In contrast to the prevailing historiographical consensus, this
essay will seek to
demonstrate that there was a widespread and persistent concern with
foreign policy in the early years
of the French Revolution, the product of the interplay between
inherited diplomatic assumptions on the
one hand and revolutionary politics and values on the other. In
particular, it will show how and why
public opinion in France after 1789 abandoned its pre-revolutionary
concern with Britain, Russia, and
the global balance of commercial power in favour of Austria, the
émigrés, and the security of the
frontiers. In this light, considerable attention will be given to
the development of Austrophobia in the
period. Rooted in traditional French distrust of the Habsburg dynasty
and reinforced by widespread
opposition to the Austrian alliance of 1756, this would find its
most virulent expression in the popular
myth of a sinister counter-revolutionary ‘Austrian committee’
headed by Marie-Antoinette. The
argument of the essay will turn upon the links between the emergence of
that myth and the
popularization of the ideas of Louis XV's unofficial diplomacy –
the
secret du roi – and its
outspoken apologist Jean-Louis Favier. Adopted by various disciples after
his death in 1784, Favier's
ideas gained in popularity as the menace of counter-revolutionary
invasion – aroused in particular by
the emperor's reoccupation of the Austrian Netherlands in July 1790
– began to dominate the popular
forums of revolutionary politics. They would ultimately help to generate
a political climate in which
the Brissotins could engineer an almost universally popular declaration
of war against Austria less
than two years after the revolutionaries had declared peace and
friendship to the entire world. From
this perspective, the growth of Austrophobia between 1789 and 1792
and its profound influence on the
development of revolutionary foreign policy might usefully be described
as the triumph of ‘Favier's heirs’.
Aloysius Huber and May 15, 1848