ONE

When the Revolution first approached action, the prospect of a war

between France and any other great Power of the time--England, Prussia,

the Empire, or let us say Russia, or even Spain--was such a prospect as

might have been entertained at any time during the past two or three

generations of men.

For pretty well a hundred years men had been accustomed to the

consideration of dynastic quarrels supported by a certain type of army,

which in a moment I shall describe.

I have called these quarrels dynastic; that is, they were mainly

quarrels between the ruling houses of Europe: were mainly motived by

the desire of each ruling house to acquire greater territory and

revenue, and were limited by the determination of all the ruling houses

to maintain certain ideas inviolate, as, for instance, the sacredness of

monarchy, the independence of individual States, etc. Though they were

in the main dynastic, yet in proportion as a dynasty might represent a

united nation, they were national also. The English oligarchy was in

this respect peculiar and more national than any European Government of

its time. It is also true to say that the Russian despotism had behind

it, in most of its military adventures and in all its spirit of

expansion, the subconscious agreement of the people.

Still, however national, the wars of the time preceding the Revolution

moved within a fixed framework of ideas, as it were, which no commander

and no diplomatist dreamed of exceeding. A, the crowned head of a State,

would have some claims against B, the crowned head of another State,

with regard to certain territories. C, the crowned head or Government of

a third State, would remain neutral or ally himself with either of the

two; if he allied himself, then, as a rule, it was with the weaker

against the stronger, in order to guarantee himself against too great an

increase on the part of a rival. Or, again, a rebellion would break out

against the power of A in some part of his dominions; then would B,

somewhat reluctantly (as the almost unlimited right of an existing

executive was still a strong dogma in men’s minds), tend to ally

himself with the rebels in order to diminish the power of A.

Human affairs have always in them very strongly and permanently

inherent, the character of a sport: the interest (at any rate of males)

in the conduct of human life is always largely an interest of seeing

that certain rules are kept, and certain points won, according to those

rules. We must, therefore, beware of ridiculing the warfare of the

century preceding the Revolution under the epithet of “a game.” But it

is true of that warfare, and honourably true, that it attempted limited

things in a limited manner; it did not attempt any fundamental change in

society; it was not overtly--since the Thirty Years’ War at least--a

struggle of ideas; it was conducted on behalf of known and limited

interests for known and highly limited objects, and the instruments with

which it was conducted were instruments artificial and segregated from

the general life of nations.

These instruments were what have been called the “professional” armies.

The term is very insufficient, and, in part, misleading. The gentry of

the various Powers, mixed with whom were certain adventurers not always

of gentle blood, were the officers that led these forces; and for the

major part of the gentry in most European countries, the military career

was the chief field of activity. The men whom they led were not a

peasantry nor a working class, still less a civic force in which the

middle class would find itself engaged: they were the poorest and the

least settled, some would have said the dregs of European life. With the

exception here and there of a man--usually a very young man whom the

fabled romance of this hard but glorious trade had attracted--and with

the exception of certain bodies that followed in a mass and by order the

relics of a feudal lordship, the armies of the period immediately

preceding the Revolution were armies of very poor men, who had sold

themselves into a sort of servitude often exciting and even adventurous,

but not, when we examine it minutely, a career that a free man would

choose. The men were caught by economic necessity, by fraud, and in

other ways, and once caught were held. No better proof of this could be

found than the barbarous severity of the punishments attached to

desertion, or to minor forms of indiscipline. So held, they were used

for the purposes of the game, not only in what would make them

serviceable instruments of war, but also in what would make them

pleasing to their masters. Strict alignment, certain frills of parade

and appearance, all that is required in a theatre or in a pretentious

household, appear in the military regulations of the time.

I must not in all this be supposed to be belittling that great period

between 1660 and 1789, during which the art of war was most thoroughly

thought out, the traditions of most of our great European armies fixed,

and the permanent military qualities which we still inherit developed.

The men so caught as private soldiers could not but enjoy the game when

it was actively played, for men of European stock will always enjoy the

game of war; they took glory in its recital and in its memories; to be a

soldier, even under the servile conditions of the time, was a proper

subject for pride, and it is further to be remarked that the excesses of

cruelty discoverable in the establishment of their discipline were also

accompanied by very high and lasting examples of military virtue. The

behaviour of the English contingents at Fontenoy afford but one of many

examples of what I mean.

