4 - The Crucible of Democracy: The French Revolution

Summary

Know that you are kings and more than kings. Can you not feel the blood of sovereignty circulating in your veins?

Unknown French revolutionary (1792) (quoted in Sorel 1969: 256)

Let us fling down to the kings the head of a king as gage of battle.

Danton (1793) (quoted in Coupland 1940: xxvii)

We are at war with armed opinions.

William Pitt (1799) (Pitt 1940: 244)

INTRODUCTION

The French Revolution and the subsequent wars that engulfed Europe represent the intersection of fundamental changes in the nature of international politics with the modern appearance of democracy as a political force. During this quarter-century of violence and upheaval many of the last vestiges of Christendom were swept away and some of the final pieces were added to the modern states system. These changes took place in unison with and in response to the popular doctrines that first emerged from revolutionary France. With the French Revolution a powerful articulation of ideas and principles that directly challenged the foundations of the existing society of states emerged from one of its greatest powers. The fundamental significance of these events for this book is conveyed by François Furet's observation that ‘the central mystery of the French Revolution’ remains ‘the origin of democracy’ (Furet 1981: 204).

The French Revolution has been a constant source of fascination over the past 200 years, and this chapter is strictly limited to exploring the conceptual shifts in democracy and popular sovereignty within France, and how these interacted with wider dynamics in international politics. There are two interrelated movements that are considered. First is the way democracy was employed by the revolutionaries and their opponents, and how this helped to shape its meaning. Compared with the American Revolution, significant contestation and re-evaluation of the concept did occur in France, which resulted in democracy being reactivated in political discourse. As John Dunn observes, ‘with the French Revolution, democracy as a word and an idea acquired a political momentum that it has never since wholly lost’ (Dunn 2005: 17). Second, there was a powerful theoretical and practical elaboration of popular sovereignty, a form of statehood that directly challenged the foundations on which monarchical powers and international society were then established.