ABSTRACT
The American Revolution was almost fifteen years in the past. The Irish Volunteers and the Dutch Patriots, from the late 1770s, rose in armed and organized defiance of their governments. In particular, the immediate cause of the French Revolution was the failure of government. This convergence of interests, which did not occur in the massive and almost contemporary peasant rebellions of Eastern Europe, and which was due in France both to basic elements of social structure and to the momentary political situation produced by the deadlock in the Estates General, is what made possible the French Revolution of 1789. Here was the moment of defiance, with a kind of arrogation of sovereignty, from which, if one wish, the French Revolution can be dated. Leopold resisted the step; and in most of Europe, including the Hapsburg dominions, the middle and lower classes were strongly opposed to interference in the French Revolution.
