Brunswick Manifesto

Last updated
Anonymous caricature depicting the treatment given to the Brunswick Manifesto by the French population Manifeste de Brunswick caricature 1792.jpg
Anonymous caricature depicting the treatment given to the Brunswick Manifesto by the French population

The Brunswick Manifesto was a proclamation issued by Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, commander of the Allied army (principally Austrian and Prussian), on 25 July 1792 to the population of Paris, France during the War of the First Coalition. [1] The manifesto threatened that if the French royal family were harmed, then French civilians would be harmed. [2] It was said to have been a measure intended to intimidate Paris, but rather helped further spur the increasingly radical French Revolution and finally led to the war between Revolutionary France and counter-revolutionary monarchies. [3]

Contents

Background

On 20 April 1792, Revolutionary France declared war on Austria. [4]

On 28 April, France invaded the Austrian Netherlands (roughly present-day Belgium). Prussia joined the war against France.

On 30 July, Austria and Prussia began an invasion of France, hoping to occupy Paris.

Brunswick Manifesto

On 25 July, the Duke of Brunswick issued the Brunswick Manifesto. The manifesto promised that if the French royal family was not harmed, then the Allies would not harm French civilians or loot. However, if acts of violence or acts to humiliate the French royal family were committed, the Allies threatened to burn Paris to the ground. The manifesto was written primarily by Louis Joseph, Prince of Condé, the leader of a large corps of French émigrés in Brunswick's army, and intended to intimidate Paris into submission. Brunswick maintained a secret correspondence with Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and two days before making the Manifesto public, he sent a copy to the Tuileries Palace, and both the King and the Queen approved it.

On August 1, news of the manifesto began sweeping through Paris. Many believed the Brunswick Manifesto was final proof that Louis XVI was collaborating with the Allies.

Also on 1 August, the Prussian Army crossed the Rhine near Koblenz; consequently, the French Legislative Assembly ordered that citizens prepare for battle.

Impact

The prevailing historiographical tradition suggests that the Brunswick Manifesto, rather than intimidate the populace into submission, sent it into furious action and created fear and anger towards the Allies. It also spurred revolutionaries to take further action, organizing an uprising – on 10 August, the Tuileries Palace was stormed in a bloody battle with Swiss Guards protecting it, the survivors of which were massacred by the mob. In late August and early September, the French were defeated in skirmishes with the Allied army, but on 20 September, the French triumphed in the Battle of Valmy. Following its defeat, the Prussian army withdrew from France.

Recent research, however, argues that the Brunswick Manifesto did not have nearly the impact upon the revolutionaries suggested in earlier source material. Firstly, the opinion of what amounted to an external foe among the French radical left was altogether trivial, both before and after the issuance of the manifesto; their attention remained firmly focused on the internal threat: the French monarchy. [5] Secondly, the literary and artistic record from the summer of 1792 suggests that Brunswick created not fear or anger, but rather humor; French cartoonists in particular took to satirizing Brunswick and his manifesto with great vigor. [6] Lastly, the French refused to take the Brunswick Manifesto seriously in any respect, believing it to be inauthentic. This determination stemmed from what they believed to be its illegality, disrespect for the law of war, and denial of national sovereignty. [7]

See also

Notes

  1. Doyle, William (1989). The Oxford History of the French Revolution . Oxford: Oxford University Press. p.  188. ISBN   0-19-822781-7.
  2. "The Proclamation of the Duke of Brunswick". history.hanover.edu. Retrieved 2017-02-10.
  3. Lyon, Janet (1999). Manifestoes: Provocations of the Modern. Corbell: Cornell University Press. p. 231. ISBN   978-0801485916.
  4. Doyle, William (1989). The Oxford History of the French Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 436. ISBN   0-19-822781-7
  5. Cross, Elizabeth. "The Myth of the Foreign Enemy? The Brunswick Manifesto and the Radicalization of the French Revolution." French History 25, no. 2 (2011): 132–197.
  6. Cross, pp. 197–202.
  7. Cross, p. 210.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis XVI</span> King of France from 1774 to 1792

Louis XVI was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French First Republic</span> Republic governing France, 1792–1804

In the history of France, the First Republic, sometimes referred to in historiography as Revolutionary France, and officially the French Republic, was founded on 21 September 1792 during the French Revolution. The First Republic lasted until the declaration of the First Empire on 18 May 1804 under Napoléon Bonaparte, although the form of government changed several times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Confederation</span> 19th-century association of German states

The German Confederation was an association of 39 predominantly German-speaking sovereign states in Central Europe. It was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as a replacement of the former Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved in 1806 in reaction to the Napoleonic Wars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">War of the First Coalition</span> 1792–1797 battles between French revolutionaries and neighbouring monarchies

The War of the First Coalition was a set of wars that several European powers fought between 1792 and 1797, initially against the constitutional Kingdom of France and then the French Republic that succeeded it. They were only loosely allied and fought without much apparent coordination or agreement; each power had its eye on a different part of France it wanted to appropriate after a French defeat, which never occurred.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flight to Varennes</span> Attempted escape by the French royal family during the French Revolution

