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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
Coursework Handbook1
The First
War
on Terror?
A Loyal
Contrast:
‘French Happiness, English Misery’, S.W. Fores, 1793
Revolutionary France and the British Response
Preliminary Formative Exercise
Answer 1 document exercise in c. 500 words. Document will be discussed in class
beforehand. Written responses should be handed in by week 6.
Final Summative Exercise
Please pick one of the options below as a final exercise. Completed answers should be
handed in to me by the end of the course if possible and should be c.1500 words in total. If
you would like to discuss any of the options with me before making your decision, please do.
Here are the options:
EITHER
A. Document exercises. Answer 3 exercises, from the 5 shown below. Each answer should
be about 500 words long. We will look through documents in class, time permitting.
OR
B. An Essay. Choose 1 essay, from the titles listed below. The essay should be about 1500
words long. If you pick this option, please prepare a brief one-page plan to hand in and
discuss with me before the end of term.
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N.B. Please note that all prints used in this book are either the author’s own copy and/or out of copyright
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
Preliminary Formative Exercise
Answer the following document exercise in c. 500 words. Please hand in your response by
week 6. Consider the following points in your answer:
a. What is the significance, if any, of the context of the source or sources?
b. What is the key message of each source?
c. How does the source or sources add to our understanding of the period?
d. What are the positives and negatives of these sources for historians?
1. Ancien Regime France
Arthur Young, Travels in France, 1787-9
To Montauban. The poor people seem poor indeed; the children terribly ragged - if possible,
worse clad than if with no clothes at all; as to shoes and stockings, they are luxuries. A
beautiful girl of six or seven years playing with a stick, and smiling under such a bundle of
rags as made my heart ache to see her. They did not beg, and when I gave them anything
seemed more surprised than obliged.
One third of what I have seen of this province seems uncultivated, and nearly all of it in
misery. What have kings, and ministers, and parliaments, and states to answer for their
prejudices, seeing millions of hands that would be industrious, idle and starving through the
execrable maxims of despotism, or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.
‘Le Tiers-État portant le Clergé et la Noblesse sur son dos’, Anon 1780s
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
Final Summative Exercise
A. Document Exercises:
Overleaf you will find a collection of sources for each of 4 topics:
1. The Constitutional Monarchy
2. The Terror
3. Burke, Paine and the Early Debate
4. The Media War
Please pick 3 out of the 4 topics and analyse the sources for each of them, writing about
500 words per topic (1500 in total).
Consider the following points in your answer:

What is the significance, if any, of the context of the sources?

What is the key message of each source?

How do the sources add to our understanding of the period?

