T. C. W. Blanning’s 1996 book The French Revolutionary Wars: 1787-1802, is an academic study focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century conflicts that engulfed Europe and set the stage for the Napoleonic era. Dr. Blanning is a British historian who taught at the University of Cambridge until his retirement in 2009 and is the author of several works on European politics and warfare in the eighteenth century including 1970’s Joseph II and Enlightened Despotism, 1986’s The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars, and 2015’s Frederick the Great: King of Prussia.
In The French Revolutionary Wars, Blanning considers the conflicts within the context of the international order in Europe, and illustrates that the French Revolution at home was consistently dominated by these developments. The first steps toward revolutionary warfare had actually been taken in 1757, during the Seven Years’ War. That year witnessed the disastrous French defeat at the hands of the Prussians at the Battle of Rossbach. The French were so shocked by their defeat that they began to seriously consider their military methods and contemplate much needed reforms. The army of Louis XV represented a pale shadow compared with the dynamic force that dominated Western Europe under Louis XIV. Reformers such as the comte de Guibert and comte de Gribeauval soon began to correct the French military deficiencies. Blanning notes that “in old regime Europe it had been French theorists and practitioners who had formed the vanguard of military change.” The French Revolution did not spark military change for France, it merely coincided with it.
Blanning notes that the critical year was 1787, two years before France’s revolution began. Firstly, the Russians declared war with the Ottoman Empire that year which eventually culminated with the involvement of the Habsburg Monarchy. By 1788, the Austrians suffered severe setbacks at the hands of the Turks, and Austria’s potential enemies, including France, began to sense Habsburg weakness. This weakness proved important in the years to come, as it helped to embolden the French. Events closer to home, however, ultimately spelled disaster for the ancien régime. Prussia and Britain intervened in the Dutch Republic, a country that the French considered within their political sphere. Debt and political paralysis meant that Louis XVI was powerless to stop it the Prussian and British intrusion into the Netherlands, however. The French failure to mobilize their army to protect their interests in the Dutch Republic illustrated Louis XVI’s tenuous hold on executive power and delegitimatized his government’s authority.
The French decision to go to war in April 1792 had far reaching consequences, both for France and for the rest of Europe. Blanning maintains that once in power the revolutionaries, most notably the Girondin Jacques Pierre Brissot, called for war as a legitimizing agent. After the flight to Varennes, and the evident collusion between Louis XVI and the conservative powers of Europe, such as the Habsburg Empire and Prussia, war provided the justification to execute the king, and it sanctioned the Revolution as the Girondins mobilized the nation in a fight for survival. Blanning affirms that once war was declared in April 1792, the revolutionaries became far more radical, and this in turn led in 1793 to the Reign of Terror, “it was not ideological differences that bought about the war, rather it was the other way around.” The revolutionaries implemented the recommendations of the post- Rossbach reformers like Guibert, who called for a mass citizen army. This mostly volunteer force, burning with revolutionary conviction, proved more reliable and dependable than previous armies. Blanning maintains, “soldiers who served out of a sense of conviction could be used in much more imaginative ways, for generals were no longer inhibited by the fear that their troops would desert at the first available opportunity.” Such highly motivated soldiers had to be amalgamated to more experienced, regular troops in order to be more effective in combat. Blanning compares the National Convention’s 1793 call for the levée en masse with a declaration for total war, and likens the mood in the National Convention that day to that of Joseph Goebbels’ 1943 fanatical total war speech. Further, Blanning states that French superior numbers was the key to French success during the period rather than the vague notion of Revolutionary zeal among the troops. Blannnig demonstrates this with the fact that whenever France’s enemies had parity in numbers, they usually won. It was only when the French had numerical superiority that they triumphed.
Blanning infers that the wars had further implications for the revolution as well as for Europe. Shortly after Valmy, French General Charles François Dumouriez proposed to the National Convention that making war could actually be profitable. Armies on campaign abroad could live off the land, thus freeing the French civilian population from the expense of their maintenance. Additionally, Dumouriez essentially promised a program of pillage and large-scale theft in foreign lands. The product of this looting could then be sent back to Paris to rescue the republic’s dwindling finances. Dumouriez’s proposal set in motion a system of plunder by which the French Revolutionary Wars were financed. In contrast, Blanning convincingly demonstrated in chapter six that Britain was able to maintain naval superiority over the French and continue waging war largely because of its advanced system of public finance, which included direct and indirect taxation and bank loans. Blanning comments, “in general a combination of insular security, continuing prosperity, and fervent patriotism encouraged public investment in the war effort.” Critically, Blanning argues, revolutionary France had begun its war without clear war aims. The National Convention’s November 1792 Edict of Fraternity painted France as a nation ready to spread the ideals of liberty to all of Europe, although this was largely to disguise the reality that the French were bent on territorial expansion and European hegemony.
