No event in modern history divides opinion with quite the intensity of the passions that are sparked off by the French Revolution. To some it remains a milestone in the development of liberty, the moment when a people first shook off centuries of superstition and mindless deference and proudly asserted their own rights as reasoning human beings. To others it was a catastrophe both for France and for Europe, in which the rhetoric of liberty was soon swamped by a terrifying outburst of frenzied killing which set the precedent for the monstrous dictatorships of the twentieth century.
Why did the French Revolution spark off such extreme reactions? Why did some groups within France and other nations outside it hold out so strongly against a movement based on the idea of freedom and equality? How far did the French revolutionaries succeed in maintaining the purity of the motivation behind their initial revolt against their king? Why did the establishment of a republican form of government provoke first civil, and then European, war?
From the start the Revolution alienated elements within France, starting with the aristocrats who fled abroad rather than give up an iota of their privileges, and soon including leaders of the early stages of the Revolution itself, overtaken by events they were no longer able to control. Some people, like the people of the Vendée region of western France or the Chouan movement in Brittany, outraged at the Revolution's attack on their cherished beliefs, rose in rebellion against the Revolution. The fighting was desperate and the price of failure was terrifying, as the people of Lyon would discover to their cost when their attempt to assert their autonomy was ruthlessly crushed by representatives of the Committee of Public Safety.
The Revolution quickly antagonised the monarchs of Europe, not least by the execution of King Louis XVI; Danton declared that the French had cast at the feet of the kings of Europe, like a challenge, the head of a king. But if the French were convinced that they were fighting a war of ideology and launching a new era in world history, their neighbours didn't always see it that way. Many of the great powers of Europe calculated their reaction to the French Revolution along much the same lines as their policy towards the Bourbon regime the Revolution had overthrown and either fought with or alongside the French according to their own national interests. But there were some across Europe who knew a life-and-death ideological struggle when they saw one - though they did not always agree on which side to support.
