies, did not have to be driven into battle with blows, kept together in closed camps, and supplied from depots. They could advance rapidly, fight in scattered ranks and attack on any terrain. They could maintain their own supplies by obtaining food directly from the people, and mass desertions, that cancer of all mercenary armies, were completely foreign to them.

These new tactics enabled the French revolution successfully to withstand feudal Europe. Fatally exhausted, the Prussian state was the first to quit the mighty struggle. When, on April 5, 1795, it made its peace with the French Republic at Basle, it was already in complete dissolution and morally and materially equally bankrupt.

In this treaty the Prussian state betrayed its feudal allies, particularly the Austrians. It gave up any claim to its possessions on the left bank of the Rhine, which had already been taken by the French, but made sure that, should a general peace be signed, it would receive some compensation. What was more, it was the unspoken assumption of both sides that the ecclesiastical states of the right bank of the Rhine were to be seized for that purpose. Finally, a so-called demarcation line was drawn in the Peace of Basle, which enclosed northern and central Germany. The French promised to respect this line if, for their part, the German states it circumscribed would observe strict neutrality.

The Prussian state was the first member of the feudal coalition against revolutionary France to run out of breath. It withdrew from great world affairs to carry on a semblance of life under the shield of a cowardly neutrality, hated and scorned by all. After a short struggle against the revolution, which the other feudal powers were able to sustain a good while longer, it was utterly finished, intellectually and morally, financially and militarily.