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The French Revolution and the Great War, 1789-1802
1789-1802; Part 3
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1789-1802; Part 3
But, as the Revolution became more violent, opinion altered. Burke, the greatest of all Whigs, who from the first, unlike others of his party, had regarded it with suspicion, published in November, 1790, his "Reflections on the French Revolution", in which he expressed his detestation of it "in its act, consequences, and most of all in its example", and prophesied that its ultimate result would be anarchy; the book made a profound impression not only in Great Britain but in all European courts. Moreover, atrocities such as the September massacres horrified public feeling. Above all, the French revolutionaries were not content to leave other countries alone. They intrigued with revolutionaries in this country, and riots in Dundee, Sheffield, and elsewhere showed the dangers of their exhortations. In the autumn of 1792 other events occurred which hastened on war The French proclaimed that they would give assistance to any nation that rose for its liberty - which was equivalent to a declaration of war against the monarchies of Europe. They occupied the Austrian Netherlands (they had begun war with Austria in the previous spring), and declared the river Scheldt open to commerce; this river, in order to develop the trade of Holland and Great Britain, had been for a long time, under European treaty, closed to all vessels by the Dutch government, and in declaring it thus open the French government showed a flagrant disregard of all treaty rights (The estuary of the Scheldt was in Dutch territory; ever since 1648 the Dutch had been recognized as having control of it and had excluded all foreigners from it. thereby ruining Antwerp and developing the prosperity of their own port of Amsterdam). Moreover, France threatened to invade Holland. Once again, as on other occasions, Great Britain felt that her own independence was bound up with that of Holland. Then followed the execution of Louis XVI in the beginning of 1793; and war was declared in February. Pitt had striven to maintain peace as long as he could; but the extremists in France had made peace impossible.
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Chronology
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