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FAVIER'S HEIRS: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE SECRET DU ROI

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1998

GARY SAVAGE
Affiliation:
Eton College

Abstract

In contrast to the prevailing historiographical consensus, this essay will seek to demonstrate that there was a widespread and persistent concern with foreign policy in the early years of the French Revolution, the product of the interplay between inherited diplomatic assumptions on the one hand and revolutionary politics and values on the other. In particular, it will show how and why public opinion in France after 1789 abandoned its pre-revolutionary concern with Britain, Russia, and the global balance of commercial power in favour of Austria, the émigrés, and the security of the frontiers. In this light, considerable attention will be given to the development of Austrophobia in the period. Rooted in traditional French distrust of the Habsburg dynasty and reinforced by widespread opposition to the Austrian alliance of 1756, this would find its most virulent expression in the popular myth of a sinister counter-revolutionary ‘Austrian committee’ headed by Marie-Antoinette. The argument of the essay will turn upon the links between the emergence of that myth and the popularization of the ideas of Louis XV's unofficial diplomacy – the secret du roi – and its outspoken apologist Jean-Louis Favier. Adopted by various disciples after his death in 1784, Favier's ideas gained in popularity as the menace of counter-revolutionary invasion – aroused in particular by the emperor's reoccupation of the Austrian Netherlands in July 1790 – began to dominate the popular forums of revolutionary politics. They would ultimately help to generate a political climate in which the Brissotins could engineer an almost universally popular declaration of war against Austria less than two years after the revolutionaries had declared peace and friendship to the entire world. From this perspective, the growth of Austrophobia between 1789 and 1792 and its profound influence on the development of revolutionary foreign policy might usefully be described as the triumph of ‘Favier's heirs’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This essay is based on my Cambridge Ph.D. dissertation, entitled ‘French foreign policy and revolutionary politics, 1787–1792.’ For their help and encouragement I should like to thank Tim Blanning, Derek Beales, Gwynne Lewis, Brendan Simms, Alan Forrest, and Michael Sonenscher. Research in France was made possible by the generosity of the British Academy, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, the Owen Taylor Research Fund of the Voltaire Foundation, and the Faculty of History in Cambridge. Earlier versions of the essay were presented to seminars at St John's College, Cambridge, and Merton College, Oxford, in February 1996, and to the 10th Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of French History, University of Sussex, April 1996. I am very grateful to all of the participants for their helpful comments and suggestions.