In Search of the ‘Glorious Peace’?

Abstract

In a memoir to the Committee of Public Safety in the spring of 1793, the French foreign minister Lebrun queried whether the French Republic could—and should—eschew recourse to negotiation.² His question concerned the very nature of the war that had begun in 1792. Was it in fact a revolutionary war, a war of ‘principles’, fought with the aim of liberating all the peoples of Europe, which thus made ‘the cannon the great negotiator’? Or was it a war to save the Republic, a war of ‘national defence’, in which case ‘the channel of negotiation represents a natural method’?³ The question of why the war was being fought and how it could be brought to an end came up repeatedly; with it came another question, that of the role of republican diplomacy in the wars of the Revolution.

Translated from the French by Sylvie Kleinman, revised, with additional material, by Godfrey Rogers.