ABSTRACT
Several recent historical works have pointed out that the term 'French Revolution' casts a false light upon the European situation at the end of the eighteenth century. The revolutionists lectured other peoples through journalism, tracts and published state papers - the Declaration of the Rights of Man, for example, or the Constitution of 1791 - as well as through correspondence between Parisian and foreign political clubs. Noblemen such as the comte de narbonne-lara, named war minister in December 1791, and the Marquis de Lafayette, who was initially in command of over half the French land forces, saw an international crisis, even after the flight to Varennes, as an occasion for reviving aristocratic leadership. The French Revolution began amid excited applause from Whig reformers in Britain, supporters of the Josephine programme in Austria and the men around Grand Duke Leopold in Tuscany, not to mention the democrats of Holland and Belgium, the Germanies and Switzerland.
