422 Chapter XVII
Ségur went home, and Genet became chargé. He thought he saw signs in Russia
that the liberating new modern spirit would soon be felt. The court nobles seemed
to be full of it; they were fascinated when Ségur showed them his American Order
of Cincinnatus, and expressed great interest in France. The two Grand Dukes, Al-
exander and Constantine, were considered to be sympathetic. They were still under
the care of their Swiss tutor, F. C. La Harpe, who was instilling in them the ideas
of the Western Enlightenment, and whose first cousin was a general in the French
army. The great Russian landowner Stroganov, said to own 10,000 serfs, when in
Paris with his French tutor, had even been a registered member of the Jacobin
Club. Genet expected something to happen in Russia, without knowing what: a
palace revolution, a guards’ revolt, a move patronized by the Grand Dukes, a serf
uprising, or a Cossack rebellion.
After the interception of Louis XVI at Varennes in 1791, Catherine II forbade
Genet to appear at her court and imposed censorship on news from France. Genet
continued to justify the French Revolution in an increasingly hostile environment.
More determined than ever he took to hiring spies, and on July 19, 1792, was or-
dered out of Russia.^31
Returning to France in October, he mixed with people like Condorcet, Brissot,
Paine, the Rolands, Dumouriez and Lebrun. He was almost immediately ap-
pointed minister to the Hague, to which however he never went. The Dutch exiles,
preparing their plans for revolution, were told by Lebrun to maintain secret con-
tact with Genet in Paris. Genet therefore spent several weeks in close touch with
real revolutionaries who expected at any moment to return to Holland. On Octo-
ber 28, meeting with the Batavian Revolutionary Committee, he expressed “entire
approval” of its plans and organization. He was then sent on a brief mission to the
republic of Geneva, where the old conflict between democratic and patrician par-
ties was brought to a crisis by the operation of French armies in neighboring
Savoy. At Geneva Genet was thought very conciliatory. Late in November he was
appointed minister to the United States.^32
When he arrived in America, in April 1793, he therefore brought with him a
sense of the supra- national conflict of 1792, at a time when in Paris itself it was
already abating. For Genet it was not new to be hailed by foreign democrats as
their champion, or to have them request French sponsorship for special military
formations. He thought he understood, from experience, the real significance of
the emerging Federalists and Republicans in America; and he had reason to be-
lieve that governments hostile to the French Revolution did not really represent
their own peoples.
Let us summarize this chapter, and venture one new thought. The French Revolu-
tion was revolutionized in 1792 by the war, through the simultaneous eruption of
31 For Genet in Russia I am indebted to my former student, Mr. W. L. Blackwell, who has exam-
ined Russian as well as French sources.
32 For Genet and the Dutch, see Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken, I, 44, 184–91; at Geneva, H.
Fazy, Genève de 1788 à 1792: la fin d ’un régime (Geneva, 1917), 478–81; in Russia, Chapter X X below;
in the United States, Chapter X X XI.