CHAPTER XVIII
LIBERATION AND ANNEXATION:
1792–1793Sir: The democratic government of France is said to have invented a new system of
foreign politics, under the names of proselytism and fraternization. My present let-
ter... will show that an internal interference with foreign states, and the annexa-
tion of dominion to dominion for purposes of aggrandizement are among the most
inveterate and predominant principles of long established governments. These
principles, therefore, only appear novel and odious in France because novel and
despised persons there openly adopted them.
—BENJAMIN VAUGHAN TO THE EDITOR OF THE
MORNING CHRONICLE, LONDON, MAY 16, 1793
The year 1793 was one of great successes for the Counter- Revolution, especially in
Belgium and Poland, the two theaters in which the forces of a democratic revolu-
tion most conspicuously failed to maintain themselves. For a while it seemed that
the same would be true in France.
In 1792 the French army occupied Belgium, and the Russian army, closely fol-
lowed by the Prussian, occupied Poland. In both cases the entering powers an-
nounced themselves as liberators, and were welcomed as such by certain elements
in the population. The French in Belgium within a few weeks passed to a policy of
annexation. The Russians and Prussians had annexationist designs on Poland from
the beginning. The French were soon driven out, but returned in 1794, so that
Belgium remained incorporated into France for twenty years. The Russian and
Prussian monarchies never gave up what they took of Poland in 1793, except that
for a few years the Prussian segment belonged to Napoleon’s Grand Duchy of
Warsaw. Only with the destruction of the Russian and Prussian monarchies them-
selves, in 1918, were the annexations of 1793 undone, and then only in part. The