ABSTRACT

In 1793 the Brissotins had led France into a much wider war than the one which had broken out in 1792 in the apparent belief that the peoples of Europe would throw off their chains and rally to the support of the French armies. A minority of reformist writers and officials, many of them disillusioned by the collapse of Josephinianism, such as Pietro Verri, continued, if only privately, to express views sympathetic to the Revolution. Some of the Revolution's admirers stayed loyal to their first impressions, true, but in almost no instance were they able to move from mere conspiracy to revolt, the upheavals that we see in Belgium, Poland and Ireland all having their roots in situations that had no connection with France whatsoever. The collapse of the Republican movement in Mainz was not, of course, the end of the story of collaboration in the Rhineland, as the fall of Mainz was not the end of French domination.