Revolutionizing of the Revolution 423
popular and of international revolutionism. Some of the constructive efforts of the
Revolution of 1789, notably the constitutional monarchy, were swept aside. In this
crisis of invasion and imminent counter- revolution, the “people” took over in de-
fault of everyone else. Given the fact of war, the leaders of the Revolution in France
made concessions to more popular elements. And given the fact of war, the poten-
tial revolutionaries of other countries hoped for French aid. The French Revolution
could no longer be a mainly middle- class or an exclusively French affair.
The Jacobins in France—that is, the predominantly middle- class revolutionaries
who had some capacity for leadership and for government—reacted to popular
and to international revolutionism in various ways. The idea of world revolution
was no mere “Girondist” crusade or propagandistic dream. People of all kinds, as
someone said in 1793, wanted to strangle the last king in the entrails of the last
priest. But there is some evidence to suggest that some Jacobins saw popular and
international revolutionism as alternatives. Those who could work most effectively
with popular revolution in France, those who could go along with the lower classes
of their own country, were the least inclined to befriend the revolutionists from
foreign parts. These included men like Robespierre, who were to govern France
during the Terror. Those Jacobins, on the other hand, who saw in popular revolu-
tionism an outburst of anarchy, who shrank from involvement with the lower
classes of France and Paris, were more likely to lend a sympathetic ear to revolu-
tionaries from Belgium or Holland, who were after all middle- class persons like
themselves, and usually spoke excellent French. As Brissot wrote to Dumouriez in
November: it is your glorious destiny to plant the tree of liberty everywhere, carry-
ing pamphlets in German on your bayonets, while we languish at home watching
the anarchists by whom we are surrounded.^33 And Dumouriez, the victor of Je-
mappes, the hero of the international revolution, reached the point where he meant
to use his prestige and his power, won in Belgium, to bring the “anarchists” in
France under control. This is one of the themes of the next chapter.
33 Brissot, Correspondance, 314.