Liberation and Annexation 437
trust. The Brissot group, having touted Dumouriez as their great general and ge-
nius, was hopelessly compromised. The Jacobins, tearing each other to pieces, were
harried by the sans- culottes. Thousands of Dutch and Belgian revolutionaries
flocked back into France and Paris, there to add to the recrimination and the con-
fusion. There were food riots in the city. Journalists screamed their denunciations.
Insurrection brewed in the Vendée. In the preceding fall there had been moments
of hope and elation; with Jemappes the crisis of the summer of 1792 seemed to
have lifted. Now matters were worse than ever. Dumouriez had proved as bad as
Lafayette; the enemy armies were again on French soil. The stage was being set for
the Terror.
To many on the side of the Counter- Revolution, however, watching these same
events, it seemed that the stage was being set for a drama more to their liking. The
defection of the most spectacular Republican general suggested that the Republic
must be nearing its end. The feuds among the Jacobins were taken as a sign of an-
archy, showing that the whole foolish experiment was about to fall to pieces. The
abbé Maury was so certain of an imminent counter- revolution that he feared he
could not reach Rome in time to lay plans for a restoration of the French clergy.
The Count de Fersen was appointed Swedish minister to the court of Louis XVII.
There was, of course, no such court; but observers in Sweden and elsewhere
thought there soon would be.
In Holland, the Orange regime felt the pleasures of a narrow escape.
In Belgium the returning Austrians, to consolidate their second restoration, per-
secuted the Democrats and made all possible concessions to the Statists. The
Monarchy, which had been so aggressively enlightened under Joseph, and more
moderately so under Leopold, had fought a losing battle in Vienna, and now met
complete defeat in Brussels. The elder Metternich, representing the Hapsburgs,
agreed to the most reactionary demands of the Belgian privileged classes, who in-
sisted on going back to the state of affairs, not before 1792, or 1789, but before
1780, to the good old quiet days under Maria Theresa. The historic constitutions
and liberties of towns and provinces were solemnly reaffirmed. The Three Estates
would rule again. The abbots and the town notables had their way. Tithes and sei-
gneurial dues were restored, as before the late disturbance.
The Submersion of Poland
While the French liberated and then annexed Belgium in the name of the Revolu-
tion, the Russian and Prussian monarchies liberated and then annexed large parts
of Poland, using the argument that Eastern Europe must be saved from revolu-
tionary infection. The validity of this argument must be examined. It is not that
anyone is now much concerned over the degree of honesty or hypocrisy in the
cabinets of Berlin and St. Petersburg. The question is whether the new Polish re-
gime, against which the Eastern monarchies intervened, did in fact represent a
“revolution” of any significant kind. The view taken here is that it did, and that the
allegations of the neighboring monarchies were not mistaken. There are two col-
lateral questions: first, to what extent the territorial ambitions of the powers that