Search

Irish Protestants appeared to have found a new sense of unity in the early months of 1778 – a feeling inspired not only by the reappearance of a historic and ‘natural’ enemy in the form of Catholic France, but also by the belated adoption of conciliatory policies towards the American colonies by Lord North's ministry. The effective dropping of the British parliament's claim to tax the colonies resolved a central issue on which most members of the Irish political nation had sympathised to some extent with the Americans, even as the threat of a European war increasingly overshadowed the distant conflict in America. But divisions of opinion on America persisted in a less acute form. If some Protestants felt that British concessions on the taxation issue provided a realistic basis for reconciliation with the colonies, others believed that American independence was a fait accompli which should be recognised as soon as possible in order to release resources for the critical struggle against France. The French war also had some potential to narrow the political gulf that had opened up between élite and popular strata of Catholic society since the 1760s. For the latter, war with France raised expectations that the long-predicted liberation of Ireland was finally at hand and consolidated pro-American sympathies which were already apparent. For Catholics of property, however, the Franco-American alliance represented something of a dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1660s were a time of trial for the Stuart regime. Rumours of republican conspiracies were rife, trouble was expected and four actual risings took place, in London in 1661, in Dublin and in the north of England in 1663 and in Scotland in 1666. The regime also had a problem with the exile community in the Netherlands which increased as it drifted into a war with the Dutch. To survive in the clandestine side of government and to counter its many problems the Stuart regime was forced to develop the use of spies and informers to penetrate and betray any potential plot and gain secret knowledge of foreign affairs. In the following pages it has been possible to trace the careers of some of the men who were used by the regime for this work. The history of the alleged Tonge Plot of 1662 has long been a contentious one. Two sides to the argument which emerged over the break-up of this supposed design exist. The first viewpoint has it that the scheme was at least partly genuine and that minor figures who were arrested, convicted and executed were part of a more general and nation-wide scheme. The second view, however, was that the plot had little validity outside the fevered and greedy imaginations of a group of agents provocateurs, who were mainly concerned to exploit the situation as much as they could; moreover that what emerged was then taken up by a rattled government, who ruthlessly exploited it in parliament and sent a group of, comparatively, innocent, and certainly misguided, men to a bloody death for its own purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When Britain went to war with revolutionary France in February 1793 it was with expectations of imperial success rather than imperial catastrophe. The evident disorganisation of France and its empire seemed to present a golden opportunity to terminate decisively a century of imperial rivalry. For over two years before the war, Pitt's government had been bombarded with appeals for aid from disaffected French West Indian planters, and with suggestions from eager British officials that now was the time to take revenge for France's part in the loss of Britain's American colonies by seizing its rich Caribbean empire. Ministers resisted, putting their faith in a peace policy to see them through domestic and international dangers, but when that policy no longer seemed viable at the turn of 1792–3 and war seemed inevitable to defend Britain's interests in Holland and the Austrian Netherlands, Pitt privately admitted that the acquisition of the French islands would be an advantage of the coming conflict. What Pitt said privately was so loudly broadcast by pro-war supporters that opposition pamphleteers specifically condemned ‘those who recommend war for speculation’ and tried to belittle ‘the golden harvest’ being held out ‘chiefly in the West Indies’. These arguments failed to convince against the case that France could easily be driven from its small trading-stations in India and that Britain could snap up the dynamic core of the French empire of the Caribbean, where an immense capital investment was tied up in a rapidly expanding economy of sugar, cotton and coffee plantations worked by over 600,000 slaves and generating some two-fifths of France's foreign trade and two-thirds of its ocean-going shipping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Britain and France were the principal opponents in the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. From the French Revolution emerged an ideology which, during the first half of the nineteenth century at least, was to fire political debate and action in Europe. Britain, in turn, was the home of the pamphleteer who was to produce the most potent counter-revolutionary ideology, Edmund Burke. Yet while they were opponents, in broad areas, the Revolution and the war produced similar experiences and developments in the two countries: the Revolution both excited political debate and prompted checks on this debate – the new intensity and style of war reinforced these developments; revolution and war required, and fostered, mass participation and as ruling groups and their opponents struggled for the hearts and minds of the respective populations so intolerance towards heterodoxy worsened; revolution and war engendered a new style of militaristic nationalism in both countries. Moreover, action by one state necessitated a reaction by the other; in the processes of ideological, organisational and nationalist development the two warring states fed off each other. The British state emerged essentially unscathed from the experience of war and the fear and threat of revolution; but while the Revolution brought dramatic changes to the French state, it will be argued here that the pressures and strains of war during the 1790s fostered the recreation of a centralised system which differed from its predecessor largely inasmuch as it was far more competent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I see everywhere public stores containing the riches of the republic; and the magistrates, truly fathers of the country, have barely any other function than to maintain the mores and distribute to each family the things they require. THE RIGHT TO EXISTENCE The fair distribution of the ‘fruits of the earth’ represented the acid test of Jacobin egalitarianism, relegating all the other social and economic reforms to second place. The primary goal of society, according to Marat, was ‘bread for all’. The ‘right to subsistence’ which La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt had wanted to see included in the Declaration of 1789, the ‘right to existence’ demanded by Robespierre, the ‘right to live’ defended by Thuriot, the ‘preservation of life’ considered the first of all human rights by Romme, ‘equality of consumption’ proclaimed by Harmand – all amounted to a principle that pre-empted all others: that of each person's entitlement to food. The Jacobin rhetoric of subsistence was indistinguishable in this respect from that of the sans-culotte militants: ‘The life of men’, Jacques Roux proclaimed, ‘is the most sacred of properties.’ Was it permissible in these circumstances for a consumer's right of appropriation to extend with impunity to staple foodstuffs beyond individual entitlement, or should it be subordinated to the common welfare? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level, never equalise … The levellers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society, by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. WHO'S WHO AMONG THE JACOBINS AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF MODERATION Before attempting to elucidate further the ideological underpinnings of Jacobin egalitarianism, it may be helpful to introduce the principal protagonists of this study, many of whom belong to the amorphous body of rank-and-file Montagnards not often the subject of historiographical scrutiny. The reader is entitled to ask who they were and why the regional centres in which they operated, often far from the capital, are of specific interest to our topic. The short answer is that they represent the mainstream, though by no means the silent majority, that they put into practice what they preached and that their activities were largely concentrated in areas free from terrorist excess. While none were major revolutionaries of the stature of a Danton or a Robespierre, it would be equally misleading to suggest that they were merely practitioners imposing the will of the legislature in the depths of the French countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I was always of opinion that the greatest strength and solidity in His Majesty's councils would be wanting to carry on the present unequal war with any prospect of success; but a still greater strength will, certainly, be necessary whenever any event shall fortunately make a peace practicable, and as, in that peace, the King's German dominions must be included, prejudices are to be combatted; popular clamour will be raised, and ought to be withstood; but can only be conquered by a solid and strong administration. Fye Billy, so Naughtily thus to behave, What just Dub'd a Freeman, and List for a Slave With Pelham and Anson those true Packhorse Peers, And Fox the Trained War-Horse, to draw in the Geers The Presents of Britons, so meanly Abuse, Turn again, a Court Hack, for a Stall in the meuse As Sarah's ten Thousand, came just in the Nick, Will you Play a whole Nation, the same scurvy Trick. She knew not indeed, how Her Legacy Sped; But the Nation is Living, tho' Sarah is Dead. Pitt's claim to fame rests on British success during the Seven Years War and this chapter will concentrate on British policy and Pitt's role during that conflict, but it is first necessary to consider his position and strength as minister. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]