Still, to understand the wars of the Revolution we must clearly

establish the contrast between the so-called professional armies which

preceded that movement and the armies which the Revolution invented,

used, and bequeathed to the modern world.

So also, to revert to what was said above, we must recall the dynastic

and limited character of the wars in which the eighteenth century had

been engaged; at the outbreak of the Revolution no other wars were

contemplated by men.

Had you spoken, for instance, at any moment in 1789, to a statesman,

whether of old experience or only introduced to political life by the

new movement, of the position of Great Britain, he would at once have

discussed that position in the terms of Great Britain’s recent defeat at

the hands of France in the affair of the American colonies. Had you

discussed with him the position of Prussia he would at once have argued

it in connection with Prussia’s secular opposition to Austria and the

Empire. Had you asked him how he considered Spain, he would have spoken

of the situation of Spain as against France in the light of the fact

that Spain was a Bourbon monarchy allied in blood to the French throne.

And so forth. No true statesman imagined at the time, nor, indeed, for

many years, that a war of _ideas_, nor even, strictly speaking, of

_nations_, was possible. Even when such a war was actually in process of

waging, the diplomacy which attempted to establish a peace, the

intrigues whereby alliances were sought, or neutrality negotiated, were

dependent upon the older conception of things; and the historian is

afforded, as he regards this gigantic struggle, the ironic satisfaction

of seeing men fighting upon doctrines the most universal conceivable and

yet perpetually changing their conduct during the struggle according to

conceptions wholly particular, local and ephemeral, and soon to be

entirely swept away by time.

Napoleon himself must needs marry an Austrian archduchess as part of

this old prejudice, and for years brains as excellent as Danton’s or

Talleyrand’s conjecture the possibility of treating now England, now

Prussia, as neutral to the vast attempt of the French to destroy

privilege in European society!

One may say that for two years the connection of the revolutionary

movement with arms had no aspect save that of civil war. True, whenever

a considerable change is in progress in society the possibility of

foreign war in connection with it must always arise. Were some European

State, for instance, to make an experiment in Collectivism to-day, the

chance of foreign intervention would certainly be discussed by the

promoters of that experiment. But no serious danger of an armed struggle

between the French and any of their neighbours in connection with the

political experiment of the Revolution was imagined by the mass of

educated men in France itself nor without the boundaries of France

during those first two years. And, I repeat, the military aspect of

those years was confined to civil tumult. Nevertheless, that aspect is

not to be neglected. The way in which the French organised their civil

war (and there was always something of it present from the summer of

1789 onwards) profoundly affected the foreign war that was to follow:

for in their internal struggles great masses of Frenchmen became

habituated to the physical presence, millions to the discussion, of

arms.

It is, as we have seen in another part of this book, a repeated and

conspicuous error to imagine that the first revolutionary outbreaks were

not met sufficiently sternly by royal troops. On the contrary, the royal

troops were used to the utmost and were defeated. The populace of the

large towns, and especially of Paris, proved itself capable of military

organisation and of military action. When to this capacity had been

added the institution of the militia called the National Guard, there

were already the makings of a nation wholly military.

Much in this exceptional and new position must be ascribed to the Gallic

character. It may be said that from the fall of the Roman Empire to the

present day that character has been permanently and of its own volition

steeped in the experience of organised fighting. Civil tumult has been

native to it, the risk of death in defence of political objects has been

equally familiar, and the whole trade of arms, its necessary

organisation, its fatigues and its limiting conditions, have been very

familiar to the population throughout all these centuries. But beyond

this the fact that the Revolution prepared men in the school of civil

tumult was of the first advantage for its later aptitude against foreign

Powers.

It is always well in history to fix a definite starting-point for any

political development, and the starting-point of the revolutionary wars

may easily be fixed at the moment when Louis, his queen and the royal

children attempted to escape to the frontier and to the Army of the

Centre under the command of Bouillé. This happened, as we have seen, in

June 1791.

