Oxforduniversity, Department for Continuing Education

OXFORDUNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION

Coursework Handbook[1]

The First War on Terror?

Revolutionary France and the British Response

Preliminary Formative Exercise

Answer 1 document exercise in c. 500 words. Document will be discussed in class beforehand. Written responses should be handed in by week 6.

Final Summative Exercise

Please pick one of the options below as a final exercise. Completed answers should be handed in to me by the end of the course if possible and should be c.1500 words in total. If you would like to discuss any of the options with me before making your decision, please do.Here are the options:

EITHER

A. Document exercises. Answer 3 exercises, from the 5 shown below. Each answer should be about 500 words long. We will look through documents in class, time permitting.

B. An Essay. Choose 1 essay, from the titles listed below. The essay should be about 1500 words long.If you pick this option, please prepare a brief one-page plan to hand in and discuss with me before the end of term.

Preliminary Formative Exercise

Answer the following document exercise in c. 500 words. Please hand in your response by week 6.Consider the following points in your answer:

What is the significance, if any, of the context of the source or sources?
What is the key message of each source?
How does the source or sources add to our understanding of the period?
What are the positives and negatives of these sources for historians?

1. Ancien Regime France

Arthur Young,Travels in France, 1787-9

To Montauban. The poor people seem poor indeed; the children terribly ragged - if possible, worse clad than if with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings, they are luxuries. A beautiful girl of six or seven years playing with a stick, and smiling under such a bundle of rags as made my heart ache to see her. They did not beg, and when I gave them anything seemed more surprised than obliged.

One third of what I have seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states to answer for their prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious, idle and starving through the execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.

‘Le Tiers-État portant le Clergé et la Noblesse sur son dos’, Anon 1780s

Final SummativeExercise

A. Document Exercises:

Overleaf you will find a collection of sources for each of 4 topics:

1. The Constitutional Monarchy

2. The Terror

3. Burke, Paine and the Early Debate

4. The Media War

Please pick 3 out of the 4topicsand analyse the sources for each of them, writing about 500 words per topic (1500 in total).

Consider the following points in your answer:

What is the significance, if any, of the context of the sources?
What is the key message of each source?
How do the sources add to our understanding of the period?
What are the positives and negatives of these sources for historians?

The French Revolution

1. The Constitutional Monarchy

Le Journal Politique National, 1790, no.8 pp 83-85

‘Paris has never merited the name of capital more than today: it raised the standard and the whole kingdom fell in behind it: it took for itself the name ‘patrie’, its town hall called itself ‘the nation’ and this insolent sophism has aroused no-one’s indignation. Paris absorbs all the state’s revenues, it holds in its hands all the branches of authority... The National Assembly, in raising Paris, might well have been able to topple the throne, but it cannot save a single citizen... The time will come, and that time is not far off, when the National Assembly will say to the civil army: ‘You have saved me from authority but who will save me from you?’... If a flock of sheep summons tigers to save it from the dogs, who will be able to save it from its new defenders...How do you reply in fact to an armed people who say to you: ‘I am master?’...

When authority has been overthrown, its power passes inevitably to the lowest classes of society since basically it is there that the executive power resides in all its fullness. Such is the state of France today and of the capital.’

Outbreak of War with Austria and Prussia April 1792: The Assembly’s Declaration

The National Assembly declares that the French nation, faithful to the principles enshrined in the Constitution ‘not to undertake any war with a view to maintaining conquest and never to direct its forces against the liberty of the people’ is only taking up arms in defence of its liberty and independence; that the war it is obliged to conduct is not a war of nation against nation but the just defence of a free people.

Robespierre, Speech to the Jacobin Club, July 1792

‘The State must be saved by whatever means, and nothing is unconstitutional except what can lead it to ruin’

2. The Terror

Decree Setting up a Committee of Public Safety, April 1793

There will be established a Committee of Public Safety made up of nine members of the Convention. This Committee will deliberate in secret. It will be charged with overseeing and speeding up the work of administration entrusted to the council of ministers.

In case of urgent need it is authorized to undertake measures of domestic and foreign defence and decrees signed by a majority of its members in consultation, which must not be less than two-thirds of the total, shall be carried out without delay. The Committee will prepare each week a general report on its operations and on the state of the Republic.

