Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:42:06.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAPTER X - THE INTERNAL HISTORY OF FRANCE DURING THE WARS, 1793–1814

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

Jacques Godechot
Affiliation:
Professor of History in the University of Toulouse Le Mirail and Honorary Dean of the Faculty of Letters
Get access

Summary

At Valmy, on 20 September 1792, the first of the many victories of the armies of the Revolution marked for Europe the start of a twenty-year war, only interrupted from 1802 to 1804 by two years of precarious peace. For France, this meant the beginning of a new regime—the Republic. Democratic at first, then middle-class and, later, Consular, it finally turned into a military dictatorship which, from 1804, adopted the name of Empire. This new regime sprang from the big social, economic and administrative changes which had occurred since 1789. The democratic republic, in 1793 and 1794, tried to fulfil the ambitions of the Revolution by combining economic equality with the equality of civic rights that had been secured in 1789. In so doing, it was to give the world an example which would inspire future socialism. But these ideals were to be short-lived. The bourgeois republic, like the military dictatorship, was to be content with consolidating the achievements of 1789, now firmly established even against the reaction of 1814.

No doubt the administrative and social achievement of 1789–92, and the socialist experiments too, would have taken shape differently if France had not been in an almost permanent state of war which dominated internal policy during the next twenty-two years. The war, and the dangers to which France was exposed by repeated defeats during the first five months of the struggle (April to September 1792), developed in the people an exalted patriotism along with the fear of enemy invasion and of seignorial reaction.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×