Many factors combine to make that date the starting-point. In the first

place, until that moment no actual proof had been apparent in the eyes

of European monarchs of the captivity of their chief exemplar, the king

of France.

The wild march upon Versailles, in the days of October 1789, had its

parallel in a hundred popular tumults with which Europe was familiar

enough for centuries. But the rapidly succeeding reforms of the year

1790, and even the great religious blunder of 1791, had received the

signature and the public assent of the Crown. The Court, though no

longer at Versailles, was splendid, the power of the King over the

Executive still far greater than that of any other organ in the State,

and indefinitely greater than that of any other individual in the State.

The talk of captivity, of insult and the rest, the outcries of the

emigrants and the perpetual complaint of the French royal family in its

private relations, seemed exaggerated, or at any rate nothing to act

upon, until there came the shock of the King’s attempted flight and

recapture. This clinched things; and it clinched them all the more

because more than one Court, and especially that of Austria, believed

for some days that the escape had been successful.

Again, the flight and its failure put the army into a ridiculous

posture. Action against the Revolution was never likely, so long as the

discipline and steadiness of the French army were believed in abroad.

But the chief command had hopelessly failed upon that occasion, and it

was evident that the French-speaking troops could not easily be trusted

by the Executive Government or by their own commanders. Furthermore, the

failure of the flight leads the Queen, with her vivacity of spirit and

her rapid though ill-formed plans, to turn for the first time to the

idea of military intervention. Her letters suggesting this (in the form

of a threat rather than a war, it is true) do not begin until after her

capture at Varennes.

Finally, coincident with that disaster was the open mention of a

Republic, the open suggestion that the King should be deposed, and the

first definite and public challenge to the principles of monarchy which

the Revolution had thrown down before Europe.

We are, therefore, not surprised to find that this origin of the

military movement was followed in two months by the Declaration of

Pillnitz.

With the political nature of that Declaration one must deal elsewhere.

Its military character must here be observed.

The Declaration of Pillnitz corresponded as nearly as possible to what

in the present day would be an order preparatory to mobilising a certain

proportion of the reserve. It cannot with justice be called equivalent

to an order _calling out_ all the reserves, still less equivalent to an

order mobilising upon a war footing the forces of a modern nation, for

such an action is tantamount to a declaration of war (as, for instance,

was the action of the English Government before the South African

struggle), and Pillnitz was very far from that. But Pillnitz was

certainly as drastic a military proceeding as would be the public

intimation by a group of Powers that the reserves had been warned in

connection with their quarrel against another Power. It was, for

instance, quite as drastic as the action of Austria against Servia in

1908. And it was intended to be followed by such submission as is

expected to follow upon the threat of superior force.

Such was the whole burden of Marie Antoinette’s letters to her brother

(who had called the meeting at Pillnitz), and such was the sense in

which the politicians of the Revolution understood it.

All that autumn and winter the matter chiefly watched by foreign

diplomatists and the clearest of French thinkers was the condition of

the French forces and of their command. Narbonne’s appointment to the

War Office counted more than any political move, Dumouriez’ succession

to him was the event of the time. Plans of campaign were drawn up (and

promptly betrayed by Marie Antoinette to the enemy), manifold occasions

for actual hostilities were discovered, the Revolution challenged the

Emperor in the matter of the Alsatian princes, the Emperor challenged,

through Kaunitz, the Revolution in a letter directly interfering with

the internal affairs of France, and pretending to a right of _ingérence_

therein; and on the 20th of April, 1792, war was declared against the

Empire. Prussia thereupon informed the French Government that she made

common cause with the Emperor, and the revolutionary struggle had begun.

The war discovered no serious features during its first four months: so

slow was the gathering and march of the Allies; but the panics into

which the revolutionary troops fell in the first skirmishes, their lack

of discipline, and the apparent breakdown of the French military power,

made the success of the Invasion in Force, when it should come, seem

certain. The invading army did not cross the frontier until more than a

week after the fall of the palace. Longwy capitulated at once; a week

later, in the last days of August, the great frontier fortress of Verdun

was summoned. It capitulated almost immediately.