What are the positives and negatives of these sources for historians?
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
The French Revolution
1. The Constitutional Monarchy
Le Journal Politique National, 1790, no.8 pp 83-85
‘Paris has never merited the name of capital more than today: it raised the standard and the
whole kingdom fell in behind it: it took for itself the name ‘patrie’, its town hall called itself
‘the nation’ and this insolent sophism has aroused no-one’s indignation. Paris absorbs all the
state’s revenues, it holds in its hands all the branches of authority... The National Assembly,
in raising Paris, might well have been able to topple the throne, but it cannot save a single
citizen... The time will come, and that time is not far off, when the National Assembly will
say to the civil army: ‘You have saved me from authority but who will save me from you?’...
If a flock of sheep summons tigers to save it from the dogs, who will be able to save it from
its new defenders...How do you reply in fact to an armed people who say to you: ‘I am
master?’...
When authority has been overthrown, its power passes inevitably to the lowest classes of
society since basically it is there that the executive power resides in all its fullness. Such is
the state of France today and of the capital.’
Outbreak of War with Austria and Prussia April 1792: The Assembly’s Declaration
The National Assembly declares that the French nation, faithful to the principles enshrined in
the Constitution ‘not to undertake any war with a view to maintaining conquest and never to
direct its forces against the liberty of the people’ is only taking up arms in defence of its
liberty and independence; that the war it is obliged to conduct is not a war of nation against
nation but the just defence of a free people.
Robespierre, Speech to the Jacobin Club, July 1792
‘The State must be saved by whatever means, and nothing is unconstitutional except what
can lead it to ruin’
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
2. The Terror
Decree Setting up a Committee of Public Safety, April 1793
There will be established a Committee of Public Safety made up of nine members of the
Convention. This Committee will deliberate in secret. It will be charged with overseeing and
speeding up the work of administration entrusted to the council of ministers.
In case of urgent need it is authorized to undertake measures of domestic and foreign defence
and decrees signed by a majority of its members in consultation, which must not be less than
two-thirds of the total, shall be carried out without delay. The Committee will prepare each
week a general report on its operations and on the state of the Republic.
Robert Linder, Montagnard, Letter to his electors, June 1793
‘The Committee of Public Safety was made responsible for seeking out the authors of the
plots denounced by the various Paris deputations, and report on them.
On 1 June a deputation from the department of Paris and the Commune demanded a decree
accusing the [Girondin] deputies. After discussion the petition was sent on to the Committee
of Public Safety. Next day the National Convention decreed the arrest of thirty-two of its
members.’
Collot-d’Herbois, CPS member, letter to a colleague on the repression of revolts in
Lyon, 1793
‘We have revitalized justice in republican style i.e. swift and terrible as the will of the nation.
It will strike at traitors like a thunderbolt and leave only ashes. The destruction of one vile
and rebellious city will strengthen all others...
The people’s blade cut the heads off twenty conspirators each day and it did not frighten
them... Sixty four of these conspirators were shot yesterday on the same spot where they fired
on patriots: two hundred and thirty will fall today.
Such substantial examples will help to persuade those cities which are vacillating.’
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
The British Response:
3. Burke, Paine & the initial debate
Richard Price, A Discourse on the Love of our Country, 1789
Be encouraged all ye friends of freedom, and writers in its defence! The times are auspicious.
Your labours have not been in vain. Behold kingdoms admonished by you, starting from
sleep, breaking their fetters, and claiming justice from their oppressors! Behold, the light you
have struck out, after setting AMERICA free, reflected to FRANCE, and there kindled into a
blaze that lays despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates EUROPE!
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790
It appears to me as if I were in a great crisis, not of the affairs of France alone, but of all
Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All circumstances taken together, the French
Revolution is the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world. The most
wonderful things are brought about in many instances by means the most absurd and
ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; and, apparently, by the most contemptible
instruments.
Everything seems out of nature in this strange chaos of levity and ferocity, and of all sorts of
crimes jumbled together with all sorts of follies. In viewing this monstrous tragi-comic scene,
the most opposite passions necessarily succeed, and sometimes mix with each other in the
mind — alternate contempt and indignation; alternate laughter and tears; alternate scorn and
horror.
‘The Rights of Man...’, Gillray, 1791
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
4. The Media War
The Star, July 1791
At the Crown Tavern, on Thursday sen’night, was celebrated the Anniversary of the French
Revolution. The meeting was composed of the most opulent and respectable Gentleman, and
appeared to want nothing to heighten the festivity and complete the happiness of the day...
Most of the lower class of people were extremely quiet and with good humour partook of a
supper prepared for them... Such was the good order and decorum preserved in this little
town.
The Morning Chronicle, September, 1792
Can we go with confidence to meet the enemy, and leave traitors in existence behind us?" —
"Let us cut the throats of every traitor!"
Such was the horrid proposition made in the Assembly of the Federates, in the Hall of the
Jacobins! —Such were the exclamations of the mob that crowded the streets! The blood
freezes in our veins while we relate the effects of this monstrous proposition. The mind
revolts.... as a horrible calumny on our common nature, but truth demands the sad and
shocking reality.
... The feelings of our Readers will have no need of commentary on this heart-rending scene.
The history of man does not furnish its parallel.
The Times, September, 1796
The Anglo-French writers in this country labour hard to transfuse into the minds of their
readers the admiration which they feel, or affect to feel, for the moderation shown by the
French... They endeavour to ennoble the cause of these deprecators, these destroyers of all
religious worship, by insinuating that a moderate, regular and honourable system has
superseded the disorganising principles of Terrorism... we must be convinced that the French
Government still continues to wage war against every opposer of its levelling system; that
universal Regicism remains still the object of all its enterprises and that the injunction to
revolutionise and Jacobinise the whole world still forms the chief instruction given to the
agents of that Government...
This fact... is more real than all the flattering pictures of French moderation, drawn by our
Anglo-Jacobin writers, whose honourable avocation it is, to stimulate the people to
insurrection
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
B. Essay Titles
Please choose ONE question and write about 1500 words:
1. How far was Britain affected by the French Revolution and why?
(Here are some of the points you might want to think about in writing your
essay: What was the nature of the French revolutionary threat? How far was it
real or imagined? Were the effects long or short term?)
2. Choose one prominent British figure during the period, and consider the
following question:
In what ways did they help shape British attitudes during the revolutionary
era and why?
(Here are some of the figures you might want to consider, though the list is by
no means exclusive! Pitt the Younger; Charles James Fox; King George III;
Prince George; Burke; Paine; James Gillray. In your answer think about the
following points when writing your essay: what role or position did they hold?
In what ways did they help to shape political culture? How were they perceived
both at the time and now?)
3. What role did propaganda play in Anglo-French relations during the
1790s and why?
(Here are some of the points you might want to think about in writing your
essay: What kinds of propaganda were produced? Who or what were the
intended audience? How effectively was the message conveyed?)
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT FOR CONTINUING EDUCATION
Suggested Background Reading
Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1767-1837
Cowie, L.W., Hanoverian England, 1714 - 1837
Dickinson, H.T. (ed.), Britain & the French Revolution, 1789-1815
Doyle, W, Oxford History of the French Revolution
Forrest, Alan, The French Revolution.
Hardman, John, Robespierre
Hampson, N, The Enlightenment
Hill, Draper, The Satirical Etchings of James Gillray
Jones, Colin (ed.), Britain & France: Conflict, Subversion and Propaganda
Keane, John, Tom Paine: A Political Life
Philp, Mark (ed.), The French Revolution & British Popular Politics
Robinson, Nicholas K., Edmund Burke: A Life in Caricature
Rudé, G, The French Revolution
Schama, S, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution
Smith, Olivia, The Politics of Language, 1791-1819
Stevenson, John, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700-1832
Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Classes
Please remember to include with your answers the details of any books you used to help
you with the exercises.
Thank you for completing the coursework exercises, I hope you enjoyed them!
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