The royal Flight to Varennes during the night of 20–21 June 1791 was a significant event in the French Revolution in which King Louis XVI of France, Queen Marie Antoinette, and their immediate family unsuccessfully attempted to escape from Paris to Montmédy, where the King wished to initiate a counter-revolution by joining up with royalist troops. They escaped as far as the small town of Varennes-en-Argonne, where they were arrested after being recognized at their previous stop in Sainte-Menehould.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of the French Revolution</span> Timeline

The following is a timeline of the French Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Valmy</span> 1792 battle during the War of the First Coalition

The Battle of Valmy, also known as the Cannonade of Valmy, was the first major victory by the army of France during the Revolutionary Wars that followed the French Revolution. The battle took place on 20 September 1792 as Prussian troops commanded by the Duke of Brunswick attempted to march on Paris. Generals François Kellermann and Charles Dumouriez stopped the advance near the northern village of Valmy in Champagne-Ardenne.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hundred Days</span> 1815 period of the Napoleonic Wars

The Hundred Days, also known as the War of the Seventh Coalition, marked the period between Napoleon's return from eleven months of exile on the island of Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815. This period saw the War of the Seventh Coalition, and includes the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War as well as several other minor campaigns. The phrase les Cent Jours was first used by the prefect of Paris, Gaspard, comte de Chabrol, in his speech welcoming the king back to Paris on 8 July.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French Revolutionary Wars</span> 1792–1802 series of conflicts between the French Republic and several European monarchies

The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts resulting from the French Revolution that lasted from 1792 until 1802. They pitted France against Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other countries. The wars are divided into two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries and the Rhineland. French success in these conflicts ensured the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.

The French Revolutionary Wars began on 20 April 1792 when the French Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria. This launched the War of the First Coalition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">September Massacres</span> 1792 killings of prisoners in Paris

The September Massacres were a series of killings and summary executions of prisoners in Paris that occurred in 1792, from Sunday, 2 September until Thursday, 6 September, during the French Revolution. Between 1,176 and 1,614 people were killed by sans-culottes, fédérés, and guardsmen, with the support of gendarmes responsible for guarding the tribunals and prisons, the Cordeliers, the Committee of Surveillance of the Commune, and the revolutionary sections of Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insurrection of 10 August 1792</span> 1792 storming of the Tuileries Palace in Paris during the French Revolution

The insurrection of 10 August 1792 was a defining event of the French Revolution, when armed revolutionaries in Paris, increasingly in conflict with the French monarchy, stormed the Tuileries Palace. The conflict led France to abolish the monarchy and establish a republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick</span> Prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg

Charles William Ferdinand was the prince of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and a military leader. His titles are usually shortened to Duke of Brunswick in English-language sources.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">French Revolutionary Army</span> Army of Revolutionary France

The French Revolutionary Army was the French land force that fought the French Revolutionary Wars from 1792 to 1802. In the beginning, the French armies were characterised by their revolutionary fervour, their poor equipment and their great numbers. However, the French Revolutionary Army had become arguably the most powerful army in the world by the mid-1790s, as the French armies had become well-experienced and organized, enabling them to comfortably outfight their enemies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seven Years' War</span> Global war among European powers (1756–1763)

The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict involving most of the European great powers, fought primarily in Europe and the Americas. One of the opposing alliances was led by Great Britain and Prussia. The other alliance was led by France, backed by Spain, Saxony, Sweden, and Russia. Related conflicts include the 1754 to 1763 French and Indian War, and 1762 to 1763 Anglo-Spanish War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Low Countries theatre of the War of the First Coalition</span> 1792–95 campaign of the War of the First Coalition

The Low Countries theatre of the War of the First Coalition, in British historiography better known as the Flanders campaign, was a series of campaigns in the Low Countries conducted from 20 April 1792 to 7 June 1795 during the first years of the War of the First Coalition. As the French Revolution radicalised, the revolutionary National Convention and its predecessors broke the Catholic Church's power (1790), abolished the monarchy (1792) and even executed the deposed king Louis XVI of France (1793), vying to spread the Revolution beyond the new French Republic's borders, by violent means if necessary. The First Coalition, an alliance of reactionary states representing the Ancien Régime in Central and Western Europe – Habsburg Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Hanover and Hesse-Kassel – mobilised military forces along all the French frontiers, threatening to invade Revolutionary France and violently restore the monarchy. The subsequent combat operations along the French borders with the Low Countries and Germany became the primary theatre of the War of the First Coalition until March 1796, when Napoleon took over French command on the Italian front.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First French Empire</span> Empire in France from 1804 to 1815

The First French Empire, officially the French Republic, then the French Empire after 1809 and also known as Napoleonic France, was the empire ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, who established French hegemony over much of continental Europe at the beginning of the 19th century. It lasted from 18 May 1804 to 3 May 1814 and again briefly from 20 March 1815 to 7 July 1815, when Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kingdom of France (1791–92)</span> Constitutional monarchy of France (1791–1792)

The Kingdom of France was a constitutional monarchy from 3 September 1791 until 21 September 1792, when it was succeeded by the French First Republic.

La Marseillaise is a French film of 1938, directed by Jean Renoir. A vast political, social, and military panorama of the French Revolution up to the autumn of 1792, its many episodes range from the life of ordinary working people through the committed bourgeois struggling for change up to those in the upper echelons of society defending the status quo.

Events from the year 1792 in France.

References