The Emergence of Citizenship in France and Elsewhere

In April 1793, France was waging war both inside and outside its borders. Over the previous year, the French government had taken up arms against Austria, Sardinia, Prussia, Great Britain, Holland and Spain. In its first seizure of new territory since the Revolution began in 1789, it had recently annexed the previously Austrian region we now call Belgium. Revolutionaries had dissolved the French monarchy in September 1792, then guillotined former king Louis XVI in January 1793. If France spawned violence in victory, it redoubled domestic bloodshed in defeat; a major French loss to Austrian forces at Neerwinden on 18 March 1793, followed by the defection of General Dumouriez, precipitated both a call for expanded military recruitment and a great struggle for control of the revolutionary state. April saw the formation of the Committee of Public Safety, fearsome instrument of organizational combat. France's domestic battle was to culminate in a Jacobin seizure of power.