A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

War and the Second Revolution 459

Olympe de Gouges (left), whose book The Rights of Women was published in France

in 1791. It detailed the notion of equal rights that Mary Wollstonecraft (right) would

take up the next year in Britain with the publication of her Vindication of the Rights

of Woman.

undertook the suppression of Jacobin sympathizers in their states. In
Britain, the seeming threat of foreign invasion helped affirm British national
identity (see Chapter 11). Popular respect for the British monarchy and
probably also for nobles soared as anti-French and anti-Catholic feelings
came to the fore. Pitt the Younger s government lashed out at the develop­
ment of popular politics in Britain, suspending the freedoms of association,
assembly, and the press, as well as the writ of habeas corpus. “Coercion Acts”
facilitated the arrest of those advocating parliamentary reform.
Thus, Louis XVI’s virtual imprisonment in the Tuileries Palace in Paris
and the thunderous speeches in the Assembly proclaiming the necessity of
“a war of peoples against kings” worried the crowned heads of Europe. On
August 27, 1791, Emperor Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire (brother
of Marie-Antoinette, who had not seen him in twenty-five years) and King
Frederick William II of Prussia promulgated the Declaration of Pilnitz. It
expressed their concern about the plight of the French monarchy and stated
the common interest of both sovereigns in seeing order restored in France.
Despite Robespierre’s speeches warning the deputies that the Revolution
must first deal with its enemies within France before waging war abroad, the
Assembly, egged on by General Charles Francois Dumouriez (1739-1823),
minister of foreign affairs, in April 1792 declared war on Austria. The stated
reason was fear that an Austrian invasion from the Southern Netherlands
was imminent. The declaration of war soon seemed a rash move, as the army
had been devastated by the desertion of two-thirds of its officers (85 percent
of its officers had been nobles before the Revolution). Moreover, Prussia