Blanning contends that in order to understand the French Revolutionary Wars, a firm understanding of events in central and eastern Europe are critical. Even as the two German states collided with Revolutionary France, their main strategic preoccupations were firmly fixed on Poland. This fixation over the Polish question diverted their attention away from the west, and allowed the French to make territorial gains it otherwise couldn’t have. Despite their shared antagonism toward Revolutionary France, the Prussians and Austrians still looked at each other as deadly rivals in their common sphere of shared strategic interest: Poland. The Russian Empire was also primarily concerned with Poland, which meant it had little interest in or resources available for a campaign against France during the early war period. Blanning relates that the Prussians and Austrians were also unable to provide leadership to the German states of the Holy Roman Empire because they were too obviously concerned with their own expansionist interests. Blanning maintains that these diplomatic considerations are essential to understanding the French Revolution’s survival and growth at the time. The French Revolutionaries were able to capitalize on their adversaries’ distractions in eastern and central Europe and dramatically expand France’s borders in the west through military occupation, economic exploitation, and the establishment of satellite states.
Blanning traces General Napoleon Bonaparte’s success in Italy in 1796, and presents it as the defining moment in his rise. Bonaparte was aware of the revolutionary regime’s desperate need for a constant flow of wealth from its armies, and he made certain his army was effective at looting. “From the moment he began his Italian campaign,” Blanning asserts, “he was careful to report back to Paris on the large amounts of money he was extorting from the luckless local population.” The victories in Italy helped to keep the revolutionary regime afloat financially. Ironically, the pillaging and economic exploitation of conquered lands constituted a blatant contrast to the French Revolutionaries’ avowed purpose of spreading liberty. France’s revolutionary republic was exposed as little more than any other expansionist state. Indeed, the Campo Formio treaty’s partition of Italy illustrated this fact dramatically. “The liberationist rhetoric may have been new, but the practice it cloaked was pure balance-of-power politics, worthy of the old regime.” Bonaparte’s successes in Italy catapulted him to the front rank of the revolution’s military leaders, and as the regime relied steadily upon military conquest for its legitimacy and its financing, military dictatorship became inevitable.
Blanning examines the war at sea, and the manner in which the revolution altered the composition of the French navy. He concludes that at the beginning of the war the French presented a real naval challenge to Great Britain, and the Royal Navy’s qualitative lead was diminishing. The Revolution, however, hampered French naval progress. Mutinies and disobedience toward aristocratic high-ranking French officers led many of the latter to resign, and opened up those ranks to men of more modest social origins. Even as La Royale fell into chaos, the Royal Navy enjoyed important gains that proved crucial in the war. Britain’s system of public financing permitted not only the Royal Navy to remain the most effective and powerful navy during the period, but allowed for a greater number of ships of the line and a more professional service overall. In defending the post-Seven Years’ War status quo at sea and around the world, Britain prevented Revolutionary France from realizing its larger global ambitions. Blanning’s final chapter explores the final years of the Revolutionary War period, from 1799 to 1802. Count Alexander Suvorov’s Russian army reversed many of Napoleon’s gains in northern Italy, but Suvorov’s success also carried within it discord. As the Russian army made gains in northern Italy, the Habsburg’s felt that Russia was intruding upon their traditional geographical sphere of interest. Blanning agrees with historian François Furet, who opined that Bonaparte’s regime must date from 14 June 1800 and his improbable victory at Marengo.
The French Revolutionary Wars: 1787-1802 constitutes an excellent overview of the conflict which pitted first Revolutionary then Napoleonic France against the rest of Europe for 23 years, and superbly illuminates the convergence between the French Revolutionary government and the wider geo-political considerations of the day. The Revolutionary regime both relied on the war it unleashed and depended upon it for its survival. The monograph as a whole is a fascinating reminder that no government exists in a vacuum of domestic considerations, but is constantly at the mercy of larger forces outside of its borders as well. Blanning’s work should be read by every serious student of the period, and those seeking to learn the true motivations of Revolutionary actors will benefit greatly as well.
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