Robert Linder, Montagnard, Letter to his electors, June 1793

‘The Committee of Public Safety was made responsible for seeking out the authors of the plots denounced by the various Paris deputations, and report on them.

On 1 June a deputation from the department of Paris and the Commune demanded a decree accusing the [Girondin] deputies. After discussion the petition was sent on to the Committee of Public Safety. Next day the National Convention decreed the arrest of thirty-two of its members.’

Collot-d’Herbois, CPS member, letter to a colleague on the repression of revolts in Lyon, 1793

‘We have revitalized justice in republican style i.e. swift and terrible as the will of the nation. It will strike at traitors like a thunderbolt and leave only ashes. The destruction of one vile and rebellious city will strengthen all others...

The people’s blade cut the heads off twenty conspirators each day and it did not frighten them... Sixty four of these conspirators were shot yesterday on the same spot where they fired on patriots: two hundred and thirty will fall today.

Such substantial examples will help to persuade those cities which are vacillating.’

The British Response:

3. Burke, Paine &the initial debate

Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, 1789

Be encouraged all ye friends of freedom, and writers in its defence! The times are auspicious. Your labours have not been in vain. Behold kingdoms admonished by you, starting from sleep, breaking their fetters, and claiming justice from their oppressors! Behold, the light you have struck out, after setting AMERICA free, reflected to FRANCE, and there kindled into a blaze that lays despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates EUROPE!

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790

It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means the most absurd and ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and, apparently, by the most contemptible instruments.

Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the mind — alternate contempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears; alternate scorn and horror.

‘The Rightsof Man...’,Gillray, 1791

4. The Media War

The Star, July 1791

At the Crown Tavern, on Thursday sen’night, was celebrated the Anniversary of the French Revolution. The meeting was composed of the most opulent and respectable Gentleman, and appeared to want nothing to heighten the festivity and complete the happiness of the day...

Most of the lower class of people were extremely quiet and with good humour partook of a supper prepared for them... Such was the good order and decorum preserved in this little town.

The Morning Chronicle, September, 1792

Can we go with confidence to meet the enemy, and leave traitors in existence behind us?" —"Let us cut the throats of every traitor!"

Such was the horrid proposition made in the Assembly of the Federates, in the Hall of the Jacobins! —Such were the exclamations of the mob that crowded the streets! The blood freezes in our veins while we relate the effects of this monstrous proposition. The mind revolts.... as a horrible calumny on our common nature, but truth demands the sad and shocking reality.

... The feelings of our Readers will have no need of commentary on this heart-rending scene. The history of man does not furnish its parallel.

The Times, September, 1796

The Anglo-French writers in this country labour hard to transfuse into the minds of their readers the admiration which they feel, or affect to feel, for the moderation shown by the French... They endeavour to ennoble the cause of these deprecators, these destroyers of all religious worship, by insinuating that a moderate, regular and honourable system has superseded the disorganising principles of Terrorism... we must be convinced that the French Government still continues to wage war against every opposer of its levelling system; that universal Regicism remains still the object of all its enterprises and that the injunction to revolutionise and Jacobinise the whole world still forms the chief instruction given to the agents of that Government...

This fact... is more real than all the flattering pictures of French moderation, drawn by our Anglo-Jacobin writers, whose honourable avocation it is, to stimulate the people to insurrection

B. Essay Titles

Please choose ONE question and write about 1500 words:

1. How far was Britain affected by the French Revolution and why?

(Here are some of the points you might want to think about in writing your essay: What was the nature of the French revolutionary threat? How far was it real or imagined? Were the effects long or short term?)

2. Choose oneprominent British figure during the period, and consider the following question:

In what ways did they help shape British attitudesduring the revolutionary eraand why?

(Here are some of the figures you might want to consider, though the list is by no means exclusive! Pitt the Younger; Charles James Fox; King George III; Prince George; Burke; Paine; James Gillray.In your answer think about the following points whenwriting your essay: what role or position did they hold? In what ways did they help to shape political culture? How were they perceived both at the time and now?)

3. What role did propaganda play in Anglo-French relations during the 1790s and why?

(Here are some of the points you might want to think about in writing your essay:What kinds of propaganda were produced? Who or what were the intended audience? How effectively was the message conveyed?)