416 Chapter XVII
ton, Alexander Hamilton, the Dutch Cornelius de Pauw and his nephew J. B.
Cloots, called Anacharsis Cloots, a rich baron from the duchy of Cleves, near the
Dutch frontier, who had been in Paris for several years, gathering a circle of mis-
cellaneous foreign radicals about him. The American Joel Barlow, in addition, was
given honorary citizenship in the following February.
It may seem a mystery how the name of Alexander Hamilton ever got on this
list, and even more of a mystery why Thomas Jefferson was omitted, since he was
better known in Paris than almost anyone whose name was adopted, having spent
five years in France before September 1789. On reflection, there is perhaps no
mystery at all. Perhaps the Assembly, less erratic than it seems, understood the
qualifications of Hamilton and Jefferson for honorary French citizenship, as of
1792, better than modern Americans who look back through various veils of illu-
sion. If the deputies knew that Hamilton mixed in banking and commercial circles
they need not have been deterred; after all, the Belgian banker Walkiers, and the
Dutch bankers Abbema and Kock, were at this very moment, as refugees from
their own countries, pleading with the French to assist them in revolutions in Bel-
gium and Holland. As for Jefferson, when in France he had been close to Lafay-
ette; and Lafayette, unable to reverse the events in Paris, had only a week before
surrendered voluntarily to the Austrians. It made sense for the French in August
1792 to suppose that Hamilton might be better disposed than Jefferson to the
Revolution. Events in the United States had not yet gone far enough to teach
them the contrary. In any case, it was chiefly as authors of the Federalist, recently
translated into French, that Hamilton and Madison were included.
Priestley, Paine, and Cloots, since they now enjoyed citizenship, were elected in
several departments to be members of the coming Convention. Priestley declined,
prudently emigrating to the United States instead. Paine and Cloots both sat in
the convention. Paine found his political friends among people like Condorcet and
Brissot, with whom he shared the idea of universal revolution. Cloots continued to
associate with the Dutch and other revolutionary exiles, and with radical journal-
ists like Hébert, who held no national office, and who continued to demand war
upon tyrants wherever found. Both the Brissot group and the Hébert group, the
two spearheads in French politics of international revolutionism, were eventually
outmaneuvered by Robespierre, who had Paine imprisoned and Cloots executed in
1793–1794.
The “legions” of various national groups, organized in 1792, allow another in-
sight into the international revolutionary spirit. Refugees from abroad asked to
form military units to fight alongside the French. Hardly had the war begun, in
April, when the French Assembly, foreseeing an advance into the Austrian Neth-
erlands, authorized a Belgian- Liègeois Legion, to which it granted six million
livres. Two such legions were formed. They both fought with Dumouriez, and ac-
companied him on his entry into Brussels in November 1792. A Dutch or Bata-
vian legion was authorized in July. Within the next few weeks, under similar pres-
sure of foreign revolutionaries in Paris, other similar “legions” were organized: an
Allobrogian Legion for Savoyards and Swiss, and a Germanic Legion which had a
thousand men by the end of 1792. There was even a shadowy English Legion,
raised by John Oswald, who was killed in the Vendée in 1793. A proposal by an