The historical background: revolution and reaction

The eighteenth century was a time of great prosperity and con­fidence for England—at least for the upper and middle classes. Toward the end of the century, however, two major political revolu­tions disturbed the English sense of security and well-being. Al­though both revolutions occurred outside England and left the basic values and structures of English society unchanged for the moment, they nevertheless had a powerful effect on late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century thinking in England. First, there was the revolt by the English colonies in America against the economic and politi­cal control of the mother country. The victory of the American movement for independence was certainly a blow to English con­fidence, but practically and philosophically it was less threatening than the second revolution, which took place in France in 1789. In practical political terms, the English could see in the Trench Revo­lution not merely a rejection of authority and control by a distant and as yet disorganized group of colonies, but a complete overthrow of the government of a great European power from within. Philo­sophically, the French Revolution seemed to signal the victory of even more radical democratic principles than those enunciated in the American Declaration of Independence.

In England the Crown and the ruling classes feared the effects of the French Revolution from the beginning. But English liberals and radi­cals, who themselves had been calling for the democratization of English society, saw in the early stages of the French Revolution—in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and in the storming of the Bas­tille on July 14, 1789, to release imprisoned political prisoners —a triumph of popular democracy. Among the enthusiastic supporters of the Revolution in its early stages were writers who would play a central role in English Romanticism. Wordsworth visited France during the summer of 1790 and was filled with hope and excitement as the country celebrated the first anniversary)of the fall of the Bas­tille. William Godwin (1756-1836), a philosopher and novelist who exerted considerable influence on Wordsworth, Shelley, and other Romantic poets, predicted in An Enquiry Concerning Political Jus­tice (1793) a peaceful version in England of what appeared to be hap­pening in France. In The Spirit of the Age, Hazlitt said that the French Revolution seemed at first to announce that "a new impulse had been given to men's minds."

But the promise and expectation aroused by the early years of the Revolution in France soon gave way to bitter disappointment as events took an increasingly violent and repressive course. When rev­olutionary extremists gained control of the government in 1792, they executed hundreds of the imprisoned nobility in what came to be known as the "September Massacres." The year 1793 saw the ex­ecution of King Louis XVI and the 'establishment under Robespierre of the Reign of Terror, during which thousands of those associated with the old regime were guillotined. Most disturbing of all, per­haps, was the invasion of the Rhineland and the Netherlands by the army of the French Republic, and the French offer of armed assist­ance to all countries desiring to overthrow their present govern­ments. Then, after savage reprisals against those who had held power during the Reign of Terror, Napoleon emerged as dictator, and eventually as emperor of France. Once a champion of the Revo­lution, Napoleon became a tyrannical despot who strove to conquer Europe and establish a new dynasty.

The reaction in England to these events in France was predictable. Even the most ardent supporters of the Revolution were left in disillusionment and despair. As Wordsworth expressed it in his greatest poem, The Prelude:

Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defense

For one of conquest, losing sight of all

Which they had struggled for ....

As for the government and the ruling classes, their fear of the Revo­lution was hardened into severe repressive measures at home against all those who sympathized with democratic ideals or reform, and into determined military opposition abroad against Napoleon's imperial army. (His navy had been destroyed by Lord Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.) Although emperor, with unlimited powers, Napoleon was in some respects still a man of the French Revolution, inheriting some of its liberating ideas, which were al­ready triumphant in America. The Whigs in Britain recognized this fact and were in favor of trying to come to terms with Napoleon. But the Tories, who saw in him a threat to their political and social sys­tem, carried the country. The final defeat of Napoleon in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo was cause for triumphant celebration by the con­servative forces that ruled England during these years. But for some of the disillusioned English, such as Shelley and Byron, who had sympathized with the ideals of the French Revolution, Waterloo marked the defeat of one despotic power by another. Far from show­ing the way to democratic progress and reform, the French Revolu­tion seemed to them to have consolidated the power of the wealthy and reactionary